4 – 2013

Limmat Valley

The Limmattal is an agglomeration. It is representative of the kind of space that is spreading endemically between core cities everywhere, growing around former village centres and small towns, along transport infrastructures and at residential complexes set in an attractive landscape. Wide transport corridors for trains and cars, large industrial sites and urbanized village centres characterize the Limmattal. Yet it also includes a very urban small town like Baden, the community of Schlieren with its strong industrial tradition, and Spreitenbach, a widely visible symbol of the boom years and of their fascination with the motor car, which is marked by the high-rise buildings and shopping centres that grew up there beside the modest rural village. Today, in the middle of a new boom, the Limmattal is experiencing a further wave of urbanization. Industrial sites are being redeveloped at an urban density. At a time of rapid – and not always controlled – growth, interesting simultaneities are occurring that make the Limmattal area appear as a paradigm of a normal kind of settlement that is developing throughout Switzerland – and perhaps even make it desirable from an “urban” point of view.