Switzerland at 10 million: 'The city is demonized, while individual homes harm the environment most'

Cities are unfairly demonized for environmental damage, while individual homes pose a greater threat to the environment, according to Joëlle Salomon Cavin, a professor of environmental and urban geography at the University of Lausanne. Her argument, presented in an interview with Le Courrier, directly challenges the Swiss People's Party's (UDC) initiative, "No to 10 Million Swiss!" This initiative posits that immigration fuels urban growth, which in turn strains natural landscapes. Cavin contends that the most problematic land-use patterns for the environment involve landscape fragmentation and low-density development, characteristic of individual housing estates. These developments not only waste land but also increase energy consumption due to greater reliance on individual car travel. She highlights that immigrants often choose to live in dense urban areas, suggesting that the link between immigration and landscape destruction needs to be re-evaluated. This perspective contradicts the common perception, even among environmentalists, that urban expansion is the main culprit. Historically, nature conservation groups focused on blaming urbanization, but by the 1990s, organizations like Pro Natura and WWF began advocating for integrated urban planning and acknowledging the downsides of peripheral living, such as car dependency and reduced social interaction. Cavin points out the paradox that nature lovers, by choosing to live in individual homes in rural settings, often have a larger environmental footprint than city dwellers.

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The types of development that are most problematic for the environment are not those related to cities, but those that involve landscape fragmentation, such as individual homes and low-density urbanization. They generate not only soil waste but also energy waste by increasing individual travel.