Federal Act
on Spatial Planning
(Spatial Planning Act, SPA)¹

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­tons and com­munes shall en­sure that the land is used eco­nom­ic­ally and that build­ing areas are sep­ar­ate from the areas where build­ing is not per­mit­ted.⁵ They shall co­ordin­ate their activ­it­ies that have a spa­tial im­pact and im­ple­ment a sys­tem of set­tle­ments that en­sures the de­sired de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try. They shall take ac­count of the nat­ur­al en­vir­on­ment and of the needs of the pop­u­la­tion and the eco­nomy.

² By means of spa­tial and re­gion­al plan­ning meas­ures, they shall in par­tic­u­lar sup­port ef­forts to:

a.

pro­tect nat­ur­al re­sources such as soil, air, wa­ter, forests and the land­scape;

a^bis.⁶

pro­mote in­ward set­tle­ment de­vel­op­ment, while en­sur­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate qual­ity of hous­ing;

b.⁷

cre­ate com­pact set­tle­ments;

b^bis.⁸

cre­ate and main­tain the re­gion­al re­quire­ments for the eco­nomy;

c.

en­cour­age so­cial, eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al life in the vari­ous re­gions of the coun­try, and pro­mote ap­pro­pri­ate de­cent­ral­isa­tion of set­tle­ment and eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies;

d.

guar­an­tee the basis for the pro­vi­sion of suf­fi­cient food sup­plies for the coun­try;

e.

en­sure the gen­er­al de­fence of the coun­try;

f.⁹

pro­mote the in­teg­ra­tion of for­eign­ers and so­cial co­he­sion.