Urban Regeneration in the Post-Socialist Context: Budapest and the Search for a Social Dimension

Based on a case study of Budapest, the authors discuss how regeneration strategies are being negotiated within post-socialist transformation contexts. Post-socialist transformation is in many ways a pronounced case of globalization and accommodation to market-driven logics of urban development. The example of regeneration strategies in Budapest highlights many of the contradictions involved in realizing socially sustainable and integrated regeneration strategies in post-socialist countries. Weak levels of state intervention, institutional fragmentation and powerful market incentives to promote speculative redevelopment tend to hinder the emergence of an affective social dimension. At the same time, the case studies presented here also provide evidence for incremental processes of learning that reflect local socio-spatial realities as well as “grander” designs of urban regeneration. This essay thus addresses processes of experimentation that are taking place in Budapest within a tense political space characterized by market-driven redevelopment, administrative fragmentation, autocratic governing styles and new multiactor approaches—partly funded by the European Union—to socially inclusive regeneration.