Swiss city planning

From Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action:

Ioan Bowen Rees, in the course of his valuable book Government by Community, compares the timid recommendations of the Skeffington Report on public participation in planning with current practice in Switzerland: 'It was with the public that the Swiss began, with the Parish Meeting, as it were, passing its own planning statute and approving its own development plan.' The person who is intoxicated by large-scale thinking asks how planning could operate under these conditions. Well, Mr Bowen Rees emphasises, 'No community in Switzerland is insignifi­cant. This means that a small commune can - and sometimes does hold up a motorway. And also that a small commune can - and some­

times does - save itself from economic stagnation by its own efforts. And why not? The result is neither poverty nor chaos.