Over a ten-year mandate, sa_partners provided strategic regional planning for Baden Regio within the Zurich metropolitan region. The work integrated spatial development, economic development, mobility and landscape across municipal boundaries, translating long-term regional objectives into strategies, planning instruments and implementation measures. The region combines a major concentration of employment and research with rapidly growing residential communities and a distinctive landscape shaped by the Limmat river corridor and the Lägern hills. With around 120,000 jobs and 180,000 residents within a wider metropolitan catchment of approximately 1.5 million people, its development requires close coordination between settlement, economy, mobility and landscape.
The work ranged from regional development strategies and spatial concepts to specific planning instruments and implementation support. These included high-rise development guidelines, landscape park strategies, regional employment-zone management and strategic advice on major transport infrastructure, including national mobility programmes and the Limmattalbahn. Rather than producing a single masterplan, sa_partners developed an evolving framework that translated long-term regional objectives into concrete spatial policies, projects and decision-making tools.
A central part of the mandate was collaboration across municipal and institutional boundaries. Participatory processes brought regional and local actors together around shared priorities and strengthened their capacity to coordinate development over the long term. The result is an integrated approach to regional planning in which spatial quality, economic competitiveness, infrastructure investment and landscape development are considered as parts of one metropolitan system.