LETTER FROM GENEVA
The new Morges station district (canton of Vaud), remarkably hideous in the general opinion of the citizens of the small medieval town on Lake Geneva, is an almost exact copy of that of Renens, about ten kilometers further west, on the same railway line. Unless it looks more like those under construction in Liestal (canton of Basel-Landschaft) or in Rotkreuz (canton of Zug).
The same disturbing phenomenon of similarity is at work in the major Swiss metropolises. It is impossible to differentiate the new development of Pont-Rouge, in Geneva, from that of Europaallee, next to the Hauptbahnhof in Zurich, or from the project Malley Central (under construction), in the suburbs of Lausanne. For the past twenty years of this urban transformation, the observation is now irrefutable. Switzerland is becoming uniform throughout.
Let’s set the scene. Geographically, to begin with, with a cramped territory of 42,000 square kilometres, two-thirds of which are occupied by mountains – the Jura chain to the north, the Alps to the south. On the remaining third, the Swiss plateau, it is necessary to fit in soon ten million souls.
In the background, the Confederation’s continued economic success, which leads to strong attractiveness. This in turn fuels the strongest population growth in Europe. Which, together with well-integrated immigration, contributes to continued prosperity.
As a result, there is a shortage of housing. However, opportunity makes the thief, the largest landowner in Switzerland is none other than the CFF (Federal Railways), which has become the country’s second largest real estate companyas former railway wastelands, plots of land well located in the centre of urban areas, become “pieces of city” additional for tens of thousands of new arrivals.
“Countless sins of construction”
These mixed neighbourhoods combine offices, housing, public services and shops in buildings that gain in height what they lose in originality. Everywhere, the same smooth parallelepipeds, the same large one-way windows, underground car parks, the everlasting branch of Brezelkönig (industrial bakery). The watchwords are densification and compliance with the rigorous Swiss “Minergie” standard – for energy-efficient buildings.
The demand for high yields from these new areas is at its highest, even though the former Swiss Federal Railways originally acquired these lands for its public service mission. In fact, part of the maintenance of the SBB railway infrastructure is financed by the company’s income from its real estate empire, which is worth 7 billion Swiss francs (7.4 billion euros).
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