Abstract
This article has a double objective. First, it defines the major challenges of contemporary urban heritage preservation through the specificities of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach in order to determine an analytical framework to examine heritage cities and quarters from the perspective of heritage preservation. Second, it applies the analytical framework to assess current urban interventions in the 8th District (Józsefváros) (Józsefváros – “Josephtown” in English – was named after the Habsburg Emperor, Joseph II, in 1777. In this article, we refer to this district as “District” or under its Hungarian denomination) of Budapest. The research results help discuss the utility of the HUL approach.
In addition to the management of the general urban challenges of globalization, Józsefváros – the most heterogeneous administrative unit of Budapest’s historical center – must develop a variety of adaptation techniques, which fit its diverse built, social, cultural, and environmental legacy. Accordingly, the launching of an overall rehabilitation program for the District posed great dilemmas for decision-makers and designers. As a trailblazing decision among the districts of Budapest, the 8th District Municipality recognized this heterogeneity by the division of its territory into 11 quarters, which were determined by their specific character and heritage in 2005. Two opposite cases are selected to compare current urban intervention. Whereas the Magdolna Quarter Program was Hungary’s first truly integrated socially sensitive urban regeneration program, the one-time prestigious Palace Quarter boasts one of the highest densities of urban historic buildings in Europe, which are rehabilitated through the establishment of a new network of interior and exterior spaces with the participation of the locals.
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- 2.
According to François Ascher, “threat and the principle of precaution” are the essential elements of contemporary urban planning, in which social actors search for anything, which can “ensure, reassure, produce trust” (Ascher 2001. pp. 76–77).
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Jean-Marc Besse explains that the landscape takes charge of the dimension of human relationship to the world, which has been abandoned by modern science and which is the direct, immediate, physical link to the sensible elements of this world. Thus, the landscape is primarily an experience.
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In Budapest, for example, since 2013, the territory of the World Heritage property has been used to define the area in which the homeless are not allowed to dwell (Budapest 2013).
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Budapest agglomeration, Budapest City, 23 districts, and some hundred quarters can be differentiated as development unit.
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The double transition is an expression used in Central and Eastern European countries because they entered simultaneously into the market economy and the globalization.
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http://rev8.hu/english/. One of the authors, György Alföldi, was the director of this company between 1999 and 2015.
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The Corvin Quarter, based on this principle, became the largest development area in Budapest historic city center as Corvin Promenade since 2005 to present.
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In the Palotanegyed, the internationally well-recognized regeneration method was based on the creation of social diversity by mixing local inhabitants with students. The campus is not situated somewhere else, but within the historic city center. In Paris, the Masséna projects utilized this development concept, but in the Palotanegyed, this is the inherited situation (Benkő 2010).
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First, she was the young “widow of the nation,” since her first husband, Sándor Petőfi, the most famous national poet, died during the 1848–1849 war of independence. Her second marriage was denied by many as an act of treason, and her efforts to become an independent female writer were also often disapproved. She was an extraordinary woman searching for her voice, whose precedent is worth of remembrance.
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The urban acupuncture, the development method based on well-located small intervention, is used since the 1980s; the first examples were realized in Barcelona in Spain or in Curitiba in Brazil.
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It is shown by data from 2015: while the population was shrinking until 2011, it started growing by 2.7 percent between 2012 and 2015. The proportion of economic activity was increased from 40.3 percent to 52.9 percent, though the unemployment rate remained 12.6 percent between 2001 and 2011. The proportion of highly educated people increased from 9.6 percent to 13.7 percent (Source: KSH)
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The name Glove Factory reflects on the former function of the plot. The community center uses the whole plot: a new part was built on the main squares of the quarter, but it is related to the reconstructed former industrial part. The courtyard became an important place where in the atmosphere the new and the historic mix forming a new unit.
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It is not only a place of memory for the local Jewish community but also the place of memory for the communist period. The Hungarian film Eldorado presents perfectly the substance of the square. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldorado (1988 film))
- 15.
The citation is from the designers’ webpage: Dominika Tihanyi et al. Community Design of Teleki Square (http://www.ujirany.com/project/teleki-square-community-park) cited 31 July 2017.
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Alföldi, G., Benkő, M., Sonkoly, G. (2019). Managing Urban Heterogeneity: A Budapest Case Study of Historical Urban Landscape. In: Pereira Roders, A., Bandarin, F. (eds) Reshaping Urban Conservation. Creativity, Heritage and the City, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8887-2_8
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