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Saturday 21 May 2016

Community Forum - Ferenc tér

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE PUBLIC DISCUSSION IN FERENC TÉR, LED BY CITY COUNCIL OFFICIALS AND ATTENDED BY THE LOCAL PUBLIC


We have to be able to talk to each other.

Some alterations are happening to be made.
More effective communication.
And action-sqad would be nice.


I have to say, that some people, I don't want to bother your sensitivity but  you all know what I am talking about, right? Yes, so certain people are doing certain things in this park that is – as we all know....
Oh indeed, we understand what you mean!

But to put it clear, I want to say it out: drugs. Drug addicts are singing all night long.

And the dogs are doing their dog-things everywhere. 
Dog-owners and dogs doing their dog-things.

This is fake democracy.

My grandfather was a very famous kinologist – which means: dog-expert.
That's how I learned basically everything about the nature of all kinds of dogs.
So on behalf of my famous grandfather i can tell you: dog-shit is smelly.

The problem is that we lost the RESPECT for each other.

And also the dogs.

And the littering.

Yes.

But there are no drug addicts any more. 
We successfully expelled them.

But what should be done by us, civilians if we see unwanted activity taking place in the park?

Call the police.
It's their duty.
Here is the phone number.

It took 2 hours for them to arrive last time I called them. 
Why is that?
 Why? Why? Why?
Why can't this discussion be more constructive?

And also to respond to the previous question:
some alterations on that field are taking place in the system.
And also: you all should know how expensive it is to guard a park.
We have to employ a person for that job.
And that goes from your tax money.

I would just grab them myself and then call the police.

Or maybe just tell them to stop their misbehaviour?
That is a very simple act, no?
 
I tried it and I don't recommend it,
as I got hurt, you know?

I think, we all can agree now.

Yes, we must say, that strict, new rules are going to take place in this park.

I can promise, that a very strict regulation will be made. That's why we are here, to make it together: this strict, new regulation of the park.

But where is the old regulation? 
I can't see it nowhere.
What's written in it? 
 Smoking is prohibited
Dog-walking is prohibited

But here are the people – smoking and walking their dogs? 
How did that happen? Why didn't we recognise this earlier?

Let's file a report on those illegal activities RIGHT NOW.
Who is smoking? You will get fined.
Smoking is prohibited as you all can hear now.

Very good.
No, there was no information provided.
And there are ashtrays everywhere.


I wanted this discussion to be about the future, not the past. 

 People... they are just like that.

THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE DISCUSSION




Observing a 'seemingly-functioning-park' under construction

Park

Cars, taxies, motors, bikes, strollers, drive by
“Cobblestone surface is not ‘child friendly’ so it should all be replaced by concrete”
Sun is shining
Birds sing
UFO is still present
The bins are super full…. Something must have happened here last night
Park is 75 Bart-steps wide
Park is 130 Bart-steps long
Atmosphere in the park is relaxed

Human behaviour

Male person freshens up at public water facility and coughs a lot
Kids who carried the chairs for the public meeting make fun of him by imitating the coughing
Another local brings his own chair
City council official opens by asking the male attendees to get the chairs and put them so everybody can sit.
The forum-setting is staged in the park using ‘indoor’ furniture
Cripple woman comes walking in straight line over the grass to join the meeting
Super big guy in black carrying his newly bought bread stopping at the talk… listens and walks on leaving the park on the opposite side.
Male person is feeding the doves from a bench away from the gathering as if nothing is happening
People come and go some of them in sports outfit
A male person in the audience takes the mic, being the first responder
Neighbour listens to the talks from his fourth floor apartment listening with his hands behind his ears
Older man is reading the newspaper in the shade…. Away from the gathering
5 dogs and their owners are present in the audience
A little princess passes by together with her Asian-like parents
More and more people from the audience start responding to the city council information and one and other
Guards walk up to a group (Pitbull and owner, girlfriend and three friends) since the talk and laugh to loud…. Almost annoying the meeting…
Mountain bikes cross the park
Mobile rings and is being answered
Camera men comes in to shoot the forum situ
Construction men and excavator have left…... it is Saturday
Pitbull and owner are still at the bench

Nature

A garden of ‘wild looking’ plants will be realised
2 persons imitating dove sounds
grass in the park is higher than average
grass on none gentrified area site is of less quality then on the other site
several birds fly over

Photos of first visit


The cover of the gasstorage, don't come closer than five meters, but a bench is placed at two metres


A fitness tool? A children's game?

Interior of the pavillion



Some remmants of a open air bedroom 
Elephant path, no elephant will ever walk on

FIABCI Prix d'Exellence

FIABCI is the "International Real Estate Estate Federation". They award annual prizes, which they describe themselves as "the FIABCI Prix d'Excellence rewards overall merit and not just aesthetics, functionality or size. The 2015 award was given to Ferencvaros. See the clip:


Branding? Simplification?


Quotes from an article I liked a lot. What if all of citizen efforts in contributing to a better public space are turned around [you might want to call it re-hacking] by those with access to tools of dissemination and control are bluntly used for placemaking and it's ultimate consequence: citybranding?

"The point is that the over-simplified, univocal and hegemonic representations at the basis of city branding leave little room for pluralism, reflexivity and multiple gazes." 

See more at: Amateur Cities - a great site, anyways.


If, as the new slogan for Budapest is apparently being developed as you read this, a slogan is dubbed, the matrix of consequences starts unravelling and countering the ensuing narrative is a tough job. With the new slogan for Budapest 'the city that unites', a open strategy seems to follow. However, practicalities on the 'floor' prevent homeless people from sleeping in parks, but do welcome English stag parties dwelling around the city. Prevent poor people to live in their original neighbourhoods but pressure them to accept a sum of money and make way for the gentrification agents. Once you are no longer part of an 'uniting' force, you are ever more excluded from this unification process. As always, unifying some means excluding others.

Click here for an update on the branding strategy.


The street-fixing issues of Ferenc tér

Jarokelo.hu is a website and mobile app that allows people to report street issues such as potholes, broken street lights etc. in the city. We have collected and presented below the issues reported at Ferenc tér.

Photo by: László Nagy


The local government designed it, but how can locals use it?

A pain point on the square have become the playful and innovative fountain statues that have not been working for a while, and urban decay started. In 2013 Jarokelo users complained about the state of the blue and white "whale". The local government promised the renovation of the statues but according to commenters on the site neither 2014, nor 2015 brought any work done. In 2015 the local government replied to a report that the water installation/fountain had to be cordoned off from public because people have started to climb on them and, slide down. Eventually, the municipality opened a competition for the best ideas to re-design the square and solve these problems.

Hello Bubi!

In 2015 BKK, the Budapest public transportation authority commissioned the construction of a Bubi bike-sharing station in Ferenc tér. Locals did notice the change, and asked for updating street signs accordingly. They even reported when cars parked on the area of the station, generating a long thread - the issue was closed as unsolved by Jarokelo administrators. Street signs facing wrong directions because of a large car passing by chose the wrong route, or because of people who chose to vandalize the signs are issues often reported by locals who use the streets everyday.

How about cars in the neighbourhood?

Parking space is also a heated debate in Budapest. Ferenc tér is not excluded from this discussion, locals report people who try to leave their cars in forbidden spaces, or half parked on the pavement, some found it important to ask for the replacement of the green metal posts that block cars from parking on the sidewalk mentioning that some of these limiting urban objects (often called Demszky-karó in Hungarian, named after Budapest’s former liberal party delegate mayor) can be easily removed for the night. 

The owner of Vekni (the bakery/grocery on the corner) was accused of asking the municipality to reduce the locals' parking lots by asking for trees in containers to be placed in front of her shop in order to reduce traffic. This is what one can read on the report's thread: she got into a discussion with someone also living in Ferenc tér who found her post on the site, and commented on it.

There are abandoned cars as well that occupy free space in the city, there was an abandoned white car that had to be removed in 2014.

Animals in Ferencváros

A common problem in urban environments is the large amount of pigeon dropping where the birds like to stay either because they like the built environment, or because locals feed them. According to an official reply to an early Jarokelo report about this, these pigeon’s are the close relatives to messenger pigeons, meaning that it is very hard to chase them away because they always find their way back. They are also smart and very curious animals.

Plants in Ferenc tér

You wonder how do people feel about green areas in the city, do they want more, do they like trees and flowers? Often they report the appearance of small grass among the cracks of pavement, or they ask for the removal of weed. Another solution to the neverending parking problem is to place trees in large containers in the way of cars. These objects can easily be avoided by pedestrians, and can block the cars from parking “in a nice way”.

Dumping your waste anywhere is just plain common

A common problem among cities, and neighbourhoods in Hungary is the illegal dumping of waste that couldn’t fit in the household waste-management subscription. People often dump their household waste in public spaces such as forests, or in parks near waste bins, probably assuming that it won’t stay there for long because the local government will want to make sure the neighbourhood is nice and clean so the waste will soon be removed.

Missing pieces

Pedestrians notice a lot more details than people rushing in cars, or on bikes. They even report the missing pieces of storm sewers because they can start being filled up with general waste, and actually they can be dangerous for pedestrians too.

And only as a pedestrian will you notice the missing pieces from a speed bump, because you stand on the pavement, and can observe that a bump was hacked at Ferenc tér to allow cars to pass by as fast as they can.
A video posted by Jarokelo.hu (@jarokelo) on

example in Budapest.......


How things can be done through collective designing..... lets dream and be playful and speculate with les Maitres du temps in our mind.......what DO you dream for Ferenc tér

Wednesday 18 May 2016

Green Park and the constant re-evaluation of modes of spatial organisation

Greek Park is a on going 'occupation' project of the Pedion Tou Areos park in Athens.



What started as a 10 days intervention project has now become an explorative platform of spatial organisation through the implementation of cultural activities and neighbourhood assemblies.






































Bellow there's an abstract by Ben Davis featured at the October 2015 issue of Frieze Magazine.



















Struggle for everyday and the construction of a neighbourhood

Thinking on parks, revitalization processes and local agency, the publication STRUGGLE FOR EVERYDAY - THE EXAMPLE OF FIFTH PARK comes to mind. 
The book is a reflective look on the 5 years of local struggle regarding the Fifth Park in Belgrade, including  texts among others  by Dubravka Sekulić  - residency artist in Unmaking The Netherlands. 

Apart from an elaborate mapping of tactics used by the neighborhood to defend Fifth Park, there is also a brief mention on the ideas and desires that formed this temporary collective – namely a common cause against  corporate forces that sought to build a business complex on top of the park. 
There was a local agency emerging out of an eminent ‘catastrophe’ (distraction of the park) that mobilised the residents but it has proven( as the publication briefly describes) most challenging to maintain that collective drive once the park was secured. 

















On the frame of Ferenc tér it is interesting to think on ways to activate local agency, especially where the concept of the ‘catastrophe’ is not evidently present. 
As in most cases it is much easier to know what we don’t want and much much more complex to figure out and act upon collectively on an alternative – a counter narrative of what already exists. Maybe the idea of the ‘catastrophe’ – a possible or even impossible dystopia could function as a driving force for local collective and sustainable re-activation of the park. 


Check HERE the publication and watch bellow Dubravka’s talk on our Unmaking The Netherlands program. 


Tuesday 17 May 2016

Play

Against all of those pushing us into small definitions of "homo economicus" or "slaves of the system", or any definition which prevents the freedom of our minds, one great fact can be brought into discussion. Man likes to play. Likes to create. Likes to do things because it is just nice to do things. Like animals, as we are, do. Have you ever seen kittens play in a garden? Exactly.















Well, in a great essay David Graeber wrote about this idea of play. It is an idea we treasure at Expodium. Therefore one of the pillars in a program we run in our hometown is called play. Since, as Graeber puts it: "What's the point, if we can't have fun?"

Hackable City

Open data seem to be the wondrous tool for the 21st century. With everybody connecting to everything, and everything to everything to build the internet of things, great things are possible, so some claim. Others are convinced that would the realization of Orwell's biggest nightmares. They yell: "1984 was a dystopian novel, not a manual."















Evgeny Morozov is one of the most fierce tech critics around these days, see him talk about the dangers of the internet of things in a lecture last year. Others see the future as less pre-designed and more open to democratic processes. Not doing away with all dangers, but trusting humans to make smart decisions for themselves, they believe we can deal with the technology of tomorrow. A great example of this latter school are the thinkers and designers behind this great publication [download link]. As the team writes in their introduction: "The project investigates the opportunities of digital media technologies for the empowerment of citizens and other stakeholders in a democratic process of citymaking. It also explores the shift in roles of and relationships between governments, (design) professionals and citizens in this process."

Monday 16 May 2016

High Rise

British science fiction writer HG Ballard predicted many of our times' strange characteristics. In his dystopian novel High Rise he wrote about the lives of English bourgeois tenants in a flat where all spontaneity has disappeared and keeping up appearances has become the norm. Until... something happens and the High Rise becomes a battlefield.




















Last year a filmmaker went on to do what filmmakers do: making a movie. See the trailer here. But for some insight in Ballards line of thinking and what he would have made of our spectacle age, head over to the man himself, and find out what he predicts for our futures.