Newsletter «Zurich International»

“Zurich meets San Francisco – A Festival of Two Cities” took place from 20 to 26 October 2018. The presentation of Zurich in San Francisco was very warmly received: some 2500 people attended the cultural, culinary, economic and scientific events, and there was a lot of very positive feedback from the audience. Besides this, the official delegation had diverse meetings with local start-ups, leading US companies and political representatives from San Francisco. The upshot of this was the expansion and strengthening of the economic, scientific and cultural ties between the two world cities.

2018 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the partnership with San Francisco. At the political level, a discussion and reception was hosted by the Mayor of San Francisco, London N. Breed. A new Memorandum of Understanding between the two cities was signed, laying the foundation for further exchange and cooperation between them. Swissnex, Switzerland’s official science hub, hosted various events on topics such as “Digital Democracy” or an “Urban Tech Summit”, at which experts, business people and academics discussed the influence of new technologies on the future of urban mobility. The “Chef meets Chef” series made for some delicious culinary treats. Five top chefs from Zurich and Rapperswil got together with five top chefs from San Francisco to produce creative masterpieces of fusion cuisine over several evenings.

With its website and on social media, the Festival reached over 7 million more people. The Californian media devoted a number of articles to the various events.

The event was presented by the City and Canton of Zurich, Zurich Tourism, the University of Zurich and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

Stefan Ege, Urban Development Zurich, Mayor’s Department

The “Wiener Wohnen” department of the City of Vienna (owner of 220,000 apartments) sent out an invitation to the international conference “Housing for all” on 4–5 December, with a wide range of topics pertaining to affordable housing. On the second day, there was an introductory presentation on the comprehensive model of housing subsidies and social housing in Vienna. There was also the opportunity to visit an integrated Smart City urban renewal project, where the focus was not just on the smart use of technology, but specifically on optimum networking and the involvement of all stakeholders in change processes.

The Housing working group of the Eurocities city network met on 5–6 December, bringing together fifteen or so delegates from host city Vienna and the other cities Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, Ghent, Gothenburg, Ljubljana and Lyon. In addition to a general update on housing policy activities in the participating cities and an exchange on a pan-European framework for housing policy, the group also met with the Homelessness working group for a discussion on “Preventing evictions and homelessness”. They also toured a longer-term interim-use project featuring “temporary living in a commercial zone” and low set-up costs.

Once again it became clear that major differences in growth and prosperity lead to very different housing needs, and that cities face very different challenges when it comes to issues such as homelessness and housing provision for very vulnerable groups. At the same time, there are some cities with very similar issues to those of Zurich.

What all cities have in common is that they have to be flexible and leave the beaten track behind to pursue new – sometimes even temporary and perhaps less than “perfectionist” – solutions when space is needed for more housing and cost-effective solutions have to be found.

Alex Martinovits, Urban Development Zurich, Mayor’s Department

Electric mobility is on everyone’s lips, and public transport is no exception. With the “eBus VBZ” strategy, Zurich’s public transport operators are aiming to convert almost their entire bus fleet to electric propulsion by 2030. In this way VBZ is contributing to realising the 2000-Watt Society, and playing an important role in reducing air and noise pollution in the city.

This makes it all the more pleasing that the VBZ eBus strategy has also been received with great interest by experts at home and abroad. For example, a specialist delegation from the Berlin Transport Company recently came to find out about the plans to expand the Zurich trolleybus network with new battery-powered trolley vehicles. The eBus strategy was also presented at the leading bus show in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Something very special, however, was the visit of two VBZ engineers to Cluj-Napoca in Romania in July. On behalf of SECO (the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs), Dominic Hink, Head of Electrical Engineering, and Christian Wrubel, Workshop Manager, were privileged to support the procurement of the first battery-powered eBuses in the Eastern European city: “We hope that the exchange lets us gain new experience that will benefit the implementation of the eBus strategy at VBZ.” Further impressions from the home of Dracula can be found at the link below on vbzonline.

David Sorg, VBZ, Department of Industrial Operations

At the invitation of the Ассоциация по развитию городских парков и общественных пространств, (the Association for the Development of Urban Parks and Public Space), Christine Bräm, Director of the Zurich’s Office of Parks and Open Spaces, attended this year’s All-Russian Forum.

In early December, some 150 park managers from Russia as well as guests from Germany, Kazakhstan, Austria, Switzerland and Belarus, met for two days in Moscow.

Under the title “Там, где мы работаем, Цюрих процветает” (“Where we work, Zurich flourishes”), Chistine Bräm gave an input presentation on the development and future challenges of green spaces and open spaces in the city of Zurich, also against the background of the new Municipal Structure Plan.

The conference also looked at how parks can be developed further to benefit the local population, and at boosting the attractiveness of cities in general and to promote tourism. Another of the focus topics was how to make parks even more attractive in winter.

The second day of the congress was reserved for informal exchange of a technical nature, plus a visit to some of Moscow’s parks.

Lukas Handschin, Office of Parks and Open Spaces, Civil Engineering and Waste Management Department

The City of Zurich’s mobility strategy is a social innovation. It is all-embracing, democratically legitimate and permanent. Because of this, Zurich has been selected as a reference city for one of five clusters in the context of the EU research project SMARTEES. The colourful acronym stands for “Social Innovation Modelling Approaches to Realizing Transition to Energy Efficiency and Sustainability”. This project uses an unprecedented amount of data to develop a model to test the effectiveness of different political and market-based incentives for energy efficiency and sustainability.

By including various European cities, the model seeks to depict the real world as closely as possible. Zurich as a reference city is supported by the Dutch city of Groningen. Budapest, Burgas, Izmir, Thessaloniki and Trondheim are “followers”, in that they will attempt to apply this social innovation to their specific context in an adapted form. In particular, it is in Zurich’s interests to maintain a regular exchange of knowledge with the other reference cities – Aberdeen, Malmö, Samsø and Vitoria-Gasteiz.

The research project was launched in spring 2018 and will run for three years. The workshops and online meetings are as colourful as the many participating cities are different from each other.

Lorenzo Cavallasca, Civil Engineering Office, Civil Engineering and Waste Management Department

Munich and Zurich are two lovable cosmopolitan cities with similarities and differences. This was how the Schweizerisch-Deutsche Wirtschaftsclub e.V. in Munich announced a debate event between two women who were each seeking to promote their particular city: Elisabeth Merk, Urban Planning Councillor of the City of Munich, and Anna Schindler, Director of Urban Development Zurich. The panel debate was facilitated with wit and substance by Monika Oberndorfer, chairperson of the Wirtschaftsclub; some sixty business representatives from both cities gathered in the venerable, newly renovated Presseclub on Marienplatz – with a direct view of the Christmas tree erected that day. The debate focused on current challenges confronting different traditions on both sides of Lake Constance: digitisation, tourism, sport, culture, and transport as well as the retail trade in flux, logistics in the neighbourhoods and finally the trees worth protecting in the hot city centres. Often there were no solutions to all these issues, but conflicting objectives were openly addressed and it became clear time and again that Munich and Zurich, despite their different sizes and histories, are faced with similar questions in their development. Stay tuned.

Anna Schindler, Urban Development Zurich, Mayor’s Department

The Foreign Affairs team of Urban Development Zurich wishes you a wonderful Advent season, a peaceful Christmas with your nearest and dearest and a smooth transition from this year to the next. Thank you for your interest over this past year and we wish you all the best for the New Year 2019!

Director Anna Schindler, Yves Bisang, Stefan Ege, Ariane Früh, Maximilian Stern, Christina Wandeler