dstad, "capital of the spanish flu".
Despite the great depression and several crisis resulting in a very high unemployment rate �stersund continued to grow in the interwar period. The municipal community Odenslund was incorporated into �stersund in 1918. The business world remained largely unaffected and �stersund continued being one of the least industrialized cities in Sweden. Instead �stersund continued to focus on wholesale trade and became a centre of this in northern and north central Sweden. The city's central position was strengthened when Inlandsbanan was constructed through J�mtland from the north to the south. During the interwar period the car and the bus became common. The first scheduled bus route was created in the 1920s between �stersund and the nearby town of Brunflo. In the next decade well over 40 bus routes were functioning in �stersund. The dairy was located west of the bus square, Gustav III:s torg, at the shopping mall K�rnan's current whereabout. This square naturally become a central part of the city.
�stersund continued to grow after the Second World War. Lugnvik was incorporated into the city in 1954 and �stersund was just like the rest of J�mtland affected by the Rehn-Meidner-model, though not in the same way. The Swedish Keynesian politic was launched in order to improve the mobility of the labour force. J�mtland was struck hard by this when the people moved from the countryside to cities, from inland to coast and from the north to the south. As an urban area �stersund was affected by the Million Programme and urban districts like K�rf�ltet were created.
The negative view towards industries were changed when the Social Democrats came to power for the first time in the city's history in 1952. Industries were enticed to �stersund through the national localization politic and industrial areas were created in Odenskog and Lugnvik. The development wasn't, as already mentioned, as good in the rest of J�mtland as it was in
