Danube Main Street project
The Main Street Danube Programme seeks to answer the issue how Budapest can utilise the Danube, how it can integrate the river into the city’s urban structure in order to strengthen Budapest’s unique “name-card” by transmitting a metropolitan vision to the world. The purpose of the programme is that Budapest should make good use of its natural “main street”, the Danube, which constitutes a link, based on which more efficient harmonisation can be established between the various development ideas, visions of the towns on the Danube and around the capital city. These will serve the individual and common ideas and objectives in the framework of turning into a metropolis region. In this context, the capital city and the Danube is more than a sum of inner-city embankments. It is a spacious region expanding in all directions – covering a large area similar in scope to the Lake Balaton.
The objective of repositioning is that the capital city shall function not only as the economic engine of the country but as a key area of a European urban city network - as a Gateway city to the South-Eastern European region. The Danube is a tool to attain these objectives. Through its international and interregional role and positioning, Budapest shall become an initiator in creating the local and institutional frames of the Danube region. Budapest may become the home of intercultural dialogue, the headquarters of its management – the “network-governance” that strengthens the Danube Region and its socially and economically sustainable development.
What makes it topical?
The saying that “crisis means opportunity” is often said these days. This statement is especially relevant for Budapest: after 20 years of change, the city is bombarded with internal and external new energies and impulses: international development programmes (European Danube Region Strategy, Fifth Corridor Partnership). A number of development projects of the network economy put a pressure on the city borders. The big question is the way in which Budapest – its citizens and network of institutions, its economic players, - and we ourselves can relate to the “tectonic” movements. What are the visions for the future decades in Budapest? What are our priorities? How can we capitalise on our major public resources, primarily on the Danube – and how can we make profit of our excellent assets? One thing is certain: Budapest must awake from her ”dream of Cinderella” – in order to join the unavoidable task of becoming a European metropolis and to meet the challenge of a common, bottom-up, long-term planning task. In the constantly changing and expanding Europe, the emerging new approach of regional reasoning gains an increasing support. This approach does not follow the traditional institutional patterns – much rather, it discovers a new map – reflecting on even more traditional natural assets and resources. The Danube is such an organic power centre, – it is one, which can be integrated into Budapest’s own vision of future. If that happens, this city may become Europe’s key connection – to itself.
The Main Street Danube Project deals with the future development opportunities of the Danube. Its approach is not a series of sector-based plans, but the application of structure-planning, as a management tool for involving various professional and citizens’ groups and the participants of the plan’s realisation.
The essence of the Main Street Danube planning project is that it starts off with a programming phase, which determines those principles, values, which must be followed at the later stages of planning. This abstract and participative (socialised) phase is followed by the elaboration of a Master plan and a Structure Plan, which put abstract considerations into space. This preliminary Structure Plan serves as the basis for engineer planning. This phase is the transitional one between social and investment plans – and it is supplemented by a financial and engineering feasibility study. The decisions based on these documents are followed by a deeper, targeted and detailed operative planning. Parallel to the programming procedures, a tendering (including the level of engineering) may also be drafted, reflecting the statements of the Preliminary Structure Plan.
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