“It Will Get Crowded, It Will Get Dull!”: Preventive Sensations of Density in Zurich's Future-Making

Abstract

In Zurich, Switzerland's largest and wealthiest city, future planning around densification has been intensely debated in recent years, spurring referendums and direct democratic votes, and permeating the public discourse through governmental communication, political propaganda, and heightened media coverage. As I argue, densification has pervaded the city beyond the technical realm of planning itself, trickling precisely into the everyday realms of the affective, embodied, and sensed, fleshing out gendered and racialized anticipatory imaginaries. This paper thus draws from critical urban studies as well as queer and affect theory to look at densification as a sensed future imaginary, often articulated to prevent its actual materialization: a phenomenon described in this article as “preventive sensations.” Drawing on ethnographic work with civil society organizations, urban activism, and far-right politics, the paper asks how the density of a city comes to be and most of all felt, even when it has arguably yet to arise. By demonstrating how Switzerland emerges as a historically urbaphobic context, I argue that crowdedness becomes a smokescreen for nationalism and anti-migration sentiments, evoked in both conservative and progressive agendas.