Forest dominates land use in cities

Bern , April 2022

Settlement areas account for less than a quarter of land use in Swiss cities. In contrast, almost a third of urban soil is covered with forest. This emerges from the "Statistics of Swiss Cities 2022" from the Association of Cities and the Federal Statistical Office.

The current study on the use of land in Swiss cities is astonishing, writes the Swiss Association of Cities in a statement on the ” Statistics of Swiss Cities 2022 ” drawn up jointly with the Federal Statistical Office . According to the analysts’ surveys, in 2018 settlement areas accounted for just 23.5 percent or 95,000 hectares of the total area of the 170 Swiss cities surveyed. Most of the urban soil, specifically 32.3 percent, was covered with forest at the end of the study period from 1985 to 2018. At 30.9 percent, the proportion of agricultural land in 2018 was also significantly larger than the settlement area.

In the six largest cities in Switzerland (Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Winterthur and Zurich), the proportion of settlement area in 2018, at 54.2 percent, was significantly higher than in the overall calculation, the statement explains further. Forest and agricultural land accounted for 29.6 and 14.3 percent, respectively.

The analysts observed growth in the reporting period, above all in residential areas. Between 1985 and 2018 it increased by almost 10,000 hectares to 35,000 hectares. The areas used for traffic and built up with recreational and green areas also grew in the reporting period. In contrast, the area used by industry in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants fell by 26 percent between 1985 and 2018.

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