Challenges and experiences of a participative green space development in Budapest-Józsefváros

This article is an attempt to present the theoretical and practical backgrounds of a participative green space development in Hungary. The renewed green space, Mátyás square is located in District VIII of Budapest, known as Józsefváros. The neighbourhood of Mátyás square had a very negative image, neglected residential areas extended into the heart of the district suffered by different social problems. The local government of Józsefváros elaborated the so called Magdolna Quarter Programme, that contains the details of the social rehabilitation of surroundings of Mátyás square. In frame of this programme – co-financed by EU through GreenKeys Project – the square has been renewed, a collaborative and participative green space development has been fulfilled. The authors were engaged in this model programme, they attempt to summarize briefly the experiences of this unique project of Budapest. The local residents were successfully involved into the planning and the implementation of the project. The participation was considerably efficient, however the experience shows that a participative project may be shorter than the project leaders thought. As a result of this activities the Urban Green Space Strategy of Józsefváros and a computer program for monitoring of green spaces were compiled as well

Ecological footprint calculation of the Budapest Metropolitan Region in a multi-method perspective

The main aim of this paper is to analyse the environmental impacts of the transformation of the Budapest Metropolitan Region through the ecological footprint indicator, between 2003 and 2013. Similarly to other major urban agglomerations in East Central Europe, the socio-spatial structure of the Budapest Metropolitan Region has gone through substantial changes since the change of regime, when the movement of younger and more affluent strata from the core city to the suburban zone commenced. According to our hypothesis the quickly growing population of the suburbs, with higher level of consumption has resulted in the reshuffle of the ecological footprint of the urban region. In this study, two methods are used to estimate the ecological footprint of the Budapest Metropolitan Region. The first is a top-down, compound method using regional GDP data as the basis of the calculation. The second is a component-based approach, combining an environmentally extended input-output model with local household consumption data. The second approach also enables us to cover the embedded (in the total life-cycle of goods and services consumed by households) ecological footprint of household consumption. Although the indirect, embedded household footprint decreased by 11% in Hungary between 2003 and 2013, it increased by 6% in Budapest and by 8% in the suburban zone. In the suburban area the growing ecological footprint is mainly the outcome of population growth, in Budapest the major driver of growth is the increasing consumption. The direct household ecological footprint accounted more than double in the suburban zone compared to the respective value in Budapest for 2013. This is mainly due to the higher (and growing, because of the spreading of wood combustion) heating footprint, whereas, there was no significant difference regarding the carbon footprint of the fuels used for vehicles

Thermal baths as sources of pharmaceutical and illicit drug contamination

Despite the fact that there are tens of thousands of thermal baths in existence, knowledge about the occurrence of pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) in untreated thermal wastewater is very limited. Because used thermal water is typically legally discharged into surface waters without any treatment, the effluent poses environmental risks for the receiving water bodies. The aim of this study was to show the occurrence patterns and spatiotemporal characteristics of 111 PhACs in thermal wastewater. Six thermal water outflows of different thermal baths were tested in different seasons in the Budapest metropolitan region (Hungary), and diurnal analysis was performed. After solid-phase extraction, the samples were analysed and quantified by coupling supercritical fluid chromatography and mass spectrometry to perform simultaneous multi-residue drug analysis. The results confirm that water discharge pipes directly transport pharmaceuticals into surface water bodies; 34 PhACs were measured to be over the limit of quantification at least once, and 21 of them were found in more than one water sample. The local anaesthetic drug lidocaine, antiepileptic carbamazepine, analgesic derivative tramadol and illicit drug cocaine were detected in more than half of the samples. Caffeine, metoprolol and bisoprolol (cardiovascular drugs), benzoylecgonine (cocaine metabolite), diclofenac (NSAID), citalopram (antidepressant) and certain types of hormones also have a significant frequency of 30-50%. However, the occurrence and concentrations of PhACs vary according to the season and number/types of visitors. As demonstrated by the diurnal fluctuation, drug contamination of thermal waters can significantly vary, even for similar types of baths; furthermore, the quantity and types of some pollutants rapidly change in the discharged thermal wastewater

Investigation of the sorption of 17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) on soils formed under aerobic and anaerobic conditions

A study was conducted on the sorption of 17 alpha-ethynylestradiol (EE2) on five soils formed under different redox conditions: an Arenosol (A_20) with fully aerobic conditions, two Gleysol samples (G_20 and G_40) with suboxic and anoxic conditions and two Histosols (H_20 and H_80) with mostly anoxic conditions. The soils were characterized on the basis of total organic carbon (TOC), specific surface area (SSA) and the Fourier transform infrared spectra of the humic acid and humin fractions (the soil remaining after alkali extraction) of the soil. The maximum adsorption capacity of the soils (Q(max)) ranged from 10.7 to 83.6 mg/g in the order G_20 > H_20 > G_40 > A_20 > H_80, which reflected the organic matter content of the soils. The sorption isotherms were found to be nonlinear for all the soil samples, with Freundlich n values of 0.45-0.68. The strong nonlinearity found in the adsorption of the H_80 samples could be attributed to their high hard carbon content, which was confirmed by the high aromaticity of the humin fraction. The maximum sorption capacity (Q(max)) of the soils did not increase indefinitely as the organic carbon content of the soils rose. There could be two reasons for this: (i) the large amount of organic matter may reduce the number of binding sites on the surface, and (ii) the decrease in SSA with increasing soil OC content may limit the ability to adsorb EE2 molecules. In anaerobic soil samples, where organic matter accumulation is pronounced, the amount of aromatic and phenolic compounds was higher than in better aerated soil profiles. Strong correlations were found between the amount of aromatic and phenolic compounds in the organic matter and the adsorption of EE2 molecules, indicating that pi-pi interaction and H-bonding are the dominant sorption mechanisms. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd