Large-scale restructuring processes in the urban space of Budapest

organisation, called Ráday Arts Council, was set up with the leadership of the manager of thebookstore. After the privatisation of the former state owned pawn-office, whose central unit operatedin a neighbouring street, also art galleries emerged in Ráday Street. The District Governmentexercised also some “fine” pressure on the tenants of the local government owned retail spaces byreminding them that the novation of leases would depend on the improved operation of the premises.As a result of all these the composition of the tenants substantially changed, the majority of theprevious uses not fitting to the improved environment vanished from Ráday Street. The street wasconverted into a “culinary street” fast surpassing in attractiveness the high street of Budapest, theVáci Street in the Downtown. An umbrella organisation called Ráday Soho Entertainment andCultural Association was set up that adopted also an “ethical code” including the expected behaviourof the restaurant and coffee-house operators. In order to minimise disturbances to the inhabitants ofthe street the number of noisy cultural programs were limited to eight in summer week ends. Theproject became a real success story, with the only reservation made by people of the culturalcommunity criticising that culinary functions tend to push art and culture into the background.Source: unpublished research material to the Department of Regional Development and Building, BudapestUniversity of Technology and Economics (Locsmándi – Szabó – Alföldi, 2008.)Two new “culinary” places in Budapest: Ráday Street and Liszt Ferenc SquareTransformations of the character of other streets well reflect the changes in their wider area. InLipótváros, where the strengthening of CBD functions is the most significant process (chapter 3.1)elite restaurants and pubs are opened serving employees of the old and new offices and thegovernmental officials too. On the other hand in the lower status residential areas the proliferation ofsmall private shops, groceries, is observable that serve, together with the various Hungarian andinternational retails chains, the lower middle class people.Along the outer sections of the main radial roads the functional transformations has fundamentallychanged the traditional cityscape: single family houses, villas along the streets are being converted toprivate retail and commercial facilities together with similar new developments. The “architecturaldegradation” of these streets induced the consultant planners of the Development Strategy of Budapestto include the “rehabilitation” of the axial roads as a prime urban renewal program of the city. (Thisprogram was later abolished.)4.4 Some successful brown-field conversions within high status residential areasIn the course of industrialisation of Budapest it was a frequent process that some industrial sites thatsettled down and grew relatively early were later encircled by the spreading residential areas. If theseindustries were located along the main development axles of Budapest, their conversion to residentialareas started as early as in the 1930s (for instance in Újlipótváros). As discussed in chapter 3.2restructuring processes in these ecological sectors were speeded up after the economic/politicalchanges.A special case has been the fate of those larger industrial sites that settled down in Buda, where theconversion of the vineyard areas into summer residence and family villas districts started in the end ofthe 19 th century when the filoxera disease exterminated viticulture. Under the socialistic era, despite26