Development of a New Urban Country on the Danube Arms near Bratislava

Abstract

The importance of the watercourse for the city as a whole and for the waterfront urban structure is given historically, geomorphologically, ecologically, and urbanly. The context of the city and the water can significantly determinate the city, in the individual stages of its development shape and model its embankment, and then offer its benefits, but also alarm in the form of possible threats connected to current climate change. Bratislava is honored to be a city on the Danube and a city with the potential of waterfronts, promenades, bridges, bays, ports, but also industrial, sports, recreational and cultural use of urban structures in contact of the city’s edge with the watercourse. Restoration of old arms of the Danube, the extension of the main river by the bypass arm southwards opens up amazing possibilities of return of the landscape - urban development of Bratislava and its background. Return scenario of the Danube arms, restoration of floodplain forests and the Danube meander landscape with sensitive urban development are ecologically modeled on the climate protection of the city against summer overheating and drying. The idea of the blue-green cover of Bratislava also offers the development of new housing sites, culture, sport, recreation and new forms of eco-management in the country. Case studies in localities of Bratislava - Rusovce, Jarovce, and Čunovo on the restored meanders of the river point to possibilities of construction of ecologically structured urbanization in the bays of the Danube arms with islands. Bratislava has the opportunity to develop its suburban development with parameters of the city’s climate protection. At the same time, there is an opportunity to propose a concept of peri-urban landscape with the recreational forests and by creating transition zones in contact with the protected landscape.