Municipal Strategic Plan
Following the municipal mergers, the city has grown and requires a new, coordinated approach to land management and spatial planning. The territory is currently governed by several zoning plans, many of which were approved by the former municipalities that have since become districts of Lugano. Following the City Parliament’s approval of the Municipal Strategic Plan (PDcom), the City is therefore proceeding with a comprehensive review of its planning regulations.
The current Municipality of Lugano is the result of four municipal mergers (1972, 2004, 2008, and 2013), which brought together 21 former municipalities (including the old Lugano) to form the new city.
Spatial planning, on the other hand, is governed by 19 Section Zoning Plans (PR), 18 of which were inherited from the former municipalities, while Lugano, Castagnola and Brè already had a unified Zoning Plan. Lugano also participates in four intermunicipal planning schemes.
Each plan consists of graphic plans and implementation norms. In some sections, the PR is supplemented by detailed plans for specific areas of particular importance.
These mergers have increased the city's population from 27,000 in the 1970s to around 68,000 today. This has been accompanied by significant territorial expansion: from 32 km² to 75.8 km². Lugano is now the ninth-largest city in Switzerland by population and the second-largest urban agglomeration by surface area. The new city features a varied territorial situation, characterized by historical cores and peri-urban areas with single-family homes, as well as urban, agricultural, mountainous, and forested areas, not to mention the lake and numerous waterways.
The city is therefore faced with a complex process of integrating 21 administrative entities—its districts—into a reorganized context shaped by significant changes. To address the challenges posed by the evolving socio-economic, institutional, and territorial framework, Lugano has decided to equip itself with three programmatic governance tools: the Development Guidelines with a ten-year horizon, the Financial Plan, and the Municipal Strategic Plan (Piano direttore comunale, PDcom), which includes visions, objectives, and directions for Lugano2050. These tools take into account the unique characteristics of each district, enhanced by the Constellations concept.
The PDcom is a strategic, concrete, dynamic, and communicative tool that allows for the territorial development of the city while laying a solid foundation for harmonizing the zoning plans of individual districts. It is designed to define the city’s territorial and urban planning framework for the next 20 years.
The Thematic Portal of the PDcom
Given the importance of the Municipal Strategic Plan project and the public information and participation process that took place following the public presentation of the winning project, a dedicated thematic portal was created. The portal was revamped in early 2026 with the publication of the complete technical report of the PDC and the related dynamic maps. All documentation relating to the Parallel Study Mandates (MSP) phase is still available on the new website.
Approval of the PDcom
On 24 October 2024, the City Council approved the PDcom and transmitted two coordinated Dispatches to the City Parliament: one for discussion on the PDcom and another regarding a funding request to initiate the revisions of zoning plans according to the territorial concept of Constellations.
The PDcom was discussed by the City Parliament at its meeting on 12 May 2025, while the funding for the revisions of the Zoning Plans was approved on 24 November 2025.
Harmonization of Zoning Plans
Gradually, the zoning plans of individual districts will be harmonized in form and content according to the objectives and a new territorial grouping defined by the PDcom. This will result in a comprehensive and coordinated planning framework for the entire city, the unified zoning plan composed of nine Constellations.
Timeline and Funding
Following the approval of the necessary funding by the City Parliament, work began on the preparation of the Strategic Plans for the planning revisions. For this purpose, the City Parliament approved total funding of CHF 2.5 million. At the same time, specific studies on cultural heritage sites and historic centres throughout the City were also launched, with total funding of CHF 300,000, along with the revision of Lugano’s Detailed Plans, for which a further CHF 250,000 was allocated.
Parallel Study Mandates
In November 2019, the City launched a public competition following the procedure of parallel study mandates (MSP) with the aim of selecting three interdisciplinary groups tasked with developing a vision of the Municipal Strategic Plan worthy of being further developed through a subsequent mandate.
In September 2020, ratifying the decision of the panel of experts, the City Council assigned the task to the three groups—Studio Paola Viganò, KCAP Architects & Planners, Consorzio Pensare Lugano—to develop a vision of the Municipal Strategic Plan.
The procedure of parallel study mandates (MSP) concluded in the fall of 2021. The City Council ratified the decision of the panel of experts and assigned Studio Paola Viganò the mandate to develop the Municipal Strategic Plan.
The outcome of the MSP procedure was presented during a public evening event in January 2022, and subsequently, the park and the orangery of Villa Saroli hosted an exhibition of the three finalist projects, which ran until 28 May 2022.
Streaming of the public evening on the PDcom, 24 January 2022
Last updated: 13 July 2026
The English version of this page was created with the aid of automatic translation tools and may contain errors and omissions.
The original version is the page in Italian.