Ferkai András: Housing Estates - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)
Housing Estates after 1945
■ Street from Stage II of the Káposztásmegyer Housing Development tainment and free-time facilities. It is, in essence, no less isolated of a system, incapable of change and growth, than the prefab housing estates of an earlier period. Even though the structures vainly try to copy the blocks of the city in appearance, the fine network of transitions between the private and the public domain making a real city cosy and livable has failed to evolve here. It is only their flats that the inhabitants can call their own, as they have no control over the interior spaces between the blocks, the parks or the playgrounds— which are spaces of an indeterminate status. This uncertainty of ownership is clearly indicated by the neglected appearance of these areas. "It may be more than hollow irony, ” says Péter György in his book Utánzatok városa, Budapest (Budapest, a City of Simulacra) "to point out the hact that the only part of the housing estate that has escaped the total failure ofi state socialism are the gardens belonging to the terraced houses. Here, as well as anywhere else in Budapest, the inhabitants refase to take care oh anything that they do not know, beyond doubt, to be their own.'' In Péter György’s interpretation, the pavilions selling cheap gadgets, the garish-looking cafés and pizza parlours are means of escape from the hopeless world of the housing estate and as such can be regarded as some sort of counter-simulacra. It is to be noted that the ten years following the publication of György's book have brought some promising developments. The first privately-financed ice-rink of Hungary was built in Ká- posztásmegyer, and a row of office blocks and individually-designed condominiums were built on the neighbouring lot. Could spontaneous change breathe new life into the housing estate? 76
