Shaping relations between natural and artificial landscapes on the example of selected riverside cities: Budapest and Rzeszow

Abstract

The article discusses the nature of the relationship between the natural landscape and the transformed landscape. The description of these ties was limited to two interdependent and simultaneously contrasting creatures - a river of a fully natural landscape and a city as an artificial landscape resulting from the Anthropos genic transformations. The relationship between these two opposing types of landscapes is centuries-old and thus constitutes a rich source of search and study of human-environment relations. The direct reason for addressing this issue is a gradual change in the approach to landscape shaping of the river valley existing with the urban landscape. Clear transformations of these dependencies and the creation of a return of the city to the river can be observed, for example, in the London docks or Mill Island in Bydgoszcz in Poland. The research area is the coastline of two administratively, culturally and historically different European cities: the Wislok coastline in Rzeszow, the capital of the voivodeship in south-eastern Poland, and the Danube coastline in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. In Budapest, the coexistence of the river and the city is very clear, and their mutual connections are historically anchored and clearly visible in the city’s urban structure. On the other hand, the dynamic changes that have taken place over the centuries in the riverbed of Wislok in Rzeszow caused that the river is not the urban axis of the city and did not significantly affect its urban layout in the past. Throughout most of its existence, the city was formed in fear of the river. The comparison of the shape of the coasts of the cities mentioned above resembles a master - pupil relationship. The two cities share a historical link with the river valley, but the degree of development of these relations varies considerably. The observation was used as a research method. The selected cases are the family towns of the authors, which made it possible to confront the results of literature research, mainly related to the historical layer, with long-term observations of the discussed areas. The article also defines the features distinguishing riverside cities and the advantages and fears resulting from the coexistence of these two seemingly contrasting landscapes.