Discussion: Jura

The freedom to be different – Jura, Switzerland’s youngest canton

PERNETTE ZUMTHOR, ARLES, FRANCE

Thank you for this detailed and very well-researched article. I also enjoyed reading it because it has given me a few great ideas for cycling around Jura myself.

MARKUS LÜTTIN, SPAIN

I used to live in Jura during those pre-referendum years covered in your article. Aged 12, I remember helping out at a family farm near Delémont. The adults at the dinner table would often talk about the pros and cons of establishing the canton of Jura. The grievances were certainly real, because Berne’s cantonal government made life more difficult for many people in Jura. This sowed the seed of political self-determination – a goal that became more and more imperative. And in hindsight we can say that establishing the new canton was evidently the right decision. Otherwise, Moutier would not have voted to join Jura too. Things have indeed calmed down since then, so the solution to the Jura puzzle could not have been more Swiss.

BARBARA SURBER, LIMA, PERU

Many thanks for keeping people like me up to speed with events in Switzerland – and for covering themes like the one dealt with in this article.

CORRECTION

We like to be accurate, which is why we need to correct the date of the all-important 1974 popular vote that we gave in our article about the canton of Jura in “Swiss Review” 5/2024. The plebiscite in Berne-administered Jura, which led to the eventual creation of the new canton, did in fact take place on 23 June 1974, and not on 23 March 1974.

The “Swiss Review” editorial team

Switzerland’s contentious motorway expansion plan

WILL MOWAT, UK

I invite everyone to look up the terms “induced demand” and “generated demand” in connection with transport planning. One soon sees that providing ever more traffic capacity is completely unsustainable. Act in haste, repent at leisure.