Newsletter «Zurich (Inter)national»

From March 4th to 8th, Zurich hosted an expert exchange on nutrition and urban food systems, bringing together representatives from the cities of Mbeya (Tanzania) and Cox's Bazar (Bangladesh) with experts from Zurich. They visited local facilities such as the Juchhof farm, the Hard community garden, and the Foodsave market.

With over half of the world's population living in cities, places like Mbeya and Cox's Bazar face the challenge of ensuring sufficient food and clean water while educating the population about healthy nutrition.

The city-to-city cooperations with Mbeya and Cox's Bazar aim to improve access to nutritious food while considering ecological principles. Various approaches are being implemented: Mbeya focuses on awareness campaigns and healthier school meals, while Cox's Bazar trains mothers in slums to share nutrition knowledge within the community and promotes the establishment of homestead gardens.

Zurich contributes financially and through regular knowledge exchange with Mbeya and Cox's Bazar. The nutrition unit of UGZ provides its expertise, while the partner organization Helvetas oversees and coordinates the implementation of activities on the ground.

Europe is becoming increasingly interconnected through mobilityCities are at the heart of this trend. Innovative solutions are needed if urban mobility is to develop sustainably. At the City Leadership Forum on February 27 and 28 in Zurich, city representatives from all over Europe and industry partners discussed what these solutions could look like. The discussion ranged from political and strategic issues to practical challenges: The participants discussed, for example, whether and how certain means of transport should be specifically prioritized in scarce road space. Or how transport companies can best handle the payment system digitally. Or how the rapidly growing number of parcels from online retailers can be distributed efficiently in cities.

The City Leadership Forum provided plenty of inspiration - also for solving challenges in the city of Zurich.

On February 6, the City Council of the City of Zurich met with executives from the larger cities and municipalities of the Canton of Zurich (Adliswil, Bülach, Dietikon, Dübendorf, Horgen, Kloten, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Schlieren, Thalwil, Uster, Wädenswil, Wetzikon and Winterthur). In the run-up to a joint discussion on various topics, the guests visited the Kaserne supervised drug consumption facilities. The visitors had the opportunity to find out about the various services offered by the city of Zurich for people who use drugs. This was followed by a debate on the cantonal government's plans to reduce the profit tax to 6% for businesses and its impact on the budgets of the municipalities and cities in the canton. Afterwards, the executive politicians discussed the various cantonal housing policy initiatives that will be put to the electorate in the canton in the upcoming year. The evening was rounded off with a joint dinner at Muraltengut.