Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Documents
h. the construction of roads, streets, squares and recreational areas; i. the public lighting of roads, streets, squares and recreational areas. Section 18. A Committee of Public Building shall be elected in the cities of Pest and Buda, by the respective General Assemblies. Section 21. The decisions of the respective municipal councils and General Assemblies passed upon the motion of the Committee of public building shall be submitted in each case under Section 17 to the Municipal Board of Public Works before implementation, and shall be immediately returned following the approval of the Board, to the city in question for implementation. In the event, however, of differences of opinion the Board shall submit the files to the Minister of the Interior for final decision. Section 22. Until the development plan for the capital is definitively determined, and all building questions are regulated by law: the public building committees of the two cities shall in every respect follow the development plans, principles and instructions laid down in general by the Municipal Board of Public Works. Section 26. The cost of the work projects outlined in Section 17 of this Act, and the cost of other public building in the two cities, shall be met by the two cities as before, and each city shall allocate at least 50 per cent of the regular revenue in the annual budget for this purpose, at an average which agrees with the percentage of their regular revenue expended on similar purposes in the two cities in the last year 1869. Magyar Törvénytár 1869-1871 [Collection of the Acts of Hungarian Parliament], Budapest, 1896, pp. 112-127. X Excerpts from the Ministerial Preamble to the Budapest Municipality Act November 19th, 1871 The Hungarian state stands in need of a centre, which should serve as a real focus for its interests and their principal support and promoter which should worthily represent the ideal of Hungarian statehood, and should exert an irresistible force of attraction on both the intellectual and material sectors of the country, in the interests of national development. This centre is a great capital, uniformly organized on an overall basis in its constituent sections, continuously gathering to itself the most effective means of advancing the intellectual and material development of the nation. By an appropriate organization and management of municipal institutions it should at the same time develop into a pleasant and wellordered meeting-place for true cultural and refined social enjoyment. 93
