If aiming for parsimonious urban land use: The case of Greater Zurich

Abstract

The Spatial Planning Act, which came into force in 1980, obliges Swiss municipalities to use urban land parsimoniously. However, they do not do so. To achieve parsimonious land use, the land within walking distance of good and very good public transport must be used intensively and in a locally balanced way, and it must provide a human-centered built environment and public realm. In this study, geodata was analyzed to generate and visualize projections of future urban land use for Greater Zurich. The projections consider a doubling of the number of residents and workers on the already zoned land. The intensity surfaces of two worker-resident ratio alternatives’ five public transport service level scenarios are compared with one another and with actual data for 2015. The projections show that Greater Zurich needs considerable intensification, especially of population, and redistribution of land use to achieve the intensity and level of local balance required for parsimonious urban land use. Therefore, future growth in residents and workers should be used to transform the built environment for parsimonious urban land use where it makes sense. To steer this transformation, planning practice must integrate spatial and traffic planning and so move towards context-dependent, conditional, dynamic, and integrative planning.