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The new station district of Morges (canton of Vaud), which is widely regarded as a horror by the citizens of this small medieval town on Lake Geneva, is an almost exact copy of that of Renens, some ten kilometres further west on the same railway line. Unless it is more like those being built in Liestal (canton of Basel-Landschaft) or even in Rotkreuz (canton of Zug).
The same disturbing phenomenon of similarity is occurring in the major Swiss metropolises. It is impossible to distinguish the new development of Pont-Rouge in Geneva from that of Europaallee next to the Hauptbahnhof in Zurich or from the Malley Central project (under construction) on the outskirts of Lausanne. After twenty years of this urban transformation, the observation is now irrefutable: Switzerland is becoming uniform everywhere.
Let us set the stage. Geographically, for one thing, with a narrow territory of 42,000 square kilometres, two-thirds of which are occupied by mountains: the Jura mountain range to the north, the Alps to the south. In the remaining third, the Swiss plateau, it will soon be necessary to accommodate ten million souls.
In the background, the Confederation’s continued economic success, which leads to a strong attractiveness, is driving the strongest population growth in Europe. Which, with well-integrated immigration, contributes to continued prosperity.
As a result, there is a housing shortage. However, opportunity makes the thief, the first land owner in Switzerland is none other than the CFF (Federal Railways), which has become the second largest real estate company in the country, as former railway vacant land, well-located land in the centre of urban areas, is converted “pieces of city” additional benefits for tens of thousands of newcomers.
“Countless sins of construction”
These mixed-use districts mix offices, housing, public services and businesses in buildings that gain in height what they lose in originality. Everywhere, the same smooth parallelepipeds, the same large one-way windows, the underground car parks, the endless branch of Brezelkönig (industrial bakery). The watchwords are densification and compliance with the strict Swiss “Minergie” standard for buildings that consume little energy.
The high-performance requirements of these new areas are high, even though the former federal railway authority originally acquired these lands for its public service mission. Indeed, part of the maintenance of SBB’s railway infrastructure is financed by the company’s revenues from its property empire, which is worth 7 billion Swiss francs (7.4 billion euros).
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