Peripheral residential developments in Switzerland : Facing carbon neutrality challenge

The notion of urban sprawl is a central topic of discourses about sustainable city. In Switzerland as in most European countries, many single-family houses are still being built in the farthest peripheries of urban agglomerations. Characterized by low density and spatial specialization, urban sprawl is highly dependent on fossil fuels. Furthermore, due to recent society evolutions, dwellings are progressively under-occupied, and households rely on individual motorized vehicle for the larger share of their mobility. Consequently, achieving low carbon energy represents an important challenge for those territories. This paper is part of an ongoing research about peripheral neighborhoods of single-family houses in Switzerland. Through the design of transformation scenarios at neighborhood scale, the research wishes to assess the capacity to achieve sustainability. The evaluation relies on various indicators, among which the average power in primary nonrenewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions are significant. This paper shows how housing and mobility’s energy consumption and GHG emissions vary between center and periphery, in comparison with Swiss “2’000 watts’ society” targets for 2050. This study especially shows that reducing GHG emissions down to targets is a major challenge in the context of Swiss peripheral neighborhoods.