It is a mammoth legislative task: How and where should construction be permitted outside of the construction zone? The Council of States wants to enable the cantons to come up with tailor-made solutions. Landscape conservationists have concerns.
Flora and concrete: there are already thousands of buildings outside the construction zone.
What should Switzerland look like in the future? Nice, hopefully – nobody seriously wants forests and fields to become a concrete desert, hiking trails and cow pastures to disappear under bricks and asphalt. Nevertheless, the pressure on those areas that are outside the construction zone is increasing. The population development requires more living space, roads and rails, the structural change in agriculture requires larger stables and exercise areas. There are already around 600,000 buildings outside the construction zone, a third of which are used for residential purposes.
So how can you prevent Switzerland from becoming too sprawling outside of the building zones? Behind this question lies a mammoth legislative task. On Thursday, the Council of States dealt with the second stage of the partial revision of the Spatial Planning Act (RPG).
The debate showed how extremely complex the bill is: After four hours of discussion, in which the members of the Council of States had to deal with a tangle of majority, minority and individual motions, not even half of the law had been dealt with. The final treatment of the business had to be postponed to the coming week. Nevertheless, the Council of States made a number of decisions this Thursday that show the direction in which things should go in the future.
Commission wants the indirect counter-proposal
The history of the RPG revision is long and confused: under pressure from a popular initiative, the Federal Council decided in 2008 to revise the Spatial Planning Act in two stages. The first stage – which obliged the cantons to reduce oversized building zones – was accepted by the electorate in 2013. The second stage remained, which was to regulate construction outside of building zones.
Only at the second attempt did the corresponding draft by the Federal Council survive the consultation process. But when the RPG revision came before the National Council in December 2019, it didn’t even want to go into it. The SVP, FDP and the then CVP fought against regulations that they felt would have been too rigid and complicated. The Environment Commission of the Council of States (Urek) then picked up the thread again, revised the draft and sent it for consultation a third time. In May 2022, she finally presented the version with which she wants to finally get the spatial planning law over the finish line.
The commitment of the Urek does not come entirely by chance: in the meantime, landscape conservationists have submitted the so-called landscape initiative. This requires that the separation of building and non-building areas be laid down in the constitution. In addition, the number of areas and buildings outside the construction zone should no longer grow. The leverage worked: Urek wants to counter the RPG revision with the initiative as an indirect counter-proposal.
The Federal Council also supports this. Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said in the Council of States on Thursday that the Commission’s proposal was convincing and coherent.
A bounty for the demolition of buildings
In fact, the Council of States is taking up the central concerns of the initiative in the RPG revision. He also wants to strengthen the separation of the two zones and supports the so-called stabilization goal, which is at the heart of the proposal: the number of buildings outside the construction zone should be stabilized, as should the number of areas that seal the ground. The concept of stabilization was deliberately chosen, as Councilor of States Daniel Fässler (Appenzell Innerrhoden, Die Mitte) explained: It takes into account a certain dynamic and continues to enable moderate growth.
In order to achieve this stabilization, the Council of States wants to introduce the instrument of the demolition bonus: in future, the Confederation and the cantons should bear the costs for the demolition of buildings outside the construction zone. This is intended to create an incentive to remove buildings that are no longer needed. In the original proposal by the Federal Council, there was still talk of an obligation to dismantle buildings that no longer conform to the zone.
The Council of States does not want such rigid regulations. With the RPG revision, he wants to give the cantons more leeway to find tailor-made solutions outside of the construction zone. In the future, the cantons should be able to define special zones in their structure plans where so-called “non-site-specific uses” are permitted – so building may still be possible there. However, in this case, “upgrading and compensation measures must improve the overall spatial planning situation,” as Commission spokesman Jakob Stark (Thurgau, SVP) explained. It remains open which uses are permitted outside the building zone and which measures should be required.
However, the cantons’ increased leeway should also be accompanied by a kind of justification obligation. In their structure plans, they must present an overall concept of how they intend to achieve their stabilization goal. The structure plans are to be adapted to the new law and approved by the federal government within five years of the draft coming into force. However, if the federal government is not satisfied, the respective canton must compensate for each new building outside the building zone until approval is granted.
Landscape conservationists express doubts
In the negotiations of the small chamber, minority motions aimed at giving the cantons the greatest possible flexibility when building outside of the building zone have prevailed on several occasions. This raises a frown among the initiators of the landscape initiative. You see the decisions of the Council of States “only partially positive”, as you announced on Thursday. Although they welcome the stabilization goal, they are bothered by the fact that the special zones mentioned can be defined throughout Switzerland and not just in mountain areas. They have no understanding for the decision of the Council of States that agricultural buildings that are no longer needed can also be converted for residential purposes.
The expectations of the RPG revision are high, the points of contention numerous. Once the Council of States has been through, it is the turn of the National Council again. After years of back and forth, Parliament could soon lay the foundation for what Switzerland should look like in the future.