People used rakes.
When you work in gardening, you are paid to do so.
If people in Zürich decide to pay more for gardening and reduce noise, it's their decision.
(though quite frankly, from using a rake myself and watching people here use leaf blowers, I'm not sure they are faster in any way)
with leaf blowing, where do people blow their leaves/branches/trash to? to roads? to neighbors? making roads flood by blocking road drainage?
what about all these noise and dust from leaf-blowing? (even not counting all those fuel burning...)
maybe those leaf-blowing promoters are the "arseholes" ?
just rake them, put them in big bags & compost them
Not everyone, sure, but this isn't an issue of rakes Vs leaf-blowers and it isn't the problem with two-stroke leaf blowers.
If anything, people with leaf blowers probably put more thought into what they do with their leaves, because they have a bigger volume of them to deal with.