French ease and Hungarian bravado
Tamás Lukovich urban planner, managing director of Pro Régió
MúzeumCafé 14.
An urban planner, vice president of the Hungarian Society for Urban Planning for four periods, lecturer at the Ybl Miklós Faculty of Szent István University, and managing director of the Pro Régió Agency working on regional development in central Hungary, Ádám Sztankay is concerned with urbanistic values. His occupation involves politics, not party politics but the interests of different communities. For a long time I studied in the English-speaking world, where a sharp division between politics and profession is clear. Politicians are elected and can be withdrawn from time to time. Professionals are appointed and cannot think in terms of cycles. I’ve learnt that professionals must outline the future rational possibilities, with all their pros and cons. Although there were many unrealised plans in the ‘old regime’, conscious planning was more honoured than in the post-1989 era. For example, at an architectural conference in the 1990s an otherwise knowledgeable town leader told one of the profession’s most prominent British professors: “Planning is a communist invention.” Yet in the European Union plans are made seven years ahead. The EU forces us to adhere to a higher degree of discipline than existed in the old days. I was a post-graduate student in Sydney in 1984-85. I finished my PhD in Hungary. Then in 1989 I was asked to go back to teach in Australia and I only returned in 1994. I left a dusty, vegetating world without any dynamism and incredible changes met me on my return. In Sidney I worked in an international team and I kept telling my Dutch boss that big changes were happening in Hungary and that I should go home. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, take it easy, there will be things to do there later on, too. I was fortunate that I could learn from thinkers like Ferenc Vidor and Tamás Meggyesi, who made me understand that the right thing to do is to share with others my experience gained from trips abroad. Budapest is showing a rather sad face, though it had a good chance to become the regional focus of east-central Europe. Cultural and conference tourism would have primarily provided the opportunity for that. Look at the main roads – the boarded up shop windows, the cheap penny stores about to shut down in Rákóczi Road and Kossuth Lajos Street. The high street of any town, district or village is always the symbol of the whole community. Budapest’s main streets show neglect, though the situation is not so bad in the provinces. Budapest is our home and we love it. But in the past twenty years nothing special has happened here. The main piping under the Great Boulevard was changed using a World Bank loan, which was really aimed at postponed maintenance. Yet, not much has happened in terms of large developments or public works. The underground is being constructed – or is not at times. Apart from the Palace of Culture, basically only spectacular shopping centres have been built from private investment. Béla Hamvas wrote in his novel Carnival: “We are all in a jam and those who think they are the least affected – they are most in it.”