SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

ZURICH

Growth spurt: What Zurich needs to do to accommodate 2 million residents

Switzerland's biggest city Zurich is becoming more densely populated. With the population expected to pass the 2 million mark in the coming years authorities are devising plans to make it liveable for new residents.

Growth spurt: What Zurich needs to do to accommodate 2 million residents
How will increasing population impact Zurich's infrastructure? Photo by Sergio Zhukov on Unsplash

At the end of 2023, over 1.6 million people lived in Zurich, Switzerland’s most populous canton.

But this number is far from static.

The population is continuing to grow — so much so, that it will reach the 2-million mark in the coming years, cantonal authorities said in a press release.

This means an increase of around 450,000 people within the next two decades — a 28-percent growth rate, which is “significantly higher than the Swiss average.”

The primary reason for this hike, accounting for 49 percent of the increase, is immigration, followed by births (44 percent) and, to a lesser degree (7 percent), people moving to Zurich from other Swiss regions

On one hand, this is good news because “it is evidence of the canton’s attractiveness and economic prosperity,” authorities pointed out.

On the other, however, this demographic evolution will create a number of new problems and exacerbate the already existing ones.

That is why “strategic decisions are needed on how to handle challenges facing various areas,”  cantonal officials said.

‘Dealing with consequences’

With this ‘growth spurt,’ Zurich will experience many of the same challenges as Switzerland on the whole will, as demographers are expecting the country’s population to swell to 10 million (from the current 9 million) people in the coming years. 

Just as the federal government has started to think about the best ways to prepare the country’s infrastructure for the growing numbers, Zurich’s authorities too will be “shaping this growth” and “dealing with its consequences.”

To achieve this goal, they have launched the ‘Growth 2050” project to begin in the summer, which will  examine “which approach is most suitable for strategically addressing the challenges ahead,” according to the press release.

What exactly does this mean?

While the project’s findings will not be made public until 2027, authorities will have to ensure that Zurich’s infrastructure, such as housing, public transport, as well as school and healthcare systems, will not crumble under pressure, but be able to function optimally — from both the financial and practical perspectives — in the new context.

While all these areas are important, in Zurich’s case, housing appears to be a particular problem as more residents move into the canton.

With  tens of thousands of foreign nationals having settled in Zurich in the past few years, for instance, affordable housing had become scarcer — a situation that has continued to deteriorate and is expected to grow worse as more residents continue to arrive in the future.

READ ALSO: Zurich hit by affordable housing shortage amid record-high immigration

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

ZURICH

Why have Zurich’s compost collectors become notorious?

Municipal trash inspectors across Switzerland are notoriously meticulous in sniffing out ‘improper’ waste. And the ones from Zurich have even won a prize for it.

Why have Zurich's compost collectors become notorious?

The self-proclaimed goal of an organisation called Freedom Priority (IF Freiheit in German, Priorité Liberté in French, and Priorità Libertà in Italian) is to fight “for the freedom of citizens and against unnecessary regulations imposed by the State.”

To this end, the group gives out an annual award, called the ‘Rusty Paragraph’, for “the stupidest law or the most senseless intervention of the year.”

Among prior winners are the 10 pm curfew for cowbells in Aargau and a ban on eating raclette in cable cars (the latter has since been revoked).

READ ALSO: Switzerland re-legalises raclette and fondue in cable cars

And this years’s winner is…

…the compost police, an official post introduced in the city of Zurich!

The new waste management ordinance calls for all organic waste to be deposited in containers.

“People who compost themselves must fill out a form to be released from this obligation and the resulting tax. The existence of the compost heap in the private garden is then controlled by city employees,” the organisation explained in a press release.

While this rule may sound like an overabundance of fastidiousness, waste management is not a laughing matter in Switzerland.

The Swiss take proper garbage disposal seriously — so seriously, in fact, that various communities hire inspectors for the unenviable job of finding improperly tossed-out trash.

Various examples prove that not recycling or disposing of one’s garbage in a municipally-approved manner can result in hefty fines.
 
READ ALSO: Why the Swiss government rummages through your garbage

The last such incident happened – coincidentally — also in Zurich, where a clueless American threw a carton box into a ‘regular’ trash can, instead of recycling it.

At the time of this incident, the offender had not yet received his fine, but it could have been as high as 320 francs. 

SHOW COMMENTS