Urban diversity, not cookie-cutter cities
Growth and landscape conservation, urban habitats and rural nostalgia – spatial and urban planners have their hands full. Wilhelm Natrup, Director of the Zurich Cantonal Office of Spatial Planning, and Professors Kees Christiaanse and Christian Schmid from the ETH Department of Architecture talk about how to handle these contradictions.
We have seen many discussions about population growth and immigration recently. Is Switzerland bursting at the seams?
Wilhelm Natrup: No, in the Canton of Zurich alone we could easily accommodate an influx of up to 400,000 people. On paper, we have sufficient reserves in built-up areas. But we have to handle these areas and zoning districts differently than we have in the past.
Kees Christiaanse: I come from Holland. Compared with my country, Switzerland is not densely populated at all. But you do see instances of urban sprawl. Above an altitude of 1,000 metres there is natural protection against this phenomenon, because it’s difficult to build any higher up. In the valleys, however, for instance in the Rhine valley, it’s getting very crowded. This leads to a populated landscape which is, in fact, an urban landscape. It’s important to shape this development by means of spatial planning measures.
Christian Schmid: When I take international guests up the Uetliberg mountain and tell them how built-up the region of Zurich is, they are completely dumbfounded. All they see is hills, forests and lakes. From an inter-national perspective, we can’t really say that Switzerland is overly urbanised. But if we take a closer look, we see that some landscapes are no longer attractive, for instance the Zurich Oberland or upper Lake Zurich in the Canton of Schwyz. There’s a great deal of urban sprawl in these landscapes, not because there’s been too much construction, but because it’s in the wrong locations. That’s the main problem.
Can these mistakes be reversed or rectified?
Christiaanse: The tools for making construction work more or less acceptable are, in my experience, far better in Switzerland than in Germany or Holland, for instance. One problem is how prominent the buildings are: for example, if you place a chimney stack in an empty landscape, then you can really see it and it “pollutes” the entire landscape. But if you were to erect the same chimney stack in the city, you wouldn’t even notice it. This means that in some situations, development in specific landscape segments will be perceived as urbanisation even if this is not the case in terms of density or social interaction. We have to be very careful here.
So you are calling for inward densification as envisaged in the new Spatial Planning Act (SPA)?
Natrup: This concept is not new to the SPA; it was already written into law, but we have had enforcement problems. The law was not consistently implemented on all state levels. That’s what led to this divergent development. The research by Kees Christiaanse and Christian Schmid highlights the problem: the wrong locations and urban sprawl. And now we see a counter-reaction from the people, who will no longer accept deteriorating landscape quality. The adoption of the new Spatial Planning Act shows that we are 30 years behind.
Christiaanse: Inward densification is a must. But inward densification doesn’t mean that we only build in towns, just that we only build on sites that have already been developed.
Schmid: In principle, I agree. But we have to be careful that we don’t densify the wrong sites. Densification is often just a buzzword. In conjunction with the zoning plan review in the city of Zurich, you often read comments at the moment that we should more or less zone the entire city. If you engage in densification on this scale, then you need to be aware of what this means. If, for instance, you let people erect buildings with an additional storey in an inner-city district, ultimately you will destroy the entire district.
It will take on a different character anyway.
Schmid: You will destroy the existing urban fabric because zoning leads to massive increases in land prices and rents. This results in gentrification, and sooner or later the existing buildings are replaced by new buildings. So densification doesn’t automatically lead to cheaper prices, as many people think – it means that we can use land differently. Depending on the situation, that can also trigger land-price spikes. I am deliberately saying this so pointedly because we have to be very careful here. But outside of city centres, there are very many areas in which good densification can markedly increase urban quality if it is done carefully.
Against this backdrop, what do you think of Europaallee, the big construction project at the main railway station in Zurich?
Natrup: The Europaallee on the Swiss Federal Railway (SBB) site is one of the straightforward projects. But we are seeing fewer and fewer of those. There is only one landowner, the site was almost clear, and SBB developed the project in accordance with Kees Christiaanse’s master plan. What’s far more typical is a situation where you have 20 landowners on the same site who have different strategies and different profit expectations or even different stakeholders, i.e. private individuals and companies. It becomes so complex that you need more time and end up with more diverse or more fragmented solutions – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
A solution which is good from the expert’s point of view won’t necessarily meet with the approval of the population at large…
Natrup: As a cantonal planner, I am sometimes disillusioned when, for example, a community rejects revised construction and zoning regulations that envisage densification – on the grounds that they want to remain a village.
Is spatial planning here affected by a “not in my back yard” mentality? On the one hand, people are in favour of protecting the natural landscape, but on the other hand they don’t like the measures required to protect it.
Schmid: That’s how people function. Our everyday consciousness is neither logical nor coherent. We, the planners and scientists, arrive on the scene and say: densification would be the logical answer. But often people don’t care. We have to offer something that will win them over. We shouldn’t resort to slogans or false promises; we have to make concrete offers. And then you have to work hard to convince people as well.
Natrup: One of the tasks in spatial planning is to balance interests. Right now, there is major acceptance of landscape conservation, nature conservation and crop rotation areas. I believe this has to do with fears of loss, including loss of identity. I see this as a mentality issue for Switzerland, where many people still have strong ties to the countryside.
Schmid: In my opinion it’s not just about protecting “green areas” or “crop rotation areas”. “Green” is not a value in itself. These green areas are also always social areas that people use in many different ways. Which areas are important for people, where do they like to go? Which are the valuable natural and farming landscapes or the important local recreational areas and open spaces? We simply must protect these areas.
Christiaanse: I see the ties between the Swiss and their landscapes as a very positive thing. As an urban planner, I don’t just want to build all the time. My task as an urban planner involves rather establishing a qualitative balance between built-up space and undeveloped space. I only want to build when it’s really necessary. My main task it to take a critical look at these aspects and then find the right balance Stakeholder management and a participatory approach account for at least half of my work. To put it bluntly, as an urban planner I have to coordinate everyone’s bad taste, and then carve something good out of it.
How do you feel about the large, newly built areas in the Zurich region that look like entire urban districts, for instance Zurich-Affoltern or Glattpark?
Christiaanse: I am a bit perplexed by them. Affoltern and Glattpark are, in my opinion, urban expansions like we might have planned in the 1980s, but not anymore today. We have since learned that they resulted in a poor social mix, insufficient activity on the ground floor, and too few small businesses. This leads to the impoverishment of districts.
Natrup: Urban expansions in Berlin or in Frankfurt are much bigger, of course. Fortunately for us here in Switzerland, our topography already imposes limits. The compartmentalisation of Switzerland also has its advantages. The Swiss processes and political system likewise mean we have to adopt a successive approach and not indulge in any grand gestures. Many people are initially overwhelmed and pleasantly surprised when they see the urban expansions in Spain or HafenCity in Hamburg. These are great locations, and it often takes a great deal of courage to do something unconventional. But when you walk through these cookie-cutter city districts, they quickly lose their appeal.
What, then, are the qualities of a liveable space in your opinion?
Natrup: The problem with the above examples is that there is little diversity. And diversity is what makes Switzerland stand out, on every level.
Christiaanse: Diversity is a really decisive criterion.
Schmid: We can find positive qualities where people feel at ease. We can look at built-up areas that seem very ordinary, but where people really feel at home and are happy to spend their time. That’s good architecture. It may be dense or less dense. It’s more important for it to be on a small scale and for people to be able to change things themselves. The problem with many of these larger developments is not only that they are so uniform; it’s also that people can’t appropriate these spaces. It starts with the smooth surfaces you can’t carve anything into, benches screwed tight so that you can’t move them around. Everything is smooth and sterile, and people don’t like that. Often it’s the little things that are important to people.
Natrup: This can also be done on a larger scale. We need diversity for demographic reasons, too. Not every form of construction is suitable for every lifestyle or every age. I have nothing against detached houses despite the large amount of space they take up. We have them and we should keep them because they are appropriate for specific life phases and groups of people. But this shouldn’t become an ideology. Diversity is also expressed in society and not just in the built-up reality.
Christiaanse: I think that places like London are interesting. The city has very dense districts with town-houses. These are multi-storey terraced houses which can be used very flexibly, also for commercial purposes. In Holland, we are seeing a re-emergence of this typology because it suits current social developments. They offer space for the start-ups subsidised by the government to help unemployed people, for instance. Urban doesn’t have to mean high-rise.
So developments in urban design are closely linked to social developments?
Schmid: Yes, but you need to know that social developments are often unpredictable and cannot be clearly anticipated. A town is an on-going process. A town constantly changes. People’s needs change, too, as does the social make-up of the districts. So in fact we can only start from the basic principle of openness. We have to plan and build in such a way that existing urban structures can meet these changing requirements, too. That’s why diversity is so important, as is a building environment that can change without us having to tear everything down. Openness also means that we don’t fill in every available space. When we have an empty space in front of us, we always think we need to build on it. But we could consider leaving part of it free and saying: we won’t build on this area for the next 10 years, because by then we may have different needs. We might need a school or a restaurant or new housing options for older people.
Isn’t this often simply a question of financial returns?
Natrup: No, this is more a strategic question. And it can be taken fully into account in planning. We do have these larger areas that are being completely built up. The good thing in our case is that they’re not even bigger than they are. This means that another project with different qualities can take shape next to them. This, too, can lead to diversity. In other countries it’s not that simple.
Christiaanse: Planning for a future that we don’t yet know will be easier if we don’t have oversized areas and the plots are developed at different times. This makes planning far more robust than in grandiose projects because we can react more readily to changes.
The criticism is often levied that Switzerland is like a patchwork quilt. Presumably you don’t see this as a problem?
Christiaanse: No, on the contrary, this is one of Switzerland’s strengths – and so is the distribution of ownership.
Natrup: But this leads to a different problem. The execution of large infrastructure projects like airports, logistic centres and the like is difficult in our system. Facilities of this kind are often built at locations which are less than ideal. This is easier in other systems.
Christiaanse: I would like to qualify that statement. When I compare Switzerland with other countries, then I have to say that we have the best urban quality here. I’m not just talking about cities and inner-city areas, but also about the surrounding areas.
Natrup: I often hear German or Dutch guests saying, “My goodness, that really is urban sprawl. Where’s the overall order?” But when you talk to the residents who use the space, then the lived-in reality here in Switzerland is on a very high level. The attention to detail, the compartmentalisation but also the short distances: these are all very special qualities of Switzerland.
But commuter journeys are getting longer and longer.
Natrup: The problem is that we sometimes offer the wrong incentives. We invest in the railways and say that railways have to remain cheap. This leads, for instance, to a situation where a one-year season ticket between Bern and Zurich has often paid for itself in around two months. So this means I can live in the centre of the country and still work at Zurich Airport. We make long-distance commuting possible and don’t offer enough incentives to encourage people to live and work within a smaller radius. When we align housing and transport developments and wish to engage in inward development, then we have to create the conditions for it to actually work.
High diversity, small plots, good transport infrastructure – Switzerland has a great deal to offer, but by no means is everyone happy.
Schmid: Yes, you can see this clearly when you look at the results of the most recent referenda. If you are fortunate enough that you can afford to live in the city, then the satisfaction level is generally high. In agglomerations and in outer-lying areas, the situation is different. There, urbanisation is often seen as a threat. In some cases, though, the communities are themselves at fault because they ultimately decide on the zoning plan and the tax rate. In many areas it is the municipalities who have built up and obstructed their landscapes. On the one hand, people want to be close to natural beauty. But on the other hand, they want growth and higher tax revenues. In the areas we discussed earlier with their large uniform buildings, people are not particularly happy, either. But it is in these very locations that we could perhaps set a good example and show the value of a successful village or neighbourhood centre that can be used by the public, open spaces, a park – or even smaller facilities like a community centre, which can already make a big difference.
Natrup: There are national fears of loss, disparities between economic centres and peripheral areas. Then we have the issue of foreigners – the referenda reflect very diverse topics and sensitivities. And then we have the people who demand self-sufficiency. These emotional currents are very difficult to handle. This is about more than just spatial planning. We shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of spatial planning when it comes to the national mood.
Christiaanse: I have the impression that Switzerland has changed dramatically over the last 15 years. More than other countries around it, Switzerland has evolved from a rather quiet, small country into a global village. This change has taken place at breakneck speed. That’s why I understand only too well that questions of orientation play a major role, even if spatial planning applies to only a small part of these problems.
Natrup: Or to turn it around, we can also say that many spatial planning questions are simultaneously questions of values and not just of urban design.
Participants:
Kees Christiaanse is Professor of Architecture and Urban Development at ETH Zurich and Director of the Institute for Urban Design. He is investigating current urbanisation processes around the globe.
Wilhelm Natrup in his capacity as Director of the external page Zurich Cantonal Office of Spatial Planning, is responsible for cantonal housing development and construction philosophy. He studied urban development and regional planning at the TU Berlin.
Christian Schmid is Adjunct Professor of Sociology in the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich and a researcher at the external page ETH Studio Basel. He examines social processes in urban development and global urbanisation processes from a comparative perspective.
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This article has been published in Globe, no.
3/September 2014:
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