Lakes in modern times

As a large parish village in a pleasant area, whose inhabitants primarily engage in agriculture, Seen was characterized in a local lexicon in the mid-19th century. Today, 150 years later, it is decidedly more challenging to describe the character of Seen in just a few words. Since 1922, it has no longer been an independent municipality but a district of Winterthur, and in recent decades, Seen has experienced an immense construction boom that has doubled the population within a generation and transformed the district into a proper city. This urbanization process today shapes the perception of a locality that consists of very different settlements, hamlets, and farms, some of which have grown together in an urban planning sense, while others have remained distant, each possessing its own history and identity. A look into the past opens up a wide field of village stories that exist in the tension between city and countryside, agriculture and industry, hills and plains, village and outlying areas. Sketching a broad panorama of the rural-urban world, the individual chapters present everyday life from various perspectives, thus creating an image that shows the district in a new, sometimes unfamiliar, and often surprising light.