Late-modern Landscape Architectural Heritage – Budapest’s Jubilee Park at 50 Years

Abstract

The urban development of Budapest between 1950 and 1980 resulted in a capital region with a population of two million, partially because of the Great Budapest concept of the previous decade, in which first just small housing units and from the seventies intensive housing estates led by industrial technology were developed to ease a tremendous housing shortage. During the housing estate developments, a new urban design notion and regulation tool, the so-called ‘normative green surface supply’, was introduced which produced large, connected green surfaces within the housing estate developments. These often took the form of local parks and public gardens. But on the other hand, the city accomplished very little in building new city parks. According to landscape architects who practiced during this time, 75-80% of the projects were related to housing estate green spaces. Besides the existing historical parks of Budapest (Margaret Island, City Park, People's Park), only two new parks were built in those decades, both on the Buda side of the Danube; in the 1960s Jubileum (Jubilee) Park and Taban at the Gellért Hill, and in the 70s the Shipyard Island Park on a Danube island. In spite of the large green surfaces created during the second half of the 20th century, Budapest is still considered as lacking in adequate amounts of green space for a European capital.