PÉCS2010 EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE
Pro Urbe Ltd. has been working with the Municipality of Pécs for two decades. The primary task of our firm is to create the transport development concept for the city, revising and readjusting it from time to time following the changing circumstances and requirements. Since the beginning of the '90s this planning process was supplemented by a computerized traffic model and estimation developed by Pro Urbe Ltd. Apart from the capital, the city of Pécs was the first city in Hungary which posessed such a resource to support development plans. This model played an important role during the development of the high-profile ECoC projects as well. Plans for numerous important traffic investments were prepared in our offices during the years preceding the development of the ECoC's so-called key projects. For example two amongst these were the reconstruction of the Ágoston square - Kálvária street area and the plans for the development of the Somogyi street - Bacsó Béla street - Sport street line. Realisation of the latter was the foundation for accessing the locations of the high-profile projects of ECoC.
When on 19th of October, 2006 Pécs was designated to be the European Capital of Culture in 2010, it became necessary to modify the current transport development concept to accomodate the new projects. The principles for the modifications were the following:
- Assuring that the long term development of the city is of primary importance.
- Every change to the transport development concept - that is necessary because of the ECoC installations and programs - has to fit with the long term development plans.
- Further development of implemented traffic facilties should be possible if requried.
The change to the concept - which took into account all the additional traffic generated by the ECoC installations and programs - was finished and accepted in 2007. The plans for accessing, servicing and parking around the Kodály Centre, the Knowledge Centre and the Zsolnay Cultural Quarter were prepared in the offices of Pro Urbe Ltd during the following year. The road planning study part of the documentation took a broader view of the area and presented as a further development possibility the building of a grade separated railway junction in the line of Lánc street - Sport street, which would create the eastern connection between the areas of the city separated by the railway lines, already planned for decades.
In 2010 the South Transdanubian Chamber of Architects commissioned the production of the KÖZ-TÉR-KÖZ book of interviews (edited by Somogyi Krisztina), with the aim to record the original intents of the designers. Transportation - presented through the works of Pro Urbe Ltd. - got its own chapter in the book.