Budapest 2050

Text: György Alföldi

Józsefváros, Budapest, 2004, Source: Municipality of Józsefvárosi

In my essay I am trying to anticipate what Budapest is going to be like in 2050, how life going on in the capital city influences and has influenced the changes in the man-made environment in the future and the past. Within the framework of the Faculty of Architecture, BME (Budapest Technical University) conducted interdisciplinary research between 2010 and 2012, which was the starting point of the first publication of the topic. As a follow-up of this thought, I went on to write my habilitation dissertation in 2015. My ideas focus on the essence of cities, as well as the laws their transformations reveal and the correlations between its systems that can or cannot be planned in advance. I am in search of a model which is able to tackle the spatial changes derived from and generated by the mutual influences that co-existing society and economy exert on each other.