In my previous presentation at the IWM I dealt with the concept of ‘Europe’ in the city-image of Budapest. This time, I will deal with the 19th century city-image in the speeches of Budapest’s mayor Gábor Demszky.
By ‘city-image’ I refer to the image of the city – an imagination and a construction. The administration and politicians of the city would be projecting their city-images, and the city-images would also be produced and reproduced in different fora of activity. In the course of my doctoral research I have been looking at the urban-planning documents, speeches by both local and national politicians, tourist information brochures, and picture books on Budapest targeting the locals or tourists. The city-images that appear in this range of material are contingent and contested, loaded with different values, tied to different discourses, created to foster or to reject positions.
