Statistical Discovery

2024-05-04

Today I dove into the numbers – the ones generously shared by the SFGV and explained in detail by Otmar Halfmann. What I found is both sobering and revealing.

Over the past 10 years, Otmar told me, Switzerland has lost at least 2.7% of its total settlement area, largely due to urban sprawl and sealed land. But here’s the catch:

Allotment gardens aren’t evenly spread across the country. They’re mainly located in urban buffer zones – the exact areas most under pressure.

Otmar walked me through how to calculate the factor by which this pressure should be adjusted.

Since garden sites are concentrated around metropolitan reserve zones (not, as he says, in the Emmental), applying a correction factor of 3 is both reasonable and necessary.

When we do this, the estimated loss over the past decade rises to about 8.1% of allotment space.

That’s roughly 73 hectares.

Even when we compensate for the few replacement areas (around one third), we’re still left with a net loss of 50 hectares.

To put that into perspective: With approximately 260 m² per plot (including paths and logistics areas), that’s nearly 2,000 gardeners who have lost their space.

And with it – perhaps – something much deeper: A rhythm. A connection to soil. A place of belonging, meaning and personal value routed in idenity and tradition.

But land is just one side of the story. The other is people.

Looking at the membership data from 2013 to 2022 – provided via the SFGV’s internal reports – I see a slow but steady decline:

• 2013: 23,071 members

• 2017: 22,222

• 2020: 21,850

• 2022: 20,482

That’s nearly 2,600 members lost over the past decade.

Most due to association closures or plot reductions.

But (usually between 40-60/year) some simply left – quietly, gradually for various reasons.

And maybe that’s the most urgent question here:

What are we losing – silently – while we look the other way?

This isn’t just about statistics.

It’s about the disappearance of community infrastructures that carry more than carrots and compost.

They carry memory.

They hold systems of care.

They give space to those who need roots – literally and metaphorically.

🌱 I didn’t expect numbers to move me.

But they do. Because I can now see what’s hidden between the lines.

And I wonder: how can design respond to this quiet erosion?

This post is just one step in that journey.

I’ll keep digging.