The quality of life in the city of Zurich
The quality of life, or environmental quality, is high in the city of Zurich. This is shown by the current environmental report, which was published on August 28, 2017. Nevertheless, environmental pollution often exceeds the legal requirements. Zurich also faces other environmental challenges.
One should not economize on the quality of life. The city of Zurich has made some environmental progress in recent years. The consumption of fossil fuels for heating and hot water has decreased by more than 20 percent in the last 25 years. Almost 100 percent of the metals from household waste are recycled.
The city administration is also implementing important measures. One-third of the passenger cars purchased by the municipality in 2016 have a low-emission drive. In four municipal retirement centers, food waste was reduced by 724 kilograms in 2016. 175 hectares of the city's land have been designated as a nature reserve.
Are air quality successes being thwarted?
However, the environmental report also clearly shows that not all environmental goals have been achieved by a long shot. Although air pollution is tending to decrease, the limit values are still exceeded, in some cases massively, for example in the case of ozone. Nitrogen oxide pollution has also decreased only slightly in the last decade, and thus significantly less than expected.
The question here is how to deal with the high exhaust values of diesel vehicles. But Zurich is still far from the target in other areas as well: Only 14 percent of 47,565 street lights are LED lights. Greenhouse emissions are still far too high at 4.7 tons per capita per year.
Noise protection should not be underestimated
One third of the residential population lives in properties where noise limits are exceeded. Noise protection remains a central challenge With the increase in the residential population and the densification in central locations and along the main axes with good public transport connections, which makes sense in terms of spatial planning, the number of people exposed to noise is rising. With the measures that have been publicly implemented in recent years, above all speed reductions, 20,000 people can be protected from excessive noise.
Major challenge: population growth
It will not be easy to maintain or even improve the environmental quality achieved, because the growing population, increasing commuter flows and climate change increase the pressure to act. For example, more people mean more garbage and more car traffic, consequently more road noise. The growing demand for housing increases the pressure on the remaining green spaces.
The more frequent occurrence of heat waves affects quality of life and health. However, it is not only the city that is challenged, but also the canton and the federal government. The city of Zurich needs support in the form of overarching measures for transport and the rapid implementation of energy and climate policy objectives in programs and projects.
Further details on the environmental report can be found in this Link
