Students: Lorenzo Zanchetta, Roman Ziegler
Location: Group work in Basel
Date: January, 2007
Type: Research project, student work, three regions

Delemont, the capitol of canton Jura, located approximately 30km southwest of Basel, is the regional center of a semi-urbanized region along the banks of the rivers Sorne and Scheulte, before they flow into the Birs. Lying on the northern side of the mountain range of the Jura, it has good connections to Basel, its closest bigger city, though due to its French speaking population, its references lie partly within France and within the other French speaking cantons of Switzerland. In contrast to Basel with a population predominantly protestant, the majority of the inhabitants of Delemont and its environs belong to the Catholic Church.
Delemont belongs to the ‚Stille Zonen / Quiet Zones‘, identified in the Portrait of Switzerland. Having grown quite rapidly in population, in the 1960s and 70s, it has since then slowly started to shrink, having dropped in size from approximately 12.000 inhabitants during the peak of the late 70s, to just over 11.000 today. Being the capitol of Canton Jura, it is host to a number of institutions and administrative functions, but seen within a larger context, is struggling to define its identity and its purpose in a ‚Europe of Regions‘.
What is the function that Delemont currently performs, or should perform in the future, for the region of MetroBasel? Do we need to change the core city of Basel, in order to incorporate Delemont and the villages of the Jura better into the matrix of urban dependencies within the region? What is the potential of sub-centers, such as Delemont, acting as an administrative hub, but devoid of a ‚Hinterland‘, today?
What infrastructural connections should be established to link Delemont more firmly into the metropolitan region of MetroBasel, and should that definition of the zone be extended to include such cities as La Chaux des Fonds, making that part of Switzerland into a more integral part of the Basel region?
Can Basel hand over certain tasks and functions to this region of the Jura? What kind of intervention is necessary to establish Basel as an entry point to Delemont and the landscapes of the Jura?