Economist.com Cities Guide: Zurich Briefing - October 2005

News this month

Laying out the welcome mat

Just over half of Swiss voters backed plans to ease labour restrictions on people from the European Union’s ten newest member states in a nationwide poll on September 25th. Zurich was one of 19 cantons and half-cantons to vote in favour of the proposal (seven voted against), with 59.4% of Zurchers expressing their approval. Switzerland’s parliament had already given the plan the go ahead. But the right-wing Swiss Democrats, warning the country could be flooded with cheap labour, forced a national vote on the issue. Despite ostensibly supporting the Democrats, many Zurich-based members of the Eurosceptic Swiss People’s Party ignored the party line and claimed a No vote would damage the country's economy.

In a separate local vote, Zurchers agreed to increase the tax deductions granted to families with children, but not by as much as was originally proposed. The Christian Democrats had called for an increase to SFr10,800 ($8,355) per child (from the current SFr5,400), but in the end settled for an extra SFr1,400 after voters came out in favour of a milder counter-proposal put forward by the cantonal government.

Sour grapes

Proposals to build Switzerland’s first nuclear-waste repository came one step closer to reality in September, when two panels of experts concluded that a site in the wine-growing region near Zurich could offer safe storage. The Swiss government’s nuclear safety inspectorate (HSK) and the independent Federal Commission for the Safety of Nuclear Installations agreed on an underground site for radioactive waste some 650 metres beneath the village of Benken, north of Zurich. According to the HSK, the site will remain stable for at least 1m years.

Switzerland's department of energy said that the report did not constitute a final decision, and pointed to studies being carried out in the cantons of Aargau and Solothurn. The Swiss government is to decide on the site in 2010, and construction is not expected to begin before 2040. Any decision would have to be approved in a national referendum.

Wheat wars

Scientists at Zurich’s Federal Institute for Technology published the results of a controversial experiment into genetically modified wheat in September. Christof Sautter, who led the project, claimed to have boosted the crop’s natural resistance to fungi by 10% after conducting the world’s first outdoor test of the KP4 gene, in a sealed-off field near the village of Lindau, just outside Zurich.

The experiment was intended to take place in 1999, but met with fierce opposition from local residents, farmers and environmentalists. The critics won a federal court injunction against the project in March 2003, only to have the decision overturned by the government seven months later. The project was three times more costly than its original budget, largely because of local opposition.

Switzerland’s “GM-free agriculture”, a lobby group, criticised the results, claiming that natural farming methods produced higher resistance to fungi at a fraction of the cost. The group is now calling on the public to back a nationwide moratorium on genetic experiments in a vote scheduled for January 2007.

Remembering Needle Park

During the late 1980s, Platzspitz Park, a patch of greenery opposite Switzerland’s national museum in Zurich, was dubbed “Needle Park” for the groups of drug addicts who congregated there. In the 1990s, the park was cleaned up, but the problem persists in Zurich, a fact highlighted this month by a display of photographs by Michael von Graffenried. The Swiss photographer recently spent 18 months chronicling the lives of addicts in the city, and is displaying his images in Platzspitz Park. Mr von Graffenried claims that since the clean-up, Switzerland’s drug problems have simply gone underground.

Watch that tram!

Police and traffic authorities have launched a campaign to increase awareness of the potential dangers of Zurich's trams. Even on zebra crossings, the city's 70-tonne trams, which need three times as much braking distance as cars, have the right of way over pedestrians. But not all pedestrians seem aware of this: over the past year, three have been killed and 26 injured by oncoming trams—half of all traffic-based pedestrian deaths in the city.

Catch if you can

October 2005

Zurich Film Festival

October 5th-9th 2005

Zurich's first annual film festival opens in October. The focus of this five-day, privately funded event, held at the Plaza cinema and at the College of Art and Design, is on new talent. Eight film-makers from all over the world have submitted their debut features for consideration for the festival’s “Golden Eye” award. The newcomer theme is reflected in the festival’s “Debut classics” series, with screenings of early works by established directors (highlights include Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs”, Jim Jarmusch’s “Permanent Vacation” and Jean Luc Goddard’s “A Bout de Souffle”). English-language subtitles are provided for most of the films.

For information on the festival’s programme and tickets, visit the official website.

More from the Zurich cultural calendar