Transport Minister Dávid Vitézy was unequivocal at a press conference yesterday: the Tisza government wants to tackle not only the shortage of student accommodation, but also the housing crisis. While a number of measures have already been outlined in the latter area, there has been a significant shift in the approach to the former. Whereas previous Orbán governments had envisaged some form of Chinese university project for Budapest, Péter Magyar’s administration now wants to revive and deliver plans for a student city and a new residential district on the very same site.
Major development in Budapest’s brownfield zone
“We will review the old plans, but the objective remains unchanged: to create a high-quality mixed residential and student-accommodation district that will also help ease Budapest’s housing crisis,” Dávid Vitézy wrote in a Facebook post yesterday.
Mr Vitézy was also closely involved in plans for the creation of a 36-hectare park in northern Csepel in the early 2020s, when he was head of the Budapest Development Centre.
The original project envisaged three main elements in the derelict brownfield areas of northern Csepel and neighbouring Ferencváros: a stadium and associated training pitches for the 2023 World Athletics Championships; a student city; and a vast public park. The stadium was built and opened to the public at the end of 2024.
The scheme could also have included the Albertfalva bridge across the Danube, together with a counterpart over the smaller branch of the river, potentially carrying a tram service.
Of those three elements, however, only the artist’s impressions have survived. According to Mr Vitézy, master plans had also been completed for the student city, but the previous government shelved them after 2021 because it preferred to allocate the site to China’s Fudan University, which intended to develop a European campus there.
Orbán government’s Chinese project collapses
The proposal met fierce opposition from local residents and successful resistance from the municipalities concerned. One of the more colourful side effects was the naming of nearby streets after causes such as Hong Kong’s freedom and the Dalai Lama.
Gergely Karácsony, Budapest’s mayor, claimed at the time that the government had initially presented plans under which the student city and Fudan University could be built side by side. It later emerged, he said, that the Chinese university’s campus would in fact occupy the site intended for student accommodation.
Mr Karácsony therefore argued that the Fudan project would effectively have displaced the original student city.
Acute need for modern student accommodation
The student-city project was intended to create a new district aimed primarily at addressing university students’ housing problems. Student residences would have formed the centrepiece of the development, with the aim of providing large numbers of affordable homes for those in higher education.
The project would not simply have involved putting up a handful of halls of residence. It represented a broader urban-development vision, combining accommodation with the infrastructure and services required for a functioning neighbourhood.
If you missed: The surprising reasons Viktor Orbán’s father was fined millions over his castle project
According to surveys, Budapest is currently short of 34,000 student-accommodation places. A substantial proportion of the existing halls leave much to be desired, yet demand is still three times greater than supply. The shortage is also pushing up property prices and rents.
Mr Vitézy said yesterday that construction could soon begin on the vast site, with plans for both a residential district and a student city. He did not provide figures for the number of homes or student places to be built, nor did he set out what other facilities might be included.
He said only that the fundamental objectives remained the same, but that the previous master plan would need to be revised.
Photos, video: new Budapest bridge to be built as project reaches important milestone
Do you have an interesting story you would like to share with other readers? Write for us!
What is wrong with these people?!? I thought Vitezy, of them all, had more sense than this.
We do not need more people coming to or staying in cities! We need FEWER!
We don’t need more urbanization. We need DE-urbanization!
Encourage these colleges and schools to move out of Budapest, to smaller towns or even semi-rural areas. (Develop infrastructure and accommodations there accordingly, of course.)