What Will Happen to Budapest's 'Ruin Pubs' Once All the Ruin Is Removed?

Szimpla in the Budapest Jewish Quarter

BUDAPEST, Hungary -- The two-story building at 14 Kazinczy Utca isn’t much to look at. Some of its windows have been boarded up and a thick layer of dirt and grime has settled into the crumbling facade. A collection of potted plants sits on a balcony overlooking the street while a bright yellow sign hangs in a doorway below.

You wouldn’t know it from the outside, but this is one of the most popular places to be in Budapest, at least on a Friday or Saturday night.

Push past the front door and a dimly-lit hallway leads to a large, open-air courtyard. Colorful lights strung together with furniture and a bicycle or two hang suspended in the air above and scenes from a black-and-white movie are projected onto the back wall. Off to the side sits an old Trabant, a type of car made in East Germany during the Cold War. The courtyard opens onto a maze of rooms, each decorated differently. In one, ancient-looking computer monitors and television sets are mounted to the walls. In another, a bathtub has been split in half and converted into a makeshift seating area.

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Placemaking and the City

Cities are back in fashion; on television (Sex in the City), in music (with ‘urban’ now the codeword for black, popular and rhythmic), in architecture (where density generates the most rewarding opportunities), among international agencies (seeking ways of managing post-Fordist and post-industrial societies), and within the planning establishment (with the reversal of ideas on the uses of the city). One of the most important issues facing planning at the beginning of the twenty-first century is how to revitalise cities. Today, cities are seen as assets rather than liabilities. Their role as engines of economic growth is widely accepted and their spheres of influence the city is becoming recognised as fundamental building blocks in the national fabric.

Bench Bombing in Philly

One simple way to transform public space

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