After the dismantling, another proposal to solve Budapest’s problems
He conducted a long interview with Dávid Vitézy, CEO of the government’s Budapest Development Center. budapestkornyeke.hu. In this, the expert expressed his views on the relationship between the districts, the capital and the government, and on the problems caused by the increase in the number of cars.
On the recent suggestion of György Matolcsy that Budapest should be divided, Dávid Vitézy said that the Governor of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank did not grasp the problem in the right place, therefore he raises many real problems in his relevant writing.
According to the head of the BFK, the current administrative system of the 23 independent districts, the capital floating between them and the state, and the agglomeration area, which is completely independent of all of them, consisting of many settlements, is very far from ideal and a good European example. This structure has been characterized for decades by the fragmented competencies and the lack of thinking in systems – it is no coincidence that the development of transport in the whole region can only really be done at the state level today, it is the only “common multiple”.
He noted that the functional urban area – that is, the real urban area where people live and work – is no longer at all the same as it was in 1950, when the present city limits of Budapest were demarcated. Many hundreds of thousands of people come to Budapest every day to work from other settlements, most of them by car – in the region of at least 3.5 million, which is unsustainable and deteriorating, based on everyday commuting habits.
So what about Budapest?
According to Dávid Vitézy, there are two possible administrative answers to this.
- One, let there be some kind of regional, stronger co-operation because of Budapest and its wider metropolitan area, so in addition to placing some of today’s capital competencies on a regional level, Budapest should be smaller (this is the Paris model and says that Paris The municipality of Budapest and Rákoskeresztúr, Kőbánya and the other outer districts would be independent municipalities, in addition to a strong region for the capital and the agglomeration, they would organize, for example, all metro, bus and tram lines, as in the French capital) .
- The other should be Budapest bigger than now, and add new settlements to the 1950s. Since it is not worth making a capital of 3-4 million in a country of 10 million, the proposal of the central bank governor is obviously leaning towards the first, ie the smaller Budapest, he pointed out.
However, our administrative system does not have the traditions of strong regions because it follows the Anglo-Saxon pattern for reasons rooted at the time of the change of regime (unlike the Czech Republic, Poland and the whole of Western Europe, where elected regional governments have serious powers). He doesn’t even think that they will be in the short term, because this is an administrative structure established in Hungary and guaranteed by two-thirds legislation, moreover, it has never worked in Hungary before, there is no historical precedent, nor does the old county system. Although it would have the advantage, for example, that suburban and urban transport organization could be further aligned, it would even bring more rational changes to the structure of individual hospitals.
A good example of the joint development of the capital and the agglomeration was the Budapest Agglomeration Railway Strategy adopted by the government at the end of the year, behind which a professional consensus was reached in addition to the professional one.
It would curb housing construction in the “field”
However, he believes that the whole agglomeration railway strategy only makes sense if the problem is guaranteed at the same time that it does not repeat itself.
“So by making the railroad better, hundreds of thousands more people aren’t moving to new fields, places that can’t be served by public transportation, just because it’s going to be cheaper to build there than in places that were already well served by rail.”
He put it this way: “With all the transport projects we now have to do in the agglomeration, we are really trying to follow decades of flaws or shortcomings in urban planning. sooner or later we need roads, railways, utilities, which we pay for together It is simply unsustainable, both financially and environmentally, as the Budapest urban area is proliferating. ,
there are no more greenfield dwellings in the agglomeration, and where the construction of new dwellings or houses may still be permitted, they may only be within walking distance or within easy reach of the nearest railway or heat station.
This is already the case in many regions of Western European cities. This, of course, means that there will even be condominiums around the stations, and of course, better transport options can be used to see how this can really make development more efficient. ”
He noted that the garden-city development model, which can be used exclusively by car and driven by car, is often called a “two-seater lifestyle”. Because no matter how old someone lives in an apartment building in Budapest and no matter how bad their heating system is, it is not as polluting as this two-seater lifestyle. And not just transport, because all energy and utility infrastructure is much more likely to be served by a higher population density.
According to him, it is not necessary to return everyone to Budapest, but the huge transport problems of the already established settlements must be solved with fixed track developments, learning from the process must be avoided and repetition of mistakes must be avoided.
In his view, people will be more inclined to stay in Budapest if the housing stock is adequate and livable neighborhoods are created with large green areas, good housing, not only fast-profit, fast-rotating, small rental apartments that are real estate investment products.
Opening image: Pixabay