Spatial Planning in Switzerland
5 Feb | How successful has spatial planning been in Switzerland? This lunch talk will discuss the achievements, lessons learnt and challenges of spatial planning in Switzerland.
As a small country in the heart of Europe, Switzerland is an attractive living and natural space.
If we want to preserve this for our children and their children as well, we need effective, far-sighted spatial and transportation planning today. Not changing the constitutional responsibilities in these fields implies that the federal level, the different agencies, the cantons and the municipalities have to coordinate and work together.
The talk by Dr Maria Lezzi, director of the Federal Office for Spatial Development in Switzerland, will discuss how new instruments and forms of cooperation. Tripartite spatial strategy Switzerland, model projects, agglomeration programmes, and the revision of the spatial planning act have been introduced over the last 15 years - most of them successfully so, but not all of them.
From the point of view of the federal planning authority, real laboratories have been important and valuable experiences, as well as the check-and-balances built into the Swiss political system.
The joint struggle for best solutions must be intensified. There are even thoughts about experimentation zones or experimentation clauses in national law. Many challenges, such as high quality, dense urbanisation at affordable prices, climate change, efficient mobility in all respects etc. require new thinking, planning and action.
The speaker
Dr Maria Lezzi has been the director of the Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE) since July 2009. From 1996 to 2001, the geographer with a doctorate from the University of Zurich was deputy-managing director of the Regio Basiliensis, the Swiss partner in international cooperation in the border region on the Upper Rhine.
She then headed the planning office in the department of building and transport of the canton of Basel-Stadt for eight years.