Lausanne, Switzerland: "Can you correct the planning blunders of the past and modernize an older city without endangering its soul?"

Contrast this to Deaf Gahan's traditional approach.

This year, Lausanne has been piloting a radically inclusive public consultation into the area’s future. The city is not just offering the public possible options to choose from. By piloting months of information-gathering from local people that culminated in a three-day mass workshop, it is trying to spark an almost existential debate about what the squares mean—or could mean—to the many diverse, overlapping groups that form the public.

You can hear the wailing in the bunker. How can the usual campaign donors wet their beaks from an existential debate about anything apart from cold, hard cash?

In Switzerland, Everyone’s an Urban Planner, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

To reimagine its largest public space, the Swiss city of Lausanne organized a citywide consultation and workshop that asked: Just who is the public?

How could anyone mess up a space this impressive?

Lausanne’s Place de la Riponne, a grand square in the heart of Switzerland’s fourth-largest city, is the kind of historically significant, dramatically sited urban set piece that would likely be the tourist-thronged highlight of any North American city. Flanked on one side by the steroidally grandiose neo-Renaissance Palais de Rumine (the building in which Iraq’s borders were drawn up in 1923), the broad plaza stands at the foot of a hill stacked with layers of turrets and steeples, beyond which you can see snow-capped Alpine mountain peaks.

But somehow, the city has managed to mess it up. The square’s ring of late 19th to mid-20th century buildings—which range visually from decent to spectacular—has been somewhat rudely interrupted by a brutalist early 1960s headquarters for the state government that serves to mask the site’s interesting, funnel-shaped topography. By the standards of old Europe, the space has been warped by some ungainly traffic planning, with a strip of the square reimagined as the feeder road to a subterranean parking lot.

This parking lot, meanwhile, has rendered the square above it ill-suited to bearing heavy loads of equipment needed for major public events—events it would otherwise have seemed perfect for. Though it still has charisma, the square and its neighbor, Place du Tunnel, could stand as textbook examples of the problems of late 20th-century urban planning; they’re noisy, unloved, and faintly neglected underneath their thin patina of grime.

Still, if Lausanne shows how bad planning can screw up a magnificent space, the city is now trying hard to make up for it. This year, Lausanne has been piloting a radically inclusive public consultation into the area’s future. The city is not just offering the public possible options to choose from. By piloting months of information-gathering from local people that culminated in a three-day mass workshop, it is trying to spark an almost existential debate about what the squares mean—or could mean—to the many diverse, overlapping groups that form the public. Rather than providing ready-made blueprints, Lausanne is starting a process that the city’s Socialist mayor Grégoire Junod calls “turning a blank page to explore the field of the possible.”

30 years ago today: (April) Swiss day trips to Geneva and Montreux.

Montreux Casino fire, Dec. 4, 1971.

Previous: 30 years ago today: Springtime in Switzerland. First, a weekend in Lausanne.

Note that I began the trip in April and the 30-year narrative in May, so I'm looping back to catch up on the earlier portions.

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Day 10 ... Saturday April 25
Lausanne. Day trip to Geneva, U.N.

Day 11 ... Sunday, April 26
Lausanne. Daytime boat to Montreux

At this late date, three decades after the fact, I'm at a loss to explain exactly why I went to Switzerland in 1987.

The stay was brief, but still comparatively expensive given the self-imposed budgetary constraints I'd established, and what's more, my original itinerary had foreseen a stay in Namur and the Ardennes in the Wallonian half of Belgium prior to revisiting Vienna in early May.

Paris put a crimp in my plans, and I changed everything around. It isn't clear why, and I'm left to ponder what might have been, seeing as eight years later I finally made it to Namur and environs, and it was epochal.

It took me almost as long to return to Switzerland, this excursion being Zurich in 1994. By then the pub business had been launched, and the sole purpose for going to Zurich was to tour the Hürlimann brewery, an atmospheric old-school operation and the conjurer of Samichlaus, now brewed in Austria since Hürlimann's unfortunate demise in the late 1990s.

The closest I can come to a coherent explanation is that I visited Switzerland to get the Alps out of my system.

As a child, and into my early teens, the primary objective of summer break Baylor family travel was to see the natural attractions of the American West. It was an obsession of my father's, and while there were occasional exceptions, the bulk of time spent away from home in my early years came in places like South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.

It was real, and it was fun; no regrets, but it wasn't me. Forever the country boy raised to fish and hunt, my father had no use whatever for cities, and in all likelihood I was destined to follow one of two paths: either agree with him and advocate the great outdoors, or diverge completely and become an urbanite.

There probably wasn't going to be a middle ground, and the verdict for me should be clear.

I do enjoy natural settings, though preferably while seated on the veranda of a hotel with a nice beer in my hand. A bit of hiking is fine, just not overnight. A tent? Not my style. When beercycling came along in my forties, it was the closest I came to recapturing the woodsy vibe, albeit it riding along canals and roads in a European man-made built environment.

In this sense, Switzerland in 1987 was my kind of compromise at a time when I was still "finding" myself. There was gorgeous scenery, accompanied by plenty of railroads and verandas, with the main problem being the high expense. Gazing at the snow-capped peaks of the Swiss Alps would require absolute precision in terms of affordable lodging, and for once, everything fell into place.

My bunk in Lausanne was at an accredited international youth hostel, and after that, in Interlaken, there was space in a highly praised independent hostel.

Lausanne was good for a day, followed by day trips to Geneva and Montreux via rail and boat.

The Russian orthodox church in Geneva dates from 1866 and was financed by a member of the Russian royal family. I'd be seeing plenty more of these onion domes later in the summer, first in Yugoslavia, then in Bulgaria, and finally during the Soviet tour.

The (Protestant) Reformation Wall lies on the grounds of the University of Geneva, and is built into the city's old defense walls. Protestantism = Protestant work ethic = all those Swiss banks, army knives and cuckoo clocks.

Louisvillians of a certain age will recall Barry Bingham Sr.'s ill-fated $2.6 million donation of a "Falls Fountain" to serve as St. Louis Gateway Arch-style welcome to the city. It was based on the fountain in Lake Geneva, which the Binghams had seen while in Europe.

The elder Bingham died just days before the Louisville version was inaugurated. There were major maintenance issues; it seems that no one had considered the vast difference between a debris-strewn river and a mountain lake. The Louisville Falls Fountain stumbled into 1998 with steadily escalating expenses, then was decommissioned, towed to a berth in New Albany, and eventually sold for scrap.

The one in Geneva was quite nice.

The second-largest United Nations office location is in Geneva, and I toured it.

It appears that several of my photos from this roll were exposed to light. I probably opened the camera before the film was completely rewound. I've applied filters to try making them presentable.

I remember nothing about my day trip to Montreux, apart from finding the casino to commemorate the inspiration for Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water." The surviving photographic evidence suggests I rode the boat in one direction and the train back to Lausanne.

Next: Up into the mountains at Interlaken.

30 years ago today: Springtime in Switzerland. First, a weekend in Lausanne.

Previously (catching up on earlier installments): 30 years ago, April 20: Amsterdam amid the Heineken.

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Day 8 ... Thursday, April 23
Amsterdam → Paris ... disaster, Yasmin couscous, liter of house wine, scant accommodations

The word "disaster" evidently was supposed to remind me of something important, and my vague recollection supports that it had something to do with "scant accommodations."

In 1987, on a fast train, it would have taken about five and a half hours to ride from Amsterdam to Paris. I'd have arrived at Gare du Nord in early afternoon, much later than I preferred when it came to scoring inexpensive bunks, but since it was April, surely the competition wouldn't be fierce.

Au contraire. Amid the cobwebs, I remember that I was told by the folks at the budget bed booking agency that while Thursday night was possible, the entirety of hostel spots in all of Paris was booked during the coming weekend. It was a student spring break, or holiday, or some such.

I was annoyed, but accepted what was offered. Arriving at my building, I was asked if I'd share a two-bed room with a complete stranger, who turned out to be a young citizen of West Germany who spoke excellent English and told me stories about his experiences as a conscientious objector, doing alternative work in the countryside.

It had been my plan to remain in Paris for a few days, but this was looking improbable on a budget. Besides, I'd be coming back later in the summer with my friends Barrie Ottersbach and Bob Gunn.

Consequently, two things needed to happen.

First, strategic planning. A consultation with the Thomas Cook European Timetable showed that if I caught the TGV from Gare de Lyon a little after seven on Friday morning, I could be in Lausanne, Switzerland just after 11:00 a.m. Obviously, it was time for the mountains.

Second, it also was time to comparatively splurge on a stress-relieving meal with wine, and this meant navigating to Rue Xavier Privas and Yasmin, the North African joint cousin Don had introduced to me in 1985. There I ordered the basic tagine with bottomless couscous (pasta) and a liter of house red.

Later in the narrative, there'll be a bit more about the myriad joys of the couscouserie, but for now, know that I returned to the hostel feeling no pain, and found that my German roomie hadn't returned.

It was a gorgeous spring evening and the window had been left open, curtains parted. As I packed for an early Friday alarm, there was a sudden ruckus on the street, and seconds later a rock came through the window and skidded along the floor in front of me.

Off went the light as I sidled over to the window to see what was happening. There was a red-faced young Frenchman who seemed quite angry, and he was yelling in the general direction of our room, which was three floors up. Being drunk myself at the time, I surmised he was, too; the rock likely was a lucky heave, and it probably had to do with a girl -- which I wasn't.

Perhaps management would be interested in knowing, so I descended the stairs and began telling the story to the first person I saw near the desk, who listened for several seconds before reminding me he was an Irishman staying at the hostel, not working at it, but if I wanted to join him in going out and confronting the angry Frenchman, he was certainly up for the challenge.

There was a pause. I laughed, he laughed, and he reached behind him into a bag and produced a Kronenbourg: "Or, why don't we just stay right here and have a beer."

There were no more rocks in our room when I poured myself atop the sheets.

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Day 9 ... Friday, April 24
Paris → Lausanne ... TGV; hostel. 

I made the train on time and arrived in Lausanne on what probably would have been considered an unseasonably warm and sunny day for April.

This typically prosperous Swiss city sits on the shore of Lake Geneva in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. There was an affordable hostel vacancy for the weekend, and relieved of my backpack, lunch beckoned. Owing to the sun, it simply had to be a picnic. I walked to the center, toward the lake.

I found a grocery and bought bread, meat, cheese and a six-pack of Cardinal lager beer, stuffed it all in my day pack, and made for what appeared to be a park area by the lake. Lots of other people had the same idea. It was midday, and many of them obviously were on lunch break. Some may have only worked the morning hours.

As I crossed the street, I was walking behind a shapely brunette. Sexism aside, at not quite 26 years old, you tend to notice these things.

She was dressed conservatively in a long, dark skirt and blouse, no doubt having emerged from her place of employment in an office or bank. When we reached the park, I seized the first open bench I saw and began fishing for my opener.

She stopped about 10 feet in front of me, pulled a blanket from her over-sized handbag, and spread it over the sand. Her skirt dropped to the ground, revealing a bikini bottom. The blouse was next, revealing -- well, nothing, as she was now topless on her blanket applying suntan lotion.

It quickly occurred to me that I loved Europe madly, and I proceeded to consume two whole beers before remembering I'd brought sandwich materials.

Lausanne was intended as a less expensive base for seeing surrounding sights, which I commenced doing on Saturday. This photo may have been taken in Lausanne, or perhaps Geneva. Everywhere in Switzerland, the Alps are there, on the horizon

Next: Weekend day trips to Geneva and Montreux.