Transport-Land Use Coordination in the Age of Swiss Agglomeration Projects: Planning Regionalisation in Bern, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich

This paper compares the impacts of the agglomeration policy of the Swiss Confederation for the coordination of transport and urbanisation in its four largest agglomerations: Bern-Mittelland, Geneva, Lausanne-Morges and Zurich-Glattal. It examines their differentiated trajectories within binding planning regionalisation, and the impact on local autonomy and on democratic legitimacy. These issues are symptoms of the tension between the differentiation of public territorial action associated with the Swiss context of executive federalism and its relative standardisation driven by the agglomeration policy. The great variability of the solutions implemented by the cantons suggests a need to deepen the study of ongoing reforms in order to better understand the impact of institutional cultures and local political power relationships.