I live in a tropical climate so I'm completely clueless on heating systems but has municipal steam heating been completely abandoned? It seems more efficient than both individual gas or electric heaters once you take conversion loses into account
Would say that almost all cities / larger towns in Sweden has municipal heating via hot water. And acc. to wikipedia around half of all housing units in Denmark, Sweden and Finland has municipal heating.
Yes, steam isn't used anymore, it's too inefficient. The trend is towards lower temperatures in the district heating.