Rural-urban divide: a solution inspired by the Bernese Jura?

On Sunday, February 9, a new vote was buried, not by the Röstigraben which is becoming less and less relevant to the analysis of Swiss politics, but by a divide between urban and rural areas. The popular initiative «Davantage de logements abordables» (More affordable housing) was accepted in all the cantons of French-speaking Switzerland, as well as in Basel-Stadt; elsewhere, only the German-speaking cities accepted the text. The aim here is not to analyze this new Swiss political divide for the umpteenth time, but rather to offer a few thoughts on the forms that future relations between urbanity and the countryside might take.

Since 2015, half the world's population has been living in cities. And according to the United Nations (UN) Department of Economic and Social Affairs, almost 70% of humanity will be living in urban areas by 2050. This state of affairs, and the projections of UN bodies, point to a future in which a new minority will try to make its voice heard: the rural, the peripheral. In Switzerland, the regions of Zurich, Lake Geneva, Basel and, to a certain extent, Bern and Ticino, are entering the new millennium with all the indicators in the green: the population is growing, services are diversifying, and transport networks are being extended and improved.

On the bangs of these centers, the Alpine and Jura valleys are increasingly marginalized; federal funding for basic infrastructure is distributed sparingly, as if fearful of giving too much away. In Western Switzerland alone, the freeway in the Upper Valais has still not been completed, and a city like Biel - with over 50,000 inhabitants - still has no complete bypass. The A5 at the foot of the Jura is incomplete between Biel and La Neuveville, and the A16 ’Transjurane«, although finally completed, serves mainly as a semi-motorway between Biel and Delémont. I'm not even going to mention rail links - La Chaux-de-Fonds (population 35,000), for example, is still excluded from the main SBB network.

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Admittedly, these delays are often due to lengthy consultation and funding procedures. The fact remains, however, that in the end, the major projects in the above-mentioned urban areas are completed, or even enter a new phase of development. This leaves the inhabitants of peripheral regions with the feeling that they have been duped. And so, these same populations, while understanding and embracing the ideals of the XXI^th In the 21st century, they often find themselves having to fight against initiatives and draft legislation which, because they apply to the whole of Switzerland and are too general, threaten their finances or are simply not adapted to their regions.

One thing is clear from this situation: cities that have the means and the will to move full speed ahead into an ecological and interconnected future, and that are facing problems of housing, urban densification and transport congestion, are held back by hinterlands that can't and won't keep up with the country if only to gallop left-handed behind. These same rural countries are condemned to becoming little by little nothing more than minorities, and fear the day when their only «choice» will be to bow to the decisions of the cities. How, then, can we satisfy these two regions with their contrasting demographics? How can we allow each to advance at the pace that suits its geography and economy? How can we prevent the emerging feeling of peripheral regions that they have been abandoned by urban elites from poisoning federal politics?

Unique in Switzerland, the canton of Berne has granted special status to one of its administrative regions: the Bernese Jura. It has a regional council elected by the region's inhabitants, with decision-making powers on cultural subsidies and responsibilities for school coordination in French-speaking Switzerland, between the Jura and other parts of the country, and across borders. A straw man for separatists, proof of Bern's goodwill for others, a project to strengthen the powers of this regional body has now been put out to consultation by the cantonal government. The region also has a system of representation that enables it to make its voice heard in the Grand Council and the Bernese State Council. This original attempt to delegate powers from a canton to a supra-communal intermediary body is an ongoing experiment in balancing the needs and demands of a minority with the normally cantonal powers.

One way of reconciling town and country might be to conceive of the two entities as special-status regions, with the canton delegating certain powers useful to the development of the regions in question. In a special cities, Urban regions could be created to manage urban projects on a supra-communal scale. For example, the desire to reduce the number of cars in the city: this supra-communal urban entity could take the issue seriously, free to work on a more coherent territory than those of the communes, and not involving the rest of the canton at the risk of upsetting the peripheries. On the contrary, in a special campaigns, In this way, rural regions could be given a special status so that they are always represented in cantonal bodies.

Of course, this is all conjecture. It's hard to imagine touching cantonal competences. Indeed, the special status of the Bernese Jura is questioned by some Bernese, who see it as an unfair system of over-representation of one region in cantonal bodies - one out of every seven State Councillors must come from the Bernese Jura minority. What's more, every time a region with a special status is given powers, the question arises as to which other regions are also poorly represented. There is also the eternal question of financing: it is pointless to expect a canton to be prepared to redistribute part of its revenue to an inferior entity such as an urban region. And the latter, without silverware, would be no more than a straw man.