Representing density: the politics of fear in Zurich city planning

ABSTRACT

Density dominates current urban discussions, especially in light of still-developing understandings of Covid-19’s impact on urban populations. This paper argues that critical scrutiny of visual representations of urban density is both missing from academic focus and critically important for understanding how perceptions of density are both created and reproduced. The political rhetoric of density shapes public perceptions as much as it responds to them, and scrutiny of visual density politics adds a new lens to critical density debates. This research takes the speculative imagery of imagined future density created for a public ballot referendum in Zurich, Switzerland as the main focus, and compares the verbal and written campaign rhetoric to the visual images produced as tools of public persuasion. By assessing the gap between what the campaigns claim and what the campaign imagery represents, the research finds embedded in conventional rhetoric a deep-seated and self-defeating assumption that the electorate unilaterally fears density and the changes it might bring. As a winning electoral strategy assuming fear of density worked; as a tool of persuasion it failed, and risks amplifying or creating the perception it assumes.

KEYWORDS:

• Density
• representation
• imaginaries
• politics
• planning

Introduction

Density holds pride of place in current urban conversations; defined, debated, demonized, and defended through multiple lenses across space, politics, and people. The burgeoning collective focus has established open avenues of research, through new methods, dialogues, and definitions. This paper contributes an analysis of how density is visually represented as a tool for political persuasion in one city’s ballot referendum on the city’s structural growth plan. The visual rather than verbal rhetoric employed by political campaigns to promote or discourage density is often missing from academic debates on density but has widespread appeal, dissemination, and accessibility. Visual representation also has the capacity to mislead or deceive, and practitioners, theorists, and politicians overlook the visual element of density debates at their peril. This research takes the imageries of imagined future density created for a public ballot referendum in Zurich, Switzerland as the focus. The campaign posters, billboards, videos, websites, and pamphlets, designed to persuade the electorate to vote either for or against increasing density in Zurich, are illustrations both of present perceptions of Zurich and speculations on how density would change the city. By focusing on these representations, the research expands the conversation from debating density’s merits or faults, or purely its quantitative vs. qualitative aspects. The research asks instead: How does the verbal or written rhetoric employed by political campaigns differ from the visual rhetoric? What can these differences reveal about the assumptions politicians make about how density is perceived by the electorate?

The paper first compares the written stated aims of each campaign to the visuals produced for each side of the debate, followed by a close reading of the materials, composition, construction, placement, and visual strategy of the visual material. By assessing the gap between what the campaigns claim and what the campaign imagery represents, using a lens of global density debates about density pragmatics and historic urban imaginaries, the research finds embedded in conventional rhetoric a deep-seated and self-defeating assumption that the electorate unilaterally fears density and the changes it might bring.

Research framework: pragmatics, representation, and imaginaries

Recent scholarship calls for re-examining density and the production of density as a political enterprise (Chen et al. 2020; McFarlane 2020; 2016; Pérez 2020), while shedding merely numeric understandings of the concept in favour of understanding lived and perceptual experience (Blanc and White 2020). Specifically in Switzerland, while density is federally incentivized and officially promoted, some cite concerns that federal and local planning guidelines incentivizing density inadvertently encourage displacement (Debrunner, Hengstermann, and Gerber 2020), while enabling a continued shift toward financial extraction (Robinson and Attuyer 2020; Theurillat, Rérat, and Crevoisier 2015). Others have documented the mismatch between the official promotion of density and local popular opposition (Wicki and Kaufmann 2022). This article focuses on representations of imagined density in Zurich, not as a tool to understand political positions vis-à-vis density in the city, but as a tool to understand the visceral and political assumptions made by the various political camps about how density is perceived. The article contends that mining the visual materials generated for campaign promotion might reveal political attitudes about density concealed in verbal or written campaign rhetoric.

Planners positing density as a pragmatic solution to pressing urban problems are not unique to Zurich; density was and is frequently promoted in London as the way to provide sufficient affordable housing, from the post-war period to today (Blanc and White 2020), and density has come in and out of fashion in cities around the world, as both solution to and cause of urban concerns (Keil 2020; Tonkiss 2013; Wicki and Kaufmann 2022). While there is no current consensus on density as a blessing or curse, there has been a noted turn in practice toward density as a pragmatic solution (Pérez 2020), sweeping aside critical questioning while claiming density as a silver bullet for urban ills. Zurich’s strategic planning framework on which the ballot referendum was held champions this approach, increasing allowable density in selected areas of the city to accommodate new residents within a tighter and more sustainable footprint. Sprawl and encroachment on greenbelt land have long been a challenge in Swiss urban planning, especially around Zurich, made possible in part, ironically, by an excellent public transportation network, as well as ineffective federal planning guidelines (Wälty 2021).

Zurich’s density debates had an unusually public airing through the 2021 referendum, which took form in verbal, written, and visual campaign materials. Visual propaganda, a common tool of political persuasion campaigns defined as the visual material produced and disseminated publicly to support campaign persuasion aims, requires a close reading. Without critical analysis visuals take on the ring of truth; a photo captures a scene, and a map describes spatial relationships of an area in a seemingly neutral way. The past two decades have seen a renewed effort to understand geographic images critically beyond mere documentation, unpacking the socio-spatial constructions embedded within their production (Schlottmann and Miggelbrink 2009), and new experiments in AI-generated imagery increase the urgency of scrutinizing visual materials produced to persuade. To do so research must address the type of image, the aim of the image, the method of production, and the method of presentation, placing content presented in its socio-cultural context. Unpacking the imagery of the Zurich Richtplan campaign propaganda highlights the visual symbols deployed in the persuasion agendas inherent to political propaganda, often rhetorically dressed as factual realities.

In this case, the maps and imagined cityscapes presented by the Zurich campaigns’ propaganda don’t seek to portray reality. Instead, they project an imagined view of potential future realities under the new allowable densities. There is a rich architectural history of the projection and visualization of urban imaginaries (Çinar and Bender 2007), most notably in the rise, fall, rebranding, and preservation of industrial cityscapes around the world (Aelbrecht 2015; Law 2023). A related and prominent set of imaginaries encompass the “ruin porn” genre, seeking to validate an urban authenticity in gritty disintegration (Clutter 2016). In contrast, the Garden City ideal has often been used politically to tout a greener, more civilized and cultured way of urban life, despite being at its core a financial proposition for operating a city (Cramer-Greenbaum 2011). Much has also been written during the Covid-19 pandemic about imagined and perceived dangers of urban density, often ignoring quantitative urban mortality statistics, and in light of these recent contributions to density debates scholars have called for a new imagining of urban value vis-à-vis density (Boterman 2020; Joiner et al. 2024; Marvin et al. 2023). This article traces the well-worn urban tropes deployed, consciously or not, by the creators of visual content for the Zurich referendum, and aims to unpack how the imaginaries they represent counteract the verbal and written rhetoric of the campaigns.

Analyzing representation conventionally takes form primarily in understanding the gap between what is shown and what is known outside the parameters of the image (Schlottmann and Miggelbrink 2009); bluntly put, how well does the image represent the reality constituted outside of it? Mining the gap between the reality of the image and the reality outside the image often yields irreconcilable incompatibilities of representation (Žižek 2009). This article explores the gap between the campaigns’ political positions and the imagined realities for a denser city that they visually present, to uncover the unwritten assumptions inherent in their imagined urban densities.

Zurich planning documents and campaign images do not claim to represent reality, but instead present competing visions for an imagined urban future that hinges on significant changes to the city’s allowable density, economic activity, building scale, and residential capacity. These imaginations of future density are inherently speculative images, and therefore this paper takes them not as symbols themselves but rather scrutinizes the graphics and imaginaries employed by each campaign to unpack how density is construed by its promoters and detractors, in contrast to the effects they verbally claim density will have. Taken together, the imageries from the campaigns both for and against the richtplan represent a fundamental assumption about density, not the reality of density itself.

The images reveal understandings about density, and in their operations as political rhetoric, they do more, by shaping these understandings. Political rhetoric creates perceptions of density as much as density invites rhetoric (Blanc and White 2020; Slater 2018), and images, in exploiting the gap between what we see and know, do as much to produce knowledge as represent it (Schlottmann and Miggelbrink 2009; Žižek 2009). In this vein, the article advocates for a close reading of density propaganda images alongside spoken claims, in order to learn what they tell us about unstated political assumptions and offer a caution for what assumptions they might produce.

Methods and materials: political campaign graphics

In Zurich, as in cities around the world, little is less neutral than the topic of densification, despite the pragmatic political rhetoric promoting it. The city expects its population to grow by 25% in the next two decades, due to a robust economy attracting an ongoing influx of migrants from inside and outside Switzerland (Stadt Zürich 2021b). The federal and local governments have enacted legislation in the last two decades that both require and incentivize densification. From 2015 through 2020 the city developed and proposed a richtplan (the literal translation of which is “structural plan”, although “strategic plan” or “planning framework” might more accurately capture the intent). The planning horizon extends to 2040 and proposes to create a denser city, justified as a strategy to accommodate the city’s growth while limiting urban sprawl and per capita carbon consumption. To uncover the assumptions made by each campaign about how the electorate perceived density in the city, this paper offers some context on the ballot referendum and then compares the written and verbal rhetoric of the main campaigns to the visual materials produced and disseminated. Documentation of visual material was collected during the campaign in 2021, and follow-up interviews with campaign marketing leaders and visual designers were conducted throughout 2022. The visual material and map promoting the richtplan, along with the propaganda from the vote Yes and vote No campaigns, illustrate many elements of current density debates. They also expose the urban politics inherent in the discussion of density, as well as the campaigns’ underlying assumptions about how the electorate perceives densification in their city.

Campaign context: Zurich’s Department of Building Construction and Department for Urban Planning developed the richtplan from 2015 through 2018, followed by an extensive public commentary period in 2018 and 2019, for which a brochure and animation promoting the plan were made. After the public comments were incorporated, and after lengthy consultation within the municipal council throughout 2020 and early 2021, the opposition members of the council determined that a public referendum should be held to allow the electorate to vote on the richtplan’s approval.

Switzerland has a strong tradition of direct democracy at all government levels (Marquis, Schaub, and Gerber 2011). In the municipality of Zurich, any individual with a right to vote can request a binding public referendum on a municipal matter by collecting 2000 signatures, roughly 1.5% of the Zurich population. The referendum is then held on one of four annual election days. The Zurich richtplan vote was scheduled for 28 November 2021. There is no proscribed length for the distribution of referendum campaign materials in Switzerland (Serdült 2010), and campaigning for and against the richtplan began in early 2021.

This article analyses four sets of publicity images created for the campaign; those produced by the city to promote the plan, those produced by the Yes campaign coalition, and those created by the two No campaigns run, separately, by the Liberals (FDP) and the Evangelical People’s Party (EVP). The research included a questionnaire given to each group to find out the aims and creation process behind each image and conducted a visual analysis of the campaign material’s graphic representation. The paper also compares these representations to the stated aims of each campaign as published online and in written campaign materials.

City promotion: The Zurich Department for Urban Planning oversaw the development of the richtplan, in consultation with many other departments, while the richtplan publicity came from the political arm of the city government, led by key city councilors. The leaflet describing the richtplan was first intended to communicate the plan to the public for comment and persuade the full city council to support the plan. When the opposition councilors called for a public vote, the materials were used to create a short animated video, and both brochures and leaflets were intended to persuade the electorate to vote to approve the plan (Gabi 2022). The leaflet graphics were outsourced to two graphic design firms working in collaboration, and the leaflet graphics were passed on to a separate film studio to create the animation.

In the public promotion of the richtplan, the city distributed leaflets with information and the proposed density map across the city at every community center (gennosenschaftzenturm, or GZ) in Zurich. The GZs are active local organizations representing every small administrative unit in the city. The animated video was shown at every GZ, and these public screenings would have provided substantial coverage for those who saw the film across the city.

Campaign materials: There is very little regulation concerning the content of campaign posters in Switzerland, notoriously so (Press 2016; Sciolino 2007). Advertising on television or radio is not allowed, so the campaign posters become the main vehicle of persuasion, with some social media presence as an extension of the poster campaigns. Each campaign is allowed 40 posters to be distributed across Zurich as they see fit. Most of the posters were presented at main transportation hubs such as the main train station, key traffic intersections, or major artery roads.

The Yes campaign, run by the Zurich chapter of VCS (an environmental protection organization specifically focused on transit), and supported by both Swiss Green parties, the Social Democrats, and the Alternative Left, put up posters around the city, especially at public transit hubs, and promoted the plan on their website with additional renderings of the city. The No campaign run by the Liberals (FDP) with support from the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), promoted the campaign through posters, Twitter, and billboards provided by third-party committees on major city roads. The No campaign from the Evangelical People’s Party (EVP) placed the allotment of 40 posters in a variety of locations around the city.

Results: four distinct imagined densities

While each propaganda campaign employed a different graphic style, fear of density underpinned all the representations, evident in the frequent mismatch between the campaigns’ written material and the visual representation. The city’s promotional material shows a recognizable city lightly touched by transparent and sensitive infill, while promoting significantly increased density. The Yes campaign shows an urban Eden, gardens splashed across plazas with only a hint of buildings in the background, despite supporting these density increases. The No campaigns portray a city dramatically altered, grimier and gloomier, playing on fears of urban danger and deterioration, despite countering the proposed density in more temperate and practical terms. All the visual material embedded an assumed fear of density in their graphic depictions.

Vote yes

Both the city’s promotion of the proposed richtplan and the independent Yes campaign promoted the plan and its allowable density changes verbally, but visually obscure the increased density potential in their public propaganda images. Instead of championing the changes densification would bring, the images mask it with images of a Zurich familiar and essentially unchanged.

Change without change: The full city richtplan is a 172-page document proposing significant increases to density allowances, along with plans for neighborhood centers, open spaces, preservation of nature, sustainability, social housing, and coordination with traffic planning. The text of the richtplan states that the plan “controls the development within the existing quarters (Stadt Zürich 2021a)”. The opening text of the Zurich richtplan brochure echoes this claim stating, “The major challenge for the future is to enable growth within the existing quarters … The city has set itself the task of controlling the process in such a way that existing qualities are preserved, and new qualities are created through growth (Stadt Zürich 2021b)”. The growth it describes is intended to be contained within already built areas of the city, by significantly increasing the allowable utilization levels, and thereby allowing higher density developments.

The city of Zurich’s brochure describing the richtplan incorporates cartoon graphics displaying what this increased allowable density might look like “controlled within existing quarters”: sensitive, delicate infill along Zurich’s streets (Stadt Zürich 2021b).

Figure 1 shows the cover of the city’s richtplan brochure. The image portrays a lively, mixed-use streetscape. The buildings shade white are recognizable landmarks of present-day Zurich, including the Prime Tower, which was the tallest occupied building in Switzerland when it was built (second from left on the top, now the second tallest in Switzerland, and visible from almost everywhere in Zurich). The buildings outlined in black represent the proposed new density, here shown as sensitive infill carefully aligned with and in no way overpowering the existing constructions. The line work distinguishes existing from proposed, while also making the proposed appear far less substantial, and the unshaded linework preserves a visual attitude of openness in between the existing buildings.

Figure 1. Example of an inspirational image. Cover for the Zurich richtplan brochure/leaflet. The title is “Zurich 2040: a spatial concept for growing city”. Graphics: Urban Catalyst in collaboration with Studio Sophia Jahnke.

Photograph of the word “Hope”, held up with two hands, silhouetted against a sunny sky. Scan of cover for the Zurich richtplan brochure, showing the brochure title, Zürich 2040, and a cityscape depicting new and old buildings and people in a cartoon-like graphic style.

The people are drawn completely out of scale with the surrounding buildings, larger by far than the real physical relationship – note the bench on the lower line taller than the buildings’ ground stories, and the peoples’ heads reaching second- and third-story windows. This deliberate scaling exaggerates the human presence while diminishing the built additions: a city for people, with new construction minimized and disappearing into the background. This is not an accident. While a photo may capture some uncontrolled serendipity, a non-AI-generated image requires intention in the placement and scaling of every line.

The short animation shown at the Zurich GZs was designed using the leaflet graphics as a base (Dummermuth 2022). The insubstantiality and transparency of the proposed density are amplified in the animated video. In the sequence of stills shown in Figure 2, the video rapidly portrays densification on a typical and recognizable Zurich street, complete with a clock tower, tram tracks, and background Prime Tower.

Figure 2. Three successive stills from Zürich 2040 animation. Animation by Ploy studio, based on graphics from Urban Catalyst in collaboration with Studio Sophia Jahnke.

Three successive stills from the Zürich 2040 animation. The animation stills show an existing Zurich streetscape quickly filling in with new buildings, in the same cartoon graphic style as the cover of the brochure.

Figure 2 again shows a lively active mixed-use street with larger-than-life humans dwarfing the buildings, cars, and trams. As the video plays, the gaps between buildings fill with carefully scaled interventions that match their surroundings perfectly in style and scope. The third image shows the final result, essentially the same recognizable street as in the beginning. The existing white buildings stand out in contrast to the blue background and the line drawings of new buildings recede. The animation moves so fast that you barely notice the changes. Additionally, the gaps in the initial streetscape are shown as just that – gaps – rather than views through to something else such as a park or the nearby hills. The flatness of the chosen cartoon style elides the sense of distance lost through the façade infill along the street. The choice to leave the new architecture transparent amplifies this elision, declining to detail the solidity of the proposed infill in favor of a light transparent touch.

The brochure concludes with a summary map of the proposal, showing the areas targeted for increased densification in the city in a very different graphic style.

The map in Figure 3 presents a clear color coding; the redder an area, the higher the proposed density, with the variations of green representing different types of green space, from parkland to forest. While presenting some new green boulevards and parks within the city, much of the green depicted represents existing conditions. The red, on the other hand, represents a stark change, presented through a jarring contrast of complimentary colors. The plan’s designers, documenting and promoting a new vision of density in the city, made an odd color choice for density – from red tape to red lining to red ink, the connotations of red are rarely positive in western political and planning worlds. Here density is presented as a glaring shift for the city, visually in opposition to the existing and proposed green areas.

Figure 3. Zürich 2040 brochure map. The brochure reads, “The plan shows a strategic target for the city of Zurich in 2040. It illustrates the possible development density in combination with the most important public infrastructure and open spaces”. Produced by Zurich Department of Building Construction.

Proposed spatial planning map of the city of Zurich. The map depicts areas targeted for increased density, new community centers, and preserved green spaces.

Instead of hiding the increased density like the cartoons and animation, the plan highlights it, calling attention to the increases using a color frequently coded negative in urban policy and planning. The density is surrounded by an expanse of preserved green space, chromatically prominent in opposition to the dense red clusters. The graphics represent density as a necessary evil to contain the city in favor of the surrounding wooded hills.

The plan, text, and substance of the richtplan depict the pragmatic benefits of density in limiting urban sprawl, containing development in a tight footprint and protecting the wooded and open areas around the city, while still casting density in red, a color associated in western planning with debt, racism, bureaucracy, and correction. The soothing blue and white of the cartoons seek to conceal density amid imageries of a city essentially unchanged. While the cartoon graphics make every effort to camouflage the proposed density within the existing building fabric, the map highlights areas targeted for density by pitting them against the greenspace surrounding the city.

The minimization of density’s effects in most public graphics – the cartoons – indicates an assumption that the electorate holds a fear of density so strong its effects should not be celebrated but rather obscured. The graphics styles reassure an assumed anxiety on the part of the public that density will rescale or defamiliarize the city that they know, by presenting a city essentially unchanged. The plan, while emphasizing the green space protecting from the dense city core, portrays density as a red blight in the land, in need of containment. These images mark a significant gap from the writing of the richtplan, which champions density as a pragmatic, equitable, and climate-friendly solution to sprawl and growth. The written text and plan substance promote density as a practical solution to urban ills, while the images cast density as an evil; to be minimized, hidden, camouflaged, and contained.

Urban Eden: The Yes campaign, rather than chromatically setting the proposed density in opposition to the green space, highlights the greenery alone and essentially ignores the density increases proposed in the plan. Instead of camouflaging density with transparent graphics, it pretends the density proposals in the richtplan don’t exist. The campaign’s position states:

The climate is changing and so the city of Zurich is not only faced with the question of where and how the city should grow, but also how we deal with the challenges of increasing heat and extreme weather conditions. The technical planning of heat reduction is integrated into the settlement richtplan.

The campaign literature focuses on the pragmatics of climate change mitigation and planning, casting the increased density as merely the catalyst for more important climate change adaptation strategy outcomes that result in more parks and green spaces for the city.

The Yes campaign’s images in Figure 4 carefully showcase the city’s green space, with judicious use of green graphic backgrounds. The image on the upper left shows the currently paved Münsterhof with a wilderness lawn Photoshopped in, literally painting some of the city’s hardscape green. The middle image shows a green park to represent the city, with only the hint of tower block level density (Prime Tower again) in the background. A subtle nod to the proposed density, hidden amidst the foliage of a park.

Figure 4. Tweets and website captures from the VCZ Yes campaign. The text reads “More Bikes. More Green. For Zurich”. The images support the urban development richtplan and also the transit infrastructure plan on the ballot in a separate referendum at the same time.

Screen captures of online VCZ Yes campaign materials from their website and tweets, showing, clockwise from top left, a plaza in Zurich with a wilderness lawn photoshopped in, a photo of an existing park with the Prime Tower in the background, and a typical Zurich street scape featuring small storefronts, trees, pedestrians, and bicyclists.

The image on the bottom mirrors the language of the city’s cartoons in photo format; the angle portrays the cycler large against a diminutive building, which shares the background in equal parts with trees and grass. The images all emphasize the green space, eliding the proposed density of the richtplan behind Edenic green city visualization. In this campaign, the text acknowledges coming climate-driven changes, and focuses on the pragmatics of climate adaptation, while the images show stasis instead of change – a Zurich essentially untouched by these adaptions or changes.

Vote no

In contrast to the sensitive infill barely altering a recognizable Zurich from the city, or the proposed density peeping out behind layered greenery from VCZ, the No campaigns present distinct and dramatic urban imaginaries highlighting perceived threats of density. Both vote No campaigns oppose density through fear-mongering images of its imagined effects. While the campaigns’ texts explicitly oppose the additional regulation proposed by the plan, and criticize its sustainability justification as greenwashing, the campaign imagery paints a picture of a denser Zurich becoming lawless, faceless, and gloomy.

Grime and doom: The stated intent of the FDP (the Liberals) poster campaign was to convince the electorate to vote no on the richtplan and no on a traffic structural plan that was up for a vote in the same election (Simon 2022). The campaign’s written materials states “Zurich has never needed a, ‘municipal structure plan’. The city has a good quality of life even without one … It’s time we took a stand against increasing paternalism, regulation and attacks on our privacy (Vorlage im Detail – Stadt Zürich 2022)”. The main argument claims new regulations will choke the current diversity and growth of diversity and aren’t required to maintain the city’s current quality of life.

The FDP’s no campaign posters and billboards present an imaginary of a dirtier and grittier Zurich (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Free Zuri No campaign billboard in Zurich. Paid for by private committee, using the No campaign’s graphic design. The graffiti style text reads: “2x NO to the misguided structural plan”. The text on blue background says “Don’t thwart public transit”.

Photograph of a billboard with Free Zuri No campaign advertisement, depicting the billboard, and surrounding street and buildings.

The billboard shown in Figure 5, although put in place by a third-party committee, combines the key elements of the FDP campaign iconography. The graffiti stencil image, created in Photoshop, was overlaid digitally by two photoshopped “stickers”, using the campaign logo (Free Züri), along with the date of the vote. These images appear elsewhere independently on FDP campaign material. The choice of style is telling – graffiti, via spray tagging or stickering, counters the core of Zurich’s current identity as a clean, safe, law-abiding city. The “misguided richtplan” will cause anarchy and sully the city. The warning looms large, amplifying its shock value – is this ugliness what you want your city to look like? The campaign argues against the need for the regulations and guidelines proposed by the richtplan, but the campaign imagery visualizes a grimier and more lawless city as its result.

Anonymous urban: The No campaign posters designed by the EVP present an equally alarming speculation about what Zurich might become. The written campaign materials state:

The green idyll dreamed of in the structure plan cannot be realized without massive interventions in private property and without an equally massive reduction in capacity for motorized private transport. The consequence will be: densification comes, the green falls by the wayside. The destruction of the quality of life in Zurich associated with the structure plan is covered with a green coat of paint. (“Vorlage im Detail – Stadt Zürich 2022”)

The campaign argues that the only lasting impact of the richtplan would be the higher allowable densities, and the proposals for protecting green space would not materialize. The stated intent of the poster campaign was “to show the threat to the traditional settlement structure from the densification made possible by the richtplan” (Danner 2022).

The EVP poster (Figure 6), like the city’s graphics, borrows specific iconic buildings of Zurich, although notably nothing so large as the existing Prime Tower. Instead of showing these buildings untouched by insubstantial infill, the poster shows them cowering in front of looming faceless towers under a brooding and ominous sky. No people are shown in this density of the future. Scale is weaponized again through exaggeration, with new buildings far larger than the proposed zoning codes would allow dwarfing familiar profiles. The distinction in rendering between the bland tower blocks and the detailed historic landmarks is a marked departure from the city’s graphics, where new and old blend seamlessly together. Here the gap between the written aims of the campaign and images promoting a No vote is again great. The writing on the poster takes aim at greenwashing; the poster imagery aims to illustrate the worst fears of the anonymous and faceless urban environment that the proposed density increases are purported to bring.

Figure 6. EVP No campaign poster. The text reads “No to the development structural plan: concrete is still concrete, even when it is painted green”.

Photograph of the EVP no campaign poster, depicting the silhouettes of landmark Zurich buildings with large faceless new buildings looming in the background, and the campaign slogan below.

Discussion and conclusions: density imaginaries and embedded fears

In the Zurich richtplan campaign images play on assumed fears of density in ways the articulated positions of the parties do not, and scrutinizing the visual campaign materials reveals this representational gap. Whether for or against the richtplan the text of all campaigns focuses on the pragmatics – too much regulation, adapting to climate change, addressing population growth, greenwashing in place of real sustainable initiatives. These pragmatic positions play into the current political debates about density, either arguing that it is or isn’t a pragmatic solution to urban ills. But in the visual representations of density, both the Yes and No campaigns evoke specific and historic urban imaginaries to either diminish or play on assumed electorate fears of density in ways the campaign texts do not.

The city’s plan promotes significantly increased density and utilization ratios, while the city’s graphics promote a walkable, compact city hardly differing in scale from the existing, misleading in its depictions of unchanged human-oriented urban streetscapes. The imagery makes every effort to show how the increased density would alter the recognizable city barely at all. The Vote Yes campaign takes a similar approach, showcasing Zurich as an Edenic garden city, full of green spaces enhanced by the richtplan and barely touched by the proposed density increases. The No campaigns’ imagery highlights assumed electorate fears that density will transform Zurich to be gritty and dangerous, ignoring the grittiness frequently used internationally as a stamp of urban authenticity. In Vote No imagery Zurich becomes unrecognizably corporate and faceless, no longer the quirky mediaeval town unchanged for centuries by waves of development.

Density, loathed or loved, surfaces in countless current urban conversations. What is striking about the Zurich campaign is how density is represented as a perceived threat, consciously or not, by the city richtplan’s visual promotions and the Yes campaign’s imagery. It might be expected from the No campaigns to pose density as a threat to the familiar, ordered society status quo. It is unexpected that the promotion of the plan, which champions density, assumes the threat of density as a given. While studies have shown the Zurich population to exhibit some general approval of density but local resistance to its implementation, they have also shown that resistance is context and implementation-specific and dependent, and mitigating factors can overcome local resistance (Wicki and Kaufmann 2022). However, instead of championing density visually, the graphics conceal, elide, and obscure its effects, defensively promoting the plan by visually claiming it won’t really change a thing.

This timid approach – assuming density to be perceived as a threat and treating it as such instead of promoting the desired potential benefits – was a safe bet to win the vote, but arguably not a winning long-term strategy. Nor was the fear-mongering amplification of the density’s effects from the No campaigns persuasive. By one metric, the city’s campaign was successful; the richtplan was approved with 61.2% of the vote. However, in 2022, the Zurich city council membership from the Yes parties was 64%, while the No camp was 31.2%, and 4.8% of the council belonged to neutral parties. Essentially, the vote broke down precisely along party lines. As a campaign to approve the richtplan, the city’s strategy worked, and the No campaigns failed. As campaigns of persuasion, there was little crossover appeal – about as many people as supported the parties who opposed the richtplan opposed the richtplan, and likewise true for the plan’s support.

The danger of this timidity lies in the inherently productive quality of visualized urban futures. The propaganda was intended to persuade and promote, in which it failed. But images, especially those depicting an imagined reality, have deep power to make that imagination seem more real. The graphics are visible, cartoonish, extreme, and therefore memorable. The urban imaginaries they present have entered the public’s consciousness in an indelible way, longer lasting than verbal campaign rhetoric. The Yes campaign, while winning the vote, missed an opportunity to visually promote density, and inadvertently supported claims of density’s threats in ways that may shape city policy and localized planning decisions for years to come.

In conclusion, scrutinizing the visual tools of political persuasion in urban planning can reveal a new facet of the density debate absent from the verbal or written pragmatic focus: the assumption of density’s danger. This assumption, whether conscious or unconscious, was embedded even within policies designed to incentivize density. These campaigns and their visual material offer a cautionary tale for planners and policy-makers – if assumed fear pervades the promotion, the promotion won’t persuade. Worse, the promotion may work against itself, promoting an assumed and self-defeating fear that counters its best intentions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum

Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. Her current research focuses on how disruptive environmental or socio-political events might upend entrenched housing inequities, historically, contemporaneously, and speculatively. Previously she was a Research Fellow on the Open City Project and completed her PhD in Architecture at ETH Zurich.