Chinese-European Cooperation for a Long-term Sustainability Boxundary: A Familiar Phenomena of Suburban Landscapes All Over Europe Dóra Hutter, Gyöngyvér Szabó, Anita Szöbölödi, Dániel Takács Corvinus University of Budapest Hungary dora.hutter@uni-corvinus.hu, gyongyver.szabo@uni-corvinus.hu, anita.szobolodi@unicorvinus.hu daniel.takacs@uni-corvinus.hu 1. Introduction The population s preoccupation with the value of potential development land plays a crucial role in this expansion. Landscapes have environmental, cultural, economic and other values, all of which influence patterns of development. Referring to this, the urban boundaries surrounding our cities are a multifaceted phenomena which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses (e.g. stores and residential), and various design features that encourage car dependency. The first assumption of this research is based on the thought that the greater the economic value attributed to undeveloped land, the more indiscriminate the inappropriate development will be and hence the concern about protection. This research gives the base for a concept of a student design competition entry named Boxundaries. The competition s challenge was to choose an example of an urban/rural boundary in which the values for land are in conflict. It had to propose a landscape architectural response to it and shows, that urban boundaries can be positive transitional elements between the urban landscape and undeveloped land, if they are planned and designed properly. This paper presents a possible solution, a conceptual answer to this assumption. 2. The urban boundary as an interface between town and country The border of a city is always changing. Legally it is an easier way to observe where the border is, but it is a hard issue to locate where a city really ends and what can we call as urban boundary. Cities are growing rapidly, join together with the suburban areas or create their own, new suburban areas. That is why the real boundary is not a straight line, much more like a blurred zone where landscape and city meet. This zone is a transition zone where many kinds of phenomena appear. One of these phenomena is a characterized form of boundary, what we call boxundary. 3. The notion of boxundary Boxundary is a fiction created for the design concept and refers to the familiar phenomena of urban boundaries on suburban landscapes. It is like rural-urban fringe, also known as the outskirts or the urban hinterland, can be described as the "landscape interface between town and country". Also as the transition zone where urban and rural uses mix and often clash.
Alternatively, it can be viewed as a landscape type in its own right, one forged from an interaction of urban and rural land uses. While the urban fringe is characterised by certain land uses which have either purposely moved away from the urban area, or require much larger tracts of land, for example: roads, motorways and bypasses, waste transfer stations, recycling facilities and landfill sites, park and ride sites, airports, large hospitals, power, water and sewerage facilities, factories, large out-of-town shopping facilities e.g. large supermarkets, boxundary refers to the architectural appearance of these. Therefore boxundary is a word play composed of the term of box and boundary. These boxundaries have strong visual, physical, ecological and mental identities. The architectural appearances of these buildings are very simple. They are mostly white cubes made of steel and concrete. These white boxes are just dropped on the site without any fitting in the landscape. Furthermore they are surrounded by huge paved parking lots. Because of these boxes are situated on the edge of the city, the image of these boxes is the first, what the incomings see when they enter the city and the last thing as well, when they leave it. So they do not have an architectural character, but they are still a kind of landmarks, with a strong visual and mental appearance. (Figure 1) Figure 1. Visual and mental appearance of boxundaries Several European cities have very similar attributes to each other. They share a lot of historical approaches, they went through similar changes. In the case of Vienna, Prague, Warsaw and Budapest the city structure has changed in the same way. Those specific land uses, that require huge tracts of lands do not have enough space in the inner parts of the city, so they are placed on the edge of the cities, next to motorways and railroads. On the map of these cities, the white ring of these boxes can be seen clearly. These kinds of elements are part of the urban structure now, so they physically compose a unit of land use (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Boxundaries in European cities Before the presence of boxes the connection of town and landscape was simple without any disturbing elements. There were not many ecological problems. But now on the edge of towns we have to deal with bad environmental impacts. Ecologically boxundaries have quite bad attributes. These artificial phenomena strengthen the greenhouse effect because of the huge size of concrete surfaces. This problem can be solved only with a solution of using much bigger size of green surfaces and much smaller usage of concrete (Figure 3). Figure 3. Ecological identity of urban boundaries
4. The planning area / Present land use The chosen planning area is situated on the north-east borderline of Budapest, the capital of Hungary (Figure 4). Figure 4. Situation of planning area When we are travelling by car or bus, and coming from east or north to Budapest by using one of the most important highway, we have to pass over this region. Nevertheless the area is in the peripheral district, it has good linkages: access to villages, towns and the capital with developed infrastructure. The planning area is situated in the rural landscape, directly near a suburban residential area, an industrial area and a forest. Around the center which is a highway exit, there are diverse-sized boxes. In these huge boxes we can find different types of services: hypermarket, toys- shop, car salon and market andhousehold store. Between the boxes, there are a lot of functions that are connected to the highway: petrol station, highway rest stop, highway agency, restaurants. Now this place is a concrete jungle with harmful ecological effect, because of the huge built up area, service roads, and parking area with scrogged trees. Consequently, this is a typical example of the 'boxundary'. Before we arrive in the capital unfortunately the boxes are surrounding us, these are erupting from the land as mushrooms. This heterogenic zone is always on the move, and spread out extremely, occupying the land from the forest belt or the agriculture. This situation is very unfavorable, because the urban region needs to be some kind of greenbelt to reduce the harmful ecological impacts. 5. Concept The main aim of this concept is to find out how we can transform boxundaries to boxscapes, and what kind of transformations should be made to fit these boxes in the landscape. How can nature conquest the boxundaries while all the functions, that the existing boxes have, will remain?
Figure 5 Before: boxundary Figure 6 After: boxscape The two rough sketches (Figure 5 and 6) show the main point of the concept as we transformed these boxundary to boxscape. The plan retained the original function of boxes, (the hypermarket and stores) but gave back huge area of land to the nature and people. In the plan the big green roof system is covering the one-storied buildings as a carpet, which is connected with the terrain. In front of the markets, instead of the costumer's parking zone, there could be a multifunctional public park evolved. On the concept of land use shows directly the surroundings of the above-mentioned site. From the symbioses of the shopping area and a multistoried public park, we can develop the regional centre with different and different types of functions. We chose the playground, sport zones, climbing walls, representative public square, outdoor marketplace, adventure park, motocross filed, organic farm. But there could be situated other services and functions as well, that need large areas: for example dog school, extreme sport fields, go-cart, mini golf, slide hill, horse riding, bio market, open air theatre etc.
Figure 7. Concept of land use In the pursuance of the SWOT analysis we reviewed also the weaknesses and threats. (Column 1) Naturally the traffic is very heavy on the highway, therefore the area must be provided from noise for example with plastic wall and needs some other environmental protection. strength good infrastructure (important highway from the Eastern Hungary to the capital) access to villages, towns and the capital there are enough place for a lot of services and functions which need large areas beautiful landscape around Column 1. SWOT analyse weakness high noise pollution access only with car or coach service (no public transport and walkways) concrete jungle with harmful ecological effect opportunity great value for developers (cheap land, large field, good infrastructure) become a good transitional zone (between urban and rural threat hyper- expansion (tucks the landscape away!) higher environmental damage interfering functions
landscape) regional serve centre of towns and districts of the capital new functions: outdoor shopping centre, whole-day program for the family real connection to the rural landscape and environment high maintenance cost 6. Results By the construction of the new green roofs and hiding the huge box buildings by them, a lot of new functions and recreational opportunities have been created. The elements of the existing and the created area can be rated into two columns (Column 2). In the column INS the existing functions and facilities are listed. Lots of these items have extremely harmful effects on the settlements environment (e.g. the huge and therefore high-temperature parking areas have significant effect on the environment s climate, the large advertising surfaces debase the scenery etc.) and making the boundaries of the cities more urban. In the column OUTS our proposals were listed by which the urban boundaries crowded by huge boxes could be made more natural and more philanthropist. Therefore our proposal is to create a multifunctional complex on the urban border which incorporates the existing logistic and shopping functions with the vision of a regional open green space, with great architectural and landscape architectural quality. The transition between the natural landscape and the urban area could be solved by this solution. The green networks of the cities could be developed, and huge biologically active surfaces could be created by this way. In the sample area we made a huge multifunctional open space (Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 10) with many recreational functions beside the shopping and logistic boxes. A lot of family programs (like concerts, sport events) can be organized on the new paved and grassy surfaces. More than 15 000 m 2 of extensive green roof and more than 32 000 m 2 intensive green roof surfaces were created. The whole existing parking area was transformed into a public park. Thus to satisfy the parking demands three deep-level garages were constructed under the shopping boxes. All in all more than 82 000 m 2 new green surface was created through these transformations.
Column 2. The existing conflicts and the proposals of the sample area Green roofs (Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 11) The main green roof above the three shopping boxes (hypermarket, toyshop and household store) is functioning as a winding, green pathway between the other small box buildings and the huge, multifunctional park. Small trees and bushes were planted on it. The surface of this roof has got different levels which are divided by small (~ 1 m tall) supporting walls. Four leisure places were created near the middle line of the roof, which are covered by plank and by grass. The roof is broken through in three points. There are two holes above the market place between the covered hypermarket and the household store, and another between the hypermarket and the toyshop. These holes used to let the sunlight reach the paved spaces under the roof. Extensive green roofs were also created on the eastern buildings of the sample area. Service areas (Figure 8, Figure 9) The service areas of each building were transferred to the south side of them. Therefore the trucks and cars are hidden from the public by the huge boxes. Two of the entrances of the deeplevel garages are directly next to the service areas and the other is placed close to the service road which runs over the motorway M3. There is a big, paved public square on the north side of these boxes, between the hypermarket and the toy-shop. The main hypermarket got a paved foreground on the north side, which is connecting directly to the public square.
Figure 8. BOXSCAPE: Landscaping concept
Figure 9. Landscaping concept of the intensive green-roof
Figure 10. Cross sections of the landscape concept
Multifunctional public park (Figure 12) A multifunctional park was created on the west side of these shopping buildings. This park is divided into two areas through the service road aforementioned. There are many playing-fields and other elements suitable for recreation between the hypermarket and the service road. A basketball field, a handball field, a playground with many playing-elements, a beach volleyball field and a huge, standard sized football field were placed on this area. Tall and short hills with different altitude are dividing these fields from each-other. These hills protect each places from noise and they can be used as bleachers alike. A paved pathway is interconnecting the several areas in the park. A community house is located on the west side of the hypermarket, which includes storages, first-aid post, restaurants and coffee-bars. Two climbing walls are framing the entrance of this community building. Motocross field with high hills and a huge lake was constructed on the west side of the park. The pathways lead into the forest on the west, directly next to the lake because an adventure park is created in it. It is important to be mentioned that a long, translucent noise barrier is running along the south side of the highway to protect the whole area from the traffic noise. The multifunctional park and the attractive green-roof could be reached by car and public transport from the highway on a by-pass road. Figure 11. View of the main terrace and pathways on the green-roof Figure 12. Birds-eye view of the proposed regional park with the green-roof 7. Conclusion The boundaries of the European, rapidly developing settlements are changing continuously and getting more urban because of the lack of rigid regulations. One of the most actual problems in these days is the destruction of the nature through the expanding human needs. It is necessary to abate these negative and damaging processes and handle the existing situation with environmental-friendly and efficient solutions. In general the best way to make proposals to these problems is to find and recognize the advantages and strengths of these areas. The cheap plots and the opportunity to expand are
continuously alluring the developers onto the outside areas of the towns. In most cases unfortunately it means that the commercial and logistics centers are favoring these spaces to construct their characterless and flat buildings. The shape of these buildings mostly equals to large, white or sometimes colored boxes, therefore these suburban landscapes could be called boxundary. The situation is almost the same in every big cities, but the solution for handling the emerged problems caused by the urban-sprawl and pertain to the town boundaries could be various depending on the actual demands of the residents. Our concept is a positive example to show an opportunity for the settlements' governments how to countervail against these problems. In this way a real connection could be created between the nature and the settlements' urban areas, by which not only the scenery could be made more natural (handling the visual conflicts) but the value of these plots on the boundaries could be enhanced equally. In essence we transformed a sample boxundary to a boxscape, so the boxes don't dominate the suburban landscape anymore.