Ville de Bulle

Bulle is a town with over 27,000 inhabitants and the capital of the Gruyère district in the canton of Fribourg. The current municipality, located at an altitude of 771 meters, is the result of the merger between Bulle and La Tour-de-Trême in 2006.

Bulle is a town in the countryside. It offers all the services and amenities of a large city in a human-scale setting close to unspoiled natural surroundings. The new Bulle is a young, attractive, dynamic economic hub serving regional development, extremely well located between Bern and the Lake Geneva region. A rich network of associations offers the population a high-quality range of cultural, sporting, leisure, and entertainment activities. With high-level educational facilities, mobility and urban planning redesigned to promote quality of life, strong integration capabilities, multicultural diversity, and a preserved environment and landscape, Bulle has many assets.

The arrival of the H189 bypass in December 2009, the introduction of public transport and the RER, traffic calming measures, and the redevelopment of the centers of Bulle and La Tour-de-Trême now offer new opportunities to steer the municipality's sustainable development towards improving the quality of life for all its citizens.

Until the end of the 1970s, Bulle still had the appearance of a small country town. The face of the city has thus undergone a profound transformation over the last 30 years. The arrival of the motorway in 1981 brought the city of Gruyère closer to the major centers and opened up the entire region. This major event triggered tremendous growth in both population—one of the highest in Switzerland—and economy. In 1983, Bulle and La Tour-de-Trême had a combined population of only 10,000. Today, the established population exceeds 27,000.

This growth has been marked by strong industrialization in the fields of machinery, iron, construction, wood, and, today, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Regional companies based in Bulle are growing and developing alongside multinationals. Basic infrastructure is being built and the overall provision for the population is developing over the years, particularly in terms of education, health, social services, sports, and culture. This take-off is being promoted by the authorities, who have made a firm commitment to a policy of regional economic development.

The emergence of a nascent urbanity was reinforced at the turn of the millennium. In 2004, Bulle was ranked first among French-speaking Swiss cities in terms of quality of life, according to a study by IDHEAP and L'Hebdo. It even ranked third nationally, ahead of Zug and Zurich. In terms of dynamism, Bulle also ranked highly among French-speaking Swiss cities according to a study conducted by Bilan magazine in February 2010. It came in fourth place after Nyon, Montreux, and Ecublens in terms of socio-economic conditions, job creation in construction, housing costs, and finally, income and social stability.

Thus, from a town where everyone knows each other, Bulle is learning to embrace more globalized and less intimate relationships between its inhabitants. Citizen relations are evolving, as they must now incorporate the dimensions of diversity and multiculturalism. The significant increase in the Swiss and foreign migrant population in recent years is certainly an important factor that has changed the way residents perceive their own city. This demographic growth, which is diverse and constant but has tended to accelerate in recent years, is also an indicator of the city's strong appeal.

Population of the City of Bulle: statistics

Altitude
Bulle TPF train station: 771 meters
Highest point: 1,170 meters
Lowest point: 730 meters

Area
2,387 hectares, including 498 hectares of forest (excluding the Bouleyres forest, which is owned by the state but located within the municipal territory).