From Socialist Planning to Investor Urbanism.
Recent Revival of Socialism's Abandoned Renewal Plans in Budapest.
Based on the case study of a deteriorated neighborhood’s protracted redevelopment in Budapest, this talk will argue that besides the socialist period‘s built legacies, its unrealized plans have also had significant impact on shaping the post-socialist city’s development and remain perceptible until today. While neglecting areas between the historical centers and new satellites, resulting in their decay, socialist planning also provided a model for their blank slate renewal, which ironically made its revival under market conditions in the form of discontextual investor urbanism. The talk will discuss this nexus and introduce the contemporary developments as belated consequences of planning practices under state socialism.
Daniel Kiss (D.Sc. ETH Zurich and M.Arch. Harvard University) is Senior Lecturer in the Network City Landscape, ETH Zurich. His field of expertise comprises theories of urban form, strategic design, as well as the history and theory of planning with focus on the socialist and post-socialist eras. In his book, Modeling Post-Socialist Urbanization: The Case of Budapest (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2019) Daniel constructed an explanatory model of post-socialist urbanization, based on the single case study of recent urban development, planning, and governance in Budapest, Hungary. He is co-editor of Relational Theories of Urban Form (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2021), a commented anthology outlining the concept of urban form within the relational field of space and agency. Besides his academic affiliation, Daniel is founding partner of the Basel-based architecture and urban design firm XM Architekten.
Date: Tuesday, May 24 at 18:00 (CET)
Meeting-ID: 985 7640 9544 | Code: CBCTLK
© Zsolt Reviczky, 2009