Aarolfingen
Aarolfingen is the name of a utopian urban planning project in the Swiss plateau of the 1960s and 1970s.
Surname
The name Aarolfingen is made up of the names of the three cities included in the utopia: Aarau , Olten and Zofingen .
The utopia
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Switzerland was gripped by a great growth euphoria. Many municipalities expected an exponential increase in the number of inhabitants. The idea of Aarolfingen was concretised in 1968 in the “Model for the Settlement of the Canton of Aargau ”. The model envisaged a city center in the Central Plateau, which on the one hand would form a counterpoint to Basel , Bern , Lucerne and Zurich , and on the other hand should put a stop to the sprawl of the Central Plateau. In addition to the three cities mentioned, the polycentric city center should include 15 municipalities from the canton of Solothurn and 18 municipalities from the canton of Aargau and have around 330,000 inhabitants. The simulation games also included setting up a university of their own. The project found little support from the general public.
criticism
The project was initially criticized primarily by the Canton of Solothurn, which harbored concerns about its territorial integrity. But resistance also arose in the regional planning groups. Ultimately, in 1974 the canton of Aargau also decided not to pursue the project any further.