Cities look to Basel for lessons in urban planning

The city of Basel has come under the spotlight at a meeting in New York. www.basel.ch

Basel is being held up as an example of successful urban regeneration by city planners ahead of a United Nations summit on cities in New York. Faced with an exodus to the suburbs, the city turned to its residents to find out what would make them stay.

Urban planners and city officials looked at the Basel model at a meeting in New York ahead of the UN summit, which kicked off on Wednesday. The purpose of the summit is to assess living conditions in cities since the UN’s Habitat II conference in Istanbul five years ago.

In the past few decades, Basel has seen increasing numbers of its middle-class residents defect to the suburbs, amid complaints about the lack of housing, rising costs and crime.

In a bid to stem the exodus, the authorities decided four years ago to approach its citizens to find out what exactly would take to persuade people to stay.

Dubbed “Werkstadt Basel”, the project cost SFr1 million ($562,000) and spent two years gathering suggestions on how to improve the city for its residents.

Based on those recommendations, community workgroups came up with 400 ideas on how to improve city life, including more green spaces and a beach along the river Rhine.

Children asked for spaces of their own, parents wanted bigger homes. The authorities retained some 200 ideas, adapting the city’s budget to accommodate them.

Some of the ideas were simple to implement, like banishing cars from selected streets. Others involved moving offices from older buildings to make way for larger apartments.

Another innovation is the arrival of neighbourhood secretaries. The residents had complained that their concerns were not being relayed properly by the administration to the authorities.

The project’s director, Christine Zeigler, admitted it was too soon to know whether “Werkstadt Basel” had succeeded in stemming the exodus, but she said the signs were that people are moving back.

swissinfo with agencies