ARE THE RENEWED PUBLIC SPACES TRULY COMMUNITY PLACES? URBAN REHABILITATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE SPACES OF TOURISM AND RELATED EXCLUSION IN KAPOSVÁR, HUNGARY

Abstract

The renewal of historical city centers has significant impact on the local economy enhancing also the opportunities of the development of the local tourism as  the renewal of community places and public buildings may increase the touristic attraction of a town. However, certain groups of the local community might be excluded from the newly emerging ’representative’ spaces – in many cases displacement in embraced in renewal schemes consciously. Theis paper focuses on the process of urban rehabilitation in Kaposvár and its impact on the use of public spaces. In political rhetoric urban rehabilitation programs are introduced to handle the problems of the local society and to stimulate the local economy – primarily tourism - by renovaiting buildings and face lifting of public spaces in Hungarian towns. The problems to be tackled – as it was written in the urban rehabilitation plans - were marginalization, segregation and the stigmatization of the related urban spaces. However the rehabilitation programs often resulted in gentrification process in practice contributed also by the local state that had managed urban renewal in a top-down manner. As a consequence these programs did not resolve the social problems of local spaces but relocated them somewhere else in space. In the followings, we analyses these contradictory processes in the context of the urban rehabilitation programs of Kaposvár,focusing ont he local efforts to eliminate homelessness.