Netzwerk Raumplanung comprises more than 30 member and partner organizations from areas such as agriculture, transport, housing and sustainability. In an article by the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, the network for spatial planning said at a conference in Bern on Friday that while many cantons had “tackled the paradigm shift towards sustainable settlement development” over the five-year time limit, there was still a great deal of work to be done.
The biggest problem has been down to the levy on added value of land. Owners in Switzerland must pay a percentage of appreciation if the value of their property increases, when agricultural land is allocated to a building zone, for example. The revised Federal Act on Spatial Planning requires a levy of at least 20 percent of such added value, though the cantons are free to apply a higher rate. Only Basel-Stadt is currently implementing this tool “very well”, while Graubünden, Jura, Neuchâtel, Schaffhausen and Solothurn were all at least “good” the network said in the article.
It also took a positive view of “building land mobilization”, the newspaper reported, with the cantons recognizing that they must “make better use of existing building land reserves within towns and cities to prevent urban sprawl”.
Bottom line, the trend is that the building zone area per person is in decline. However, growth is still being achieved on the most expensive land. In the article, the network called on cantons and municipalities to now “more consistently re-zone building zones that are too big and better protect cultivated land”.
