High ground – urban planning and development

The Swiss spatial concept is ten years old. It is time to review this agreement about the shape and future of the country. To this end, Hochparterre prepares Switzerland’s Agenda 2040.

it is time. We have to think: like this Spatial concept Switzerland renewal? Ten years ago, the federal government, the cantons and the municipalities agreed on the goals and methods of creating the Switzerland region on these three pillars of our state. Not as a law, but as a barrier that authorities at all levels decide to walk along in order to plan settlements, transport, energy infrastructure, or design living spaces and landscapes. It was the premiere of the Swiss spatial concept. Five years later, delegates from the federal government, the cantons and the municipalities, from daily spatial science and planning, patted each other: “We are on the right track.” But they also realized that political upheavals such as the energy transition, global climate change, rapid demographic changes, new technologies, or growing inequality in urban, rural and mountain areas will make the concept look out of date at times. In short – on his birthday next year, the Swiss space concept is ready for a makeover. Radebutz? nicely? At odd points?

Born of lust and joy
Switzerland’s Agenda 2040 contributes to that. Hans-Georg Bächtold and Köbi Gantenbein edited it. One of them has been working as a mezzanine floor clerk for thirty years in landscaping, planning and lifestyles. The other, a forestry engineer and spatial planner, has been a planner of the cantons for Basel Landschaft for many years, and as general manager of the SIA, he also took an interest in spatial planning. Their development was accompanied from 2003-2019 in the Spatial Planning Council. The two recently wrote a special issue of Hochparterre: This is how 10 Million Switzerland live. Then they came up with the idea: Instead of crafting entries for a new “room concept,” we’re on our way to one – not by pressure and need, but by lust and imagination, an attitude toward life that is good for room planning.

Grouped
The track is called the Raum Schweiz Agenda 2040 and here on hochparterre.ch there are regular contributions from planners, geographers and sociologists; By scholars, spatial planners, and horizontal thinkers and degrees. They will provide the chip on which the Swiss spatial concept can be roofed, glued, and revised in a future-oriented manner. There is a collage. This is a contemporary art form. You collect roadside pieces, discover similarities and differences, cut pieces to size, paint and put them together with great joy unexpected images are created. As a completely open format, the collage is the opposite of closed image and coherent confirmation. Bächtold & Gantenbein specifically invite the authors to Switzerland’s Agenda 2040. But you warmly welcome the contributions, objections and counter-statements from everyone who thinks it would be a miracle to form Switzerland in 2040.

With the Raum Schweiz Agenda 2040, Hochparterre incites a renewal of the “spatial concept of Switzerland”. The editors are sponsored by Hans-Georg Bächtold and Köbi Gantenbein. All readers are encouraged to submit agenda entries to gantenbein@Hochpartner.To send the chapter.