La Chaux-de-Fonds
La Chaux-de-Fonds is a Swiss city in the canton of Neuchâtel. It is located in the Jura Mountains at an altitude of 992 metres, a few kilometres south of the French border. After Geneva, Lausanne, Biel/Bienne, and Fribourg, it is the fifth-largest city in the Romandie, the French-speaking part of the country, with a population of.
The city was founded in 1656. Its growth and prosperity are mainly bound up with watchmaking. It is the most important centre of the watch-making industry in the area known as the Watch Valley. Partially destroyed by a fire in 1794, La Chaux-de-Fonds was rebuilt following a grid street plan, which was and is still unique among Swiss cities, the only exception being the easternmost section of the city, which was spared by the fire. It creates an exciting and obvious transition from the old section to the newer section. The roads in the original section are very narrow and winding and open to the grid pattern near the town square. The famous architect Le Corbusier, the mathematician Armand Borel, the writer Blaise Cendrars, and the carmaker Louis Chevrolet were born there. La Chaux-de-Fonds is a renowned centre of Art Nouveau.
In 2009, La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle, its sister city, were jointly awarded UNESCO World Heritage status for their exceptional universal value.
UNESCO World Heritage Sites
The watch-making cities of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle have jointly received recognition from UNESCO for their exceptional universal value.The Site's planning consists of two small towns located close to each other in the mountainous environment of the Swiss Jura. Owing to the altitude and the lack of water, the land is ill-suited to farming. Planning and buildings reflect the watch-making artisans' need for rational organization. Rebuilt in the early 19th century, after extensive fires, both towns owe their survival to the manufacturing and exports of watches, to which, in the 20th century, was added the minute micromechanical industry.
Along an open-ended scheme of parallel strips on which residential housing and workshops intermingle, the town's planned layout reflects the needs of the local watch-making culture that dates back to the 17th century, and which is still alive today. Both agglomerations present outstanding examples of mono-industrial manufacturing towns, which are still well-preserved and active. Urban planning has accommodated the transition from the artisans' production of a cottage industry to the more concentrated factory production of the late 19th and 20th centuries. In 1867, Karl Marx was already describing La Chaux-de-Fonds as a "huge factory-town" in Das Kapital, where he analyzed the division of labour in the watch-making industry of the Jura.
It is the tenth Swiss Site to be awarded World Heritage status, joining others such as the Old City of Bern, the Rhaetian Railway and the Abbey and Convent of St. Gallen.
History
The region was first inhabited around 10,000 years ago. A skull and other traces have been found in caves nearby.In the middle of the 14th century, the region was colonized from the southern Val-de-Ruz. La Chaux-de-Fonds is first mentioned in 1350 as la Chaz de Fonz. In 1378 it was mentioned as Chault de Font. The name is of uncertain origin, "Chaux" perhaps being of pre-IE origin and meaning -arid plateau, while de Fonds being intended to connect it with Fontaines in Val-de-Ruz.
The region was under the authority of the lords of Valangin. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the second wave of colonization came from the so-called Clos de la Franchise. Agriculture was the main activity but the village remained small. In 1531 there were only about 35 people living there. The first church was built in 1528. By 1530, La Chaux-de-Fonds, like the rest of the Valangin lands, converted to the new Reformed faith. The Lord of Valanginian, René de Challant, fixed the boundaries of the parish in 1550. The church and parish provided a political structure and a small community of Valanginian citizens, free farmers and peasants grew up around the church. By 1615 there were 355 people living in the village. In 1616, the low and middle jurisdiction over La Chaux-de-Fonds moved to Le Locle and La Sagne, while the high court remained in Valanginian. Agriculture, supplemented by mills on the banks of the Doubs, continued to dominate. However, at the end of the 16th century, the city became an important crossroad between Neuchâtel, Franche-Comté and the Bishopric of Basel.
The community grew during the Thirty Years' War, mainly because of its strategic position for trade. Economic activity accelerated in the 18th century with the development of lace- and watch-making. Pierre Jacquet-Droz, best known for his automata, was a particularly prominent watchmaker of this era.
In 1794 the city was devastated by fire. Charles-Henri Junod designed the new city in 1835, which is now known for its ‘modern’ grid-like plan, in comparison with most European cities' meandering streets. The central avenue is named the Avenue Léopold Robert.
History of the watch-making industry in La-Chaux-de-Fonds
In the second half of the 18th century, Swiss watch-making was on the rise. Parallel to this and despite residency bans Jewish traders began to settle in the region and became involved in the industry. From 1848 onwards restrictions on residence and settlement of Jews were gradually lifted in the Canton of Neuchâtel.In the 1870s, as American companies began to produce watches and watch parts on an industrial scale, Swiss watch-making experienced a crisis. The traditional model of the individual craftsmen was not compatible with the faster-industrialised production rates, but from the 1880s modernisation slowly but surely took hold in the Swiss watch industry.
One of the first modern factories was founded by the Ditesheim brothers Achilles, Leopold and Isidore, who had moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1876. Having joined the trade towards the end of the 19th century, many Jewish manufacturers were less bound to the traditional ideas. Thus they were particularly involved and invested in modernisation processes. The Ditesheim company gained international renown and was renamed ‘Movado’ in 1905.
Encouraged by economic success, more newcomers arrived, among them many Jews. Of the 180 or so medium-sized family businesses in the town, about 30 per cent were owned by Jewish families in 1912. The Jewish community had grown from 541 to 900 members in the span of about 20 years.
During the First World War the watch companies largely received armament commissions. These commissions died down with the end of the war. From 1933, in the run up to the Second World War, Jewish producers began to struggle as their Jewish contacts in occupied countries increasingly faced persecution. Some Jewish companies in La Chaux-de-Fonds were under surveillance from German spies, suspected of illegally exporting war materials for the Allied Forces.
History of anarchism
La Chaux-de-Fonds was one of the centers of the Jura Federation of the First International. After the Saint-Imier Congress, marking the birth of the anarchist movement, one of the first anarchist newspapers, the Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne, was published in the town. This newspaper had a 'very important role' according to historian René Bianco.Geography
La Chaux-de-Fonds has an area,, of. Of this area, or 54.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 27.9% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 16.7% is settled, or 0.5% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.2% is unproductive land.Of the built-up area, industrial buildings made up 1.6% of the total area, housing and buildings 8.4%, transport infrastructure 4.6% and parks, green belts and sports fields 1.1%. 24.2% of the total land area is heavily forested and 3.7% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 0.4% is used for growing crops, 40.0% is pasture and 14.2% is alpine pasture. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.
The municipality was the capital La Chaux-de-Fonds district until the district level was eliminated on 1 January 2018. It is located in the Jura Mountains near the French border at an elevation of about.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Tierced per fess, Azure three Mullets of Five Argent in fess, Argent a Hive Or surrounded by seven Bees of the same, and chequy Argent and Azure.Demographics
La Chaux-de-Fonds has a population of. , 29.1% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years the population has changed at a rate of 1.3%. It has changed at a rate of 1.4% due to migration and at a rate of −0.2% due to births and deaths.Most of the population speak French as their first language, Italian is the second most common and Portuguese is the third. There are 900 people who speak German and 32 people who speak Romansh.
, the population was 48.0% male and 52.0% female. The population was made up of 12,444 Swiss men and 5,578 non-Swiss men. There were 14,513 Swiss women and 4,988 non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 15,164 or about 41.0% were born in La Chaux-de-Fonds and lived there in 2000. There were 3,778 or 10.2% who were born in the same canton, while 6,962 or 18.8% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 9,651 or 26.1% were born outside of Switzerland.
, children and teenagers make up 22.5% of the population, while adults make up 58.9% and seniors make up 18.6%.
, there were 14,380 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 17,285 married individuals, 2,573 widows or widowers and 2,778 individuals who are divorced.
, there were 17,207 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.1 persons per household. There were 7,087 households that consist of only one person and 747 households with five or more people. , a total of 16,833 apartments were permanently occupied, while 1,376 apartments were seasonally occupied and 756 apartments were empty. , the construction rate of new housing units was 1 new units per 1000 residents. The vacancy rate for the municipality,, was 2.05%.