The Southern City Gate project in Budapest will include plans both to build student accommodation quarter and a campus for China’s Fudan University, László Palkovics, the innovation and technology minister, said on Tuesday.
Palkovics insisted that the Fudan campus would not rob space from the Student City.
The development concept for the area had not fundamentally changed, the minister said at a ceremony awarding bidders in an international tender for designs for the area. Besides student hostels and community facilities, “associated development projects such as research institutes” were also part of the original plan, he said.
Palkovics noted that the government had adopted a strategy for student hostel development worth 220 billion forints, back in 2017.
The minister said that Fudan was considered the 34th best university in the world, adding that setting up a Fudan campus in Budapest would “benefit Hungary, benefit China, and benefit the community”.
Deputy state secretary Domonkos Schneller said that the Southern City Gate programme was aimed at revitalising brownfield sites at the northern tip of Csepel Island and adjacent areas in the 9th district, constructing the planned Galvani Bridge across the river Danube, as well as “adding a huge, green area” to the city.
Photo by Tamás Sóki/MTI
