Budapest’s fragmented riverfront renewal: Western trends interspersed with post-socialist characteristics

Abstract

Although waterfront regeneration has stood in the forefront of the urban development of economically developed countries for several decades, and global peripheries have also (re)discovered their reusable waterfronts since the turn of the millennia, post-socialist urban geography has turned to this topic only recently. The remarkable length of the Danube riverside in Budapest also lends itself for a case study. Therefore, in order to fill this research gap, this paper aims to place the transformation of Budapest’s riverfront brownfields in the broader context of international trends. It examines local processes vis-à-vis the global diffusion of waterfront regeneration, with particular emphasis on the generations of waterfronts. Subsequently, it applies the cyclic model of dereliction and revitalization on the example of Budapest, along with a functional categorization. In addition to these, the concept of ‘bluefields’ is brought into the discussion as well. Since the renewal of Budapest’s riverfronts is rather heterogenous, the paper also intends to refine the overall picture of their transformation by providing a concise description of various pieces of this mosaic. In doing so, post-socialist circumstances and local specificities are taken into consideration simultaneously.

Keywords

• Budapest
• post-socialist city
• waterfront/riverfront