Proposals, solutions to be implemented for a better urban renewal agenda in East Central Europe

Krisztina Keresztély, 2016

This proposal sheet focuses on three main issues that arise from the analysis and description of urban renewal policies in East Central Europe. First of all, the need of a further reflection on the specificities of CEE countries and the need of conceiving adapted policies. Secondly, the coherence and coordination between multilateral, national and local policies and projects. The third issue concerns the nature of civil participation and the need to empower civil societies.

The general analysis of East-Central European urban renewal as presented in the analysis sheet is only a first step at the moment. There are still a limited number of comparative studies and evaluations of concrete local practices. Therefore, it is still difficult to draw the main lines of an Eastern European paradigm of urban renewal.

Once this paradigm has been defined, another important challenge must be tackled by experts: what conclusion should be drawn from the Eastern European experience? Should we continue to analyse the specificities of this region based on a comparative approach vis-à-vis of Western European experiences? In what measure should we continue to focus on ‘weaknesses’ and ‘strengths’ in order to catch up with the experiences of more developed regions, and in what measure should we think about innovative practices to be undertaken and improved in the light of local conditions?

Yet the above reflections on the phases and specificities of CEE urban renewal have indicated several clear courses of action for a better functioning of our systems. These are of course ongoing questions that experts, practitioners and simple citizens have been facing since the early years of the political transition.

Urban renewal policies need to be at least partly disconnected from the ‘hegemony’ of European funds (see the analysis sheet on European challenges). Even if the majority of financing will of course continue to depend on EU programming, the embeddedness of these programs on the local level has to be ensured by the development of real integrated housing and urban policies – on the local as well as on the national levels. Of course, the adoption of national level urban policies should definitely not mean any concentration of funding and competencies in decision making. It is time to launch collective reflection on urban development in these countries. Otherwise the case of Hungary, where urban development and especially the development of the capital city has increasingly become the object of one-sided political decisions, may become an example for the whole region…

Civil participation programs should be reinforced in all segments of urban development. Participative planning or community building processes are currently only included in neighbourhood-level development in the case of European funded projects, where integration of local stakeholders is regarded as the core element of urban renewal. Participatory elements still need stronger assessment concerning their character, results, number of people involved, decisions made and how the program implements these decisions, etc. The case studies presented in this dossier show that public participation is sometimes very limited and superficial.

Civil society needs to be empowered, among other things, by knowledge. People in this part of Europe are definitely not used to intervening in public decisions, and they will certainly not change their feelings concerning their role in society for many years to come. They need to be trained, to understand their competencies, the possible strategies they can choose, their rights to obtain information, the organisations and other civil and public bodies they can turn to for support, etc. Politician – and also inhabitants – need to increase their capacity for dialogue and awareness of public responsibility. This is also an element that has few historical roots in this part of Europe.

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