Andor Wesselényi-Garay
Magazine “Atrium”
Ybl Miklós Technical Unversity, Corvnius University
Budapest - Hungary
E-mail: w-g-a@axelero.hu
The City As an Eternal Spatial Conflict –
Budapest At The Dawn of a New Paradigm
The multipart title of the lecture adumbrates an affirmable link between conflicts and certain changes
that Budapest is about to face. The statements of this short essay are next:
1. The story of the urban development is always explainable by the stories of different conflicts; the
transformation of the city structure is conflict itself.
2. There are clear and almost unquestionable political and sociological signs of major changes in
Budapest’s policy, that one might call a new paradigm.
3. The new paradigm in the development of Budapest is caused by the inherited and ambivalent
relationship with conflicts.
In the summer of 2004, after two years of leadership, the fourth freely elected Hungarian government
had to depose. The evaluation of the cabinet crisis revealed, that the colorful drama of the ex prime
minister must be analysed in the context of joining the EU.
The emphasizing slogan, “We Join Europe”, in the last fifteen years has slowly turned into fear, and a
bit later into a tortured cliché. It was doubtful if the new norms would have any effect on the
governing attitude in the near future. In April, right after the European parliamentarian elections no
one had believed in the slightest hope of any change in Hungary. A few months later, as an unexpected
result of making the first administrative efforts to act in the philosophy of the European legal norms
made unambiguous for the complete political elite that it is not acceptable to rule the way they did
before. The previous governmental philosophy which was a special idiosyncrasy of the different elites
in the last decade, suddenly has become unacceptable. A special period has ended, the first fifteen
years of the new republic has turned out to be a provision. And that provisionality is over now. The
shocking waves of the government crisis almost immediately have reached Budapest. One of the very
first declarations of the new prime minister predicted, that he is intent on modeling a new program for
Budapest, even though the Urban Development Concept, after four years of conciliation, had reached
completion at the end of 2003. Correlating with the major political events, it has also become
unavoidable to realize, that the last decade of Budapest was provisional too. And that provisionality
has also come to an end, to be relayed by a new era, which in time necessarily would turn out to be a
new transition.
In this period the urban development of Budapest was controlled by a certain strategy, which is
internationally known as The Budapest Model. The main element of this model is the mutual political
agreement in values and attempts between the municipalities and the capital cabinet. The 23
municipalities in Budapest have equal rights and power, which has led to the forced equality of
smaller and wider public interests. The Budapest Model has become the synonym of successful policy
making, notwithstanding that the iconic city vision was missing from the urban development strategy.
The Urban Development Concept, in accordance with its category is more like a list of wishes, than a
well represented or communicated icon about the urban landscape. One can agree that a city is not
only the sum of its buildings and spaces, but more, the promise of all the imaginable actions of its
area. Because of the common fear of dropping behind in the close competition of the European cities,
the citizens of Budapest have started to judge their city not upon the promises that had fulfilled, but
judging upon the urban actions that still has not started.
Despite the indisputable success of the Budapest Model as a “smooth operator” of the city, increasing
number of discontented citizens had started formulating their critic: in the perception of Budapest
there are not visible signs of the democratic political changes. The lack of wish for an iconic Cityscape
of the new millennium, and the absence of the Great Budapest Vision are in the intellectual focus of
the criticisms.
The historical structure of Budapest was built a hundred years ago. In that sense Budapest is a
montage that was created by following a collective vision of the European metropolis, based upon the
mixed image of Paris, Berlin and London. According to our memories, Budapest was built in forty
years, through a series of conflicts. One might remember the magnificent words of Lewis Mumford,
interpreting the city as the creator of war, and the child of war. In this “war” most of the medieval city
structure of Budapest was destroyed to guarantee big enough free place for the new one. The historical
experience of taking conflicts is attached to the successful urban development.
The conflict is the most controversial element of the contemporary city policy. As an adverse heritage
of the Kádár era, the Hungarian political elite does not have any experience in dealing with conflicts.
The only strategy that the early 50’s generation is trained for is avoiding conflicts. This attitude is the
basic characteristic of the (city) governance too, so the leadership per definitionem reluctant in
inspiring major changes in the spatial structure. But – and in this point one can agree with Imre
Makovecz – constructing, building is a drama indeed. Architecture is conflict. A huge unexpected and
unexplainable conflict in space, creating a void, that folds the “anti-nature” that has been violently torn
out of the previously empty space. Babel is one the metaphors of this conflict, where God himself
punishes the people for their brave.
The lack of activity in creating and fighting conflicts, which acted a hundred years ago as the engine of
the rapid structural development of the historical Budapest, has led to a contemporary urban strategy
that has not created iconic vision for the future. The city governance did not have the chance to use
architecture as a representational device on one hand, and was not able to balance the growing fear of
being dropped behind in the contest of the European cities in the other. Deducible from all that, a need
of more centralized power and more conflicting governance has declared by the intellectuals of
Budapest. The capital of Hungary is at the dawn of a new paradigm.