Integrated Urban Development Strategy: Renewal of the Urban Development

Abstract

The integrated urban development strategy (IUS) was strongly endorsed by the Leipzig Charta (2007). This approach to urban development includes social, economic and regional aspects and tries to incorporate the various local levels and contextual time lines, involving local actors into the planning process, while looking for financing to both government and private sources. Although IUS requires new and hitherto unknown efforts from many Western European countries and cities, particulary in the process of civic participation, it opens a fundamentally new era in the ex-socialist member countries of the European Union. In spite of the fact that more than a hundred IUS blueprints have already been elaborated by Hungarian municipalities, there is a general realisation that the desired renewal of Hungarian urban development is still to be found. To know and use some of the sophisticated methods filtered out by way of comparative international studies may assist in this long and difficult procedure. In this contribution, the introductory section about the historical development of IUS within the EU is followed by two studies illustrating British, Dutch and German best practices in urban development.