Between distance and proximity: nature parks and the city in Switzerland

Abstract

Urban Nature Parks do not exist in Switzerland. A debate regarding their establishment in 2010 petered out. This failure exemplifies a representation of nature in the Swiss parks system, which should stand very far removed from the city. Since the establishment of Parks of National Importance in 2006, human activity has been tolerated under the condition that it is considered rural. Because it is neither wild, with the exception of a few rewilded forests, nor rural, urban nature has no place in this policy. However, the ‘a-urban’ conception of the parks policy in Switzerland does not preclude the existence of close links between cities and nature parks for obvious reasons of spatial and functional proximity. Hence, although the nature parks should be far removed from the cities by definition, they are very close to them by reality. Furthermore, this paradoxical situation is accompanied by the emergence of local solutions, outside the framework of the official regulation of nature parks, for ensuring the conservation of open highly urbanized non-built areas at the outskirts of cities. However those Agglomeration Parks are far from constituting an equivalent alternative to the national strategy with no legal status, an absence of dedicated funding and their very large target gathered under the banner of “open spaces”.