When developing urban areas, one of the key issues to consider is that of traffic. The provision of well-planned, adequate transport infrastructure is key to dealing with the levels of traffic generated by a major urban area.

This latest research by Pierre Stämpfli, which formed part of his Master thesis at the Centre for Urban & Real Estate Management (CUREM), Zurich, aimed to analyse the relationship between large infrastructure and urban development by using the example of Geneva’s city bypass, which opened in 1993, as a real case study.  

Covering an area of approximately 41,000 km2, Switzerland is a land-locked country in Western Europe, home to some 7.5 million people. As a federal republic, it is divided into 26 states, referred to as Cantons. While Berne is Switzerland’s capital, its economic centres are the cities of Zurich and Geneva.   

The main findings were that:

• the urban form is heterogeneous and strongly influenced by the building regulations prevailing in the different construction zones;
• urban sprawling was happening, as in other modern cities, but the correlation with the new infrastructure couldn’t be demonstrated;
• there is no obvious relationship between the construction of the motorway and urban development in the canton of Geneva.