Missed Opportunity for a Comparative Analysis. What Do the Budapest and Zagreb Maps of the 4th CIAM Congress Conceal?

The CIAM 4 Congress in Athens in 1933 presented analyses of 34 world cities, including Budapest and Zagreb. These two cities belonged to the same empire, where an intense knowledge exchange, mainly from the center to the periphery, could come about until the collapse of the Monarchy. The situation changed in the post-war period when Zagreb first took precedence in introducing the most progressive planning practices. The new regulation plan was based on an international competition in 1930/1931, which implemented the concepts of neighborhood units and linear cities of the Soviet type. Members of the Zagreb Work Group (the Yugoslav section of CIAM) played a decisive role in the design. It means that this group, gathered around Ernest Weissmann, a former collaborator of Le Corbusier, could enforce the methods of modern architecture and planning, unlike the Hungarian CIAM group led by Farkas Molnár, a student of Bauhaus, who were forced to operate on the margins of the conservative architectural scene. Both groups were connected by their committed work in proposing rational housing models to remedy the acute housing crisis and confronting the public with these problems by striking documentary exhibitions. Their social and even collectivist programs provoked a harsh reaction on behalf of the authorities and were disallowed by CIAM leaders, too. The Zagreb regulation plan, however, could remain the base of the post-war development of the city, while the more conservative development program of Budapest would have been redesigned several times.