Sarah Ben Salem

Making cities more liveable and adapted to environmental conditions is more and more brought to the fore. In cities with strong historical identities, city enhancement is very challenging because of many reasons, such as keeping the authenticity of the inherited patrimony and the vulnerability of the heritage while intervening in its immediate environment. Since the last two centuries, Budapest and Vienna have faced radical urban growth and transformations around their Medieval walls. In this research, we study the development of the Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) in the two Central-Eastern European cities. Various reasons can justify a comparative study between the two towns; both resemble their geomorphological and climatological characteristics, and the Danube river flows in both cities. In addition to that, they were unified during the Austro-Hungarian empire. However, in the post-World Wars period, they have had a different development process after the separation of Austria and Hungary by their Iron Curtain.

Due to their authentic urban and architectural character, the Medinas of Tunis and Marrakesh became listed among the United Nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (UNESCO) heritage sites in 1979 and 1985, respectively. Nowadays, the urbanization of the surrounding green areas and the climate change impacts on cities are degrading the Medinas’ livability and their characteristic heritage. On the other hand, scientific knowledge and data about the green system in the dense urban cores of Medinas in the Maghreb region is still not a widely apprehended theme in the scientific domain. This research objective is to initiate nature-based and sustainable solutions in these cities by demonstrating the application of the urban green infrastructure (UGI) approach. As a research methodology, an analysis of the historical green system development in the Medinas is given to highlight their tangible and intangible values. The analysis goes over three periods: first, the
medieval Islamic era, then the modern period during the French colony, and the contemporary city as a unique urban landscape. Finally, the study proposes a design guideline to prove the applicability of the UGI in the given historical morphologies by implementing the retained historical values of the historic green heritage in Medinas and the aspects of the site.

Arts are the main human expression encouraging man to expose his practices, ideas, and fears. This in turn affects and shapes his environment, an environment which keeps evolving into cities. Nowadays, human expression through art is playing a major role in the development of the urban landscape by shifting the old-fashioned paradigms of the rigid and static urban structuring and development, especially with the new urban trends floating on the surface. The case study of the Medina of Tunis is a paradigmatic example that illustrates the bottom-up approach of social participation in urban life through art. The research question asked here is to what extent has the artistic practices been influencing the urban development of the city's user experience? Can this be regarded as a necessary tool for the regeneration of the historical urban landscape? First, a general overview of urban development and the influence of the artistic practices have been presented. Issues such as urban transformation are highlighted. The second part exposes specific examples of artistic manifestations influencing public spaces and urban life in the studied example of the Medina of Tunis. The next step is about elaborating the main examples in their context in the form of case studies. The analysis of these case studies directs towards the outcomes and conclusions regarding the impact of artistic practices in changing the way a city is perceived, used and designed.

In the last thirty years, a vast literature has been compiled on the legacy of socialist architectural heritage and its evaluation after the fall of the regimes. The researchers of post-socialist urban transformation often select for their analysis clear cases like a whole town built or re-built under socialism, or focus on full-scale cultural and administration districts created on the site of earlier ones or placed near to the old, historic core as an alternative, representing a new era.1 Such examples of new socialist cities or new city centres have been described and analysed in the case of Hungary as well.2 However, Budapest, the Hungarian capitol, was spared radical interventions, at least in its city centre. Right after the war, the participants of an architectural competition intended, in the spirit of a new beginning, to remove all the buildings left standing after bombardment along the banks of the Danube and replace them with free-standing modern blocks. This plan was never realised, because of the lack of money.3 The few new buildings erected in the inner city between 1945 and 1960 – functioning mainly as offices – were built on infill plots, meaning that they were usually not visually striking but were surely expensive.4 A deliberate and programmatic development of the inner city started only after 1960 when the master plan of Budapest was finally accepted, in parallel with the political consolidation following the failed 1956 revolution.

Since the turn of the millennium, Budapest city walking tours have become increasingly popular. Against the reach offer, we can’t find any tour that touches the built heritage of the socialist period. The only exceptional tour leads the visitors to memorials, statues and politically relevant places and tells shocking stories about the communist years of the 1950s. To analyse this architectural amnesia, we follow a proposed touristic route along the historic city centre, which was not untouched by socialist building activity. Several of these buildings – typically infill projects – were highly appreciated by contemporaries and were featured in architectural guides of the 1970s but even in the 1990s. We assess and evaluate the state of these buildings and discover their stories. We look for the reasons why many buildings which were characterized by highly appreciated architectural values in the 1970s and 1980s, have been either demolished or rebuilt. Can this be regarded as the necessary loss due to the progress or is it the revaluation of a period sentenced to oblivion? Did these buildings lose their tangible or intangible value? We conclude, that behind the underestimation of the socialist building heritage we find practical, financial and political reasons. In most cases, the organisation behind a community or office building dissolved and the expensive city centre plot was sold for a commercial enterprise, which demanded a relevant layout and an up-to-date outlook. These changes were celebrated by the press and the profession both and appreciated as progress. However, there is one special case, when the architects and historians successfully demonstrated against the transformation of an office building of the 1960s. In the background, we assume the high professional appreciation of the architect and the activity of his dedicated former colleagues.

Keywords: city centre, socialist building heritage, collective memory

With 2019 marking three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989-2019) and the collapse of state-socialism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the team at the “Urban Morphosis Lab” research group decided to utilize this unique opportunity to reflect and discuss on the ways in which the processes and outcomes of post-socialist transition have impacted the built environment of the CEE cities. That thought led us to organise the inaugural International Conference on Cities and Change, with the focus being on topics related to restructuring of planning and design frameworks, infrastructure, architecture, and urban space in CEE context. After receiving more than 125 abstracts from across Europe, the conference brought together leading academics, researchers and practitioners in fifteen sessions, who discussed the major factors that guided this process, such as–the shift to neoliberal system of urban governance and planning; strategic and innovative urban development approaches and practices for adapting to socio-political change; democratization of planning and design practices; privatization and commodification of urban spaces; globalization and diversification of urban culture; and transformation of urban memory, heritage and identity. Through these insights and debates, the conference increased the diversity of geographic perspectives in research on urban transformation, brought forth the spatial dimensions of transitioning processes, and, finally, produced new empirical insights, theoretical concepts and analytical methods for better understanding the complexity of the processes of urban change in wider international contexts.

The cultural heritage is presented in different, physical and non-tangible forms and attributes. Cities of the middle age are a glorious testimony and a singular trace of a specific architectural vocabulary, and also, an urban and social networking reflecting a particular way of living of the previous civilizations.
The Medina (old Arabic city) of Tunis is a city which flourished in North Africa since the 8th century. Until the present days, it is a place of living and attracting tourists coming from all around the world to experience the Arabic spirit and atmosphere in its alleys and streets. However, located in the heart centre of the Tunisian capital, the Medina had to endure the negative aspects of the urban growth pressure. This problem has become steadily more critical since the implantation of the modern city during the French colonization.
The objective of the paper is to present the rehabilitation project of the Medina of Tunis, which was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1979. We will analyse the interaction between the tangible and intangible values of a city, from the one side, and the social needs and practices, from the other side, starting from a global context to the particular case of the Arabic Islamic city of the Medina. In addition to that, we will evaluate if the social implication and participation are taken into consideration in the main urban projects and interventions in the city.
As a conclusion, we will suggest a reflection of how to consider the different tangibles and intangibles parameters of the city and involving the social groups to preserve the city’s identity and respond to its users’ needs.

Due to the fast growth of cities population and the climate change challenges the world is facing nowadays, Sustainability has become a sensitive openly discussed issue. Specialists and stakeholders are facing numerous contemporary challenges concerning heat island effects and several social issues. Therefore, one of the most efficient applied strategies is urban parks as they play an essential tangible role in city structure as they develop positive impacts on the urban structure, environment and heat island. Moreover, they play an essential role in the transmission and contribution of intangibles such as culture, heritage, recreation, natural environment. This paper will discuss the role of urban parks in reaching an ecological and social balance in urban domains.

The Budapest Inner City along the Danube was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, while the rest of the territory belongs to the protection zone. The Southern part, which kept the medieval and 19th-century structure the most, was recently almost devoted to foreign visitors.
The paper's objective is to discover the still existing facilities and capabilities inherent in this territory serving as a basis to create a civic and gathering place after the pandemic. The research is based on two approaches. Following the methods developed by Jan Gehl, we analyse the existing possibilities for public life: the quiet places, free benches, green infrastructure, and services for the inhabitants. Following the mapping methods of Kim Dovey, we analyse the intensity of cultural possibilities offered for the citizens: universities, cultural hubs and meeting points for people with lower incomes.