Notes on a Street in Transition
As Jane Jacobs pointed out quite a few years ago, a street can be more than simply a pipeline transmitting people or things from one place to the next: in fact in the most dynamic situations it is an organic entity which can either thrive or wither away. In this context the urban street is not that far removed from from the trading routes or trails borne from the wilderness as humanity’s isolated communities intermingled, fought, traded and evolved into modern metropolises.
Urbanists, planners, sociologists and city dwellers have argued relentlessly about the qualities that make one street resilient and alive and another moribund and desolate. Searching for some magical ingredient to inject into the life blood of a city’s atrophying elements they invent panaceas that inadequately consider the urban totality and the dimensions of human nature: its necessities or whims.
Frank Sinatra sung about ‘State Street, that great street’ in a paean to Chicago, yet in the closing decades of the twentieth century State Street was a corpse on life support; it was turned into a pedestrian zone and, when that didn’t work, revamped and returned to the holler of autos and buses that traversed downtown The planners futilely sought to revive the once majestic thoroughfare. Located in the city’s commercial centre, it lay dormant after six o’clock when its vitality was drained away as people returned to other neighbourhoods and the suburbs.
Király utca (King Street) is a ubiquitous thoroughfare throughout Hungary and is often one of some significance. In Budapest there are two. One is located a block from where I live and separates the VIth and VIIth districts, both of which are vital elements in the city’s centre. Two trolley routes cover its distance. Under different names and guises it runs from City Park to Deak Ferenc Square; as a boulevard it contains many stately villas, important churches, embassies and offices. As Király utca proper it is a mixture of high density apartment buildings with street level commercial spaces. Consequently, it harbours a high level of pedestrian traffic.
Király utca in Pécs is one-half of a mostly pedestrian street that runs from one end of the city ring to the other. At mid-point is the Szechenyi Square. When I arrived in Pécs in October of last year the easterly end of the street, along with the Square, were undergoing massive changes. All part of city wide construction and rejuvenation processes brought about as a result of the city’s designation as a Cultural Capital of Europe. Anchored by MacDonalds and a four star hotel, the western end of the street was virtually untouched; although just beyond the fences the virtually non-stop construction work was ominously present.
