Does the one million cost include the land?
If older people complains how the young leave and never return, or the population is decreasingâŠyes, NIMBY. The approach by the municipality to development is unsustainable.
Of course, current property owners are the other side in this conflict. People with a mortgage should not find themselves with an underwater loan just because a change in development regulations. At the same time, stretching the budget but still not being robust enough to deal with changing prices is not something smart. Regardless of level of commitment and discipline, not smart.
So, current owners require a certain level of stability, while future owners and inhabitants (people that rent) also need a piece of the pie. Protecting one group more than the other leads to distortions. The housing shortage points at current owners being protected more than future owners.
This reply by the federal council to a parlamentarian Postulat, effectively a question, gives a neat overview of the historical development and the long term drivers for the current situation.
What sense does it make to tweak parameter like maximum number of floors from 5 to 6 and land utilisation coefficient accordingly in dense quarters (where smaller flats will be replaced by bigger ones effectively not really changing the number of people living there, and that at a huge cost) while all around the city there are quarters of houses with at most a couple of flats that would bring tons of new living space if zoned into the proper urban area. Instead there are enclaves for the rich and very dense unlivable quarters for the rest.
Case in point: Ecublens VD. I know this area well.
Left hand side: a cozy village
Right hand side: EPFL
There is even a Lausanne metro station at the EPFL and public transport buses nearby. Why all this infrastructure and a village next to it?
Google Maps: EPFL, Ecublens
An other problem is ISOS, sorry only in German, French and Italian.
âThe ISOS is the worldâs only inventory of sites that covers the entire area of a country.â
When the âBundâ (government in Bern) starts mingling in as well it gets really slow.
Please help with German here, itâs about âstĂ€dtischen Wohnungâ. Does this mean apartments owned by the city of ZĂŒrich?
Anyway, itâs interesting. War against under-occupied apartments.
Currently, around 1,100 municipal apartments (stĂ€dtische Wohnungen) are considered underoccupied. Around 150 of these are severely underoccupied, says Kornel Ringli of Liegenschaften Stadt ZĂŒrich.
So, for example, if someone lives alone in a four-room apartment, the affected person is informed in writing and asked to take appropriate measures. One option is to change the occupancy, or to find a new apartment.
Eviction of noncompliant tenants is only a last resort. Kornel Ringli says they will be offered alternative accommodation beforehand. âThey can fill out an exchange form and state their preferencesâfor example, regarding the neighborhood and rent.â
PS indeed, itâs about apartments owned by the city. Itâs really sad that scarce resources are invested and no impact at all in the housing shortage because under-utilization.
Migros pension fund manager managing 1k apartments: âThere is no right to live in Zurichâ
I saw a poster about this week. A popular initiative to have âmore affordable apartmentsâ to be voted next Nov. 30. The narrative is that evil real estate companies operate apartments for profit. Meanwhile, benevolent cooperatives rent apartments at cost.
Well, itâs a shame that the evil real estate companies are just pension funds. The housing shortage might be solved, but how will pension funds work?
Reading the wiki of the stillborn Zurich metro system, I couldnât help but laugh with the following:
In the run-up to the decisive referendum there had been demands to vote separately on the construction of the underground and suburban train systems. In fact, the suburban train was widely undisputed while a heated sociopolitical debate concerning the Underground broke out. In particular, members of the Social Democratic Party were against the âproject of megalomaniaâ (as they called it).
They feared that the construction of the underground railway would lead to rising land prices, higher rents, and housing close to the city centre would be in danger of being converted into offices. This would lead to a displacement of the cityâs population to the suburbs, resulting in longer journeys to work.
Thankfully, that metro was never built, land prices never exploded, rents are affordable to lower incomes and people have very short commutes to officesâŠand everyone was happy ever after 
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The number of cities worldwide that made huge errors not building light or underground rail links whilst doing away with the trams is quite large. At least ZĂŒrich kept the trams; now do the social democrats get the credit for that or are they just a whipping boy?
The decision was taken by popular vote AKA referendum. I donât think the the social democrats pointed guns to voterâs heads that day on 1973, please correct me if Iâm wrong. So, the joke is on voters than went for NO, people born before 1955, not many left.
Today, me and fellow riders of the S11 commute from another canton and not from another municipality next to Zurich city. Some people still complain about high rents.
By world standards Zurich has a population of a small town.
AFAIK they are all social democrats in ZĂŒrich though no party carries that name. They may be left wing or right wing but nobody calls social democracy in question. The quality of some Wikipedia articles has really deteriorated. I looked up ânon-believerâ and it redirects to âinfidelâ which is quite funny. So now I know. I am an infidel.
ZĂŒrich really is a small lovely city with, in general, a great public transport system. A big mistake was in not making Stadelhofen S-Bahn station much bigger.
Maybe, with an underground from the 70s, the rents would be even higher.
Zurich is directed at the wealthy. And the wealthy dont want the peasant class living anywhere near them.
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Thanks for the correction. So the others wander around not really knowing who they really are?
It doesnât help to clarify the confusion that theyâre only âsocialistsâ in French and Italian. I arrived first to NeuchĂątel and linked SP to socialist. Some years later I moved to German speaking part and the first time I saw âSozialdemokratischeâ in their name really got my attention.
I have no idea at all about the motivation for the different names across the language borders, and the implications. Only political marketing? Are French and Italian speakers more comfortable with shorter words?
Haha my home town of Sydney is up there. Ripped all the trams out in the early 1960s, now spending billions to restore light rail and add new metros.
You donât have to look much further than Geneva.
Genevaâs tram system has a long and rich history, starting from 1862 with a horse-drawn tram line. The network grew extensively through the early 20th century, reaching up to 120 km by 1923, serving both urban and suburban areas and even crossing into France. However, from the mid-20th century, the tram network contracted significantly, shrinking to just one line by 1969.
Then
Since 1995, Geneva has been actively expanding its tram network again. The current network has five main tram lines, extending into France with one line going to Annemasse. Geneva is noted for having one of the few international tram lines in the world.
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Perhaps GM had a hand in it.