On the World Habitat Daythe Green Map of Budapest has been launched. The press conference was organized in the Hungarian Museum of Trade and Tourism, and honoured by the attendance of Ms Éva Beleznay, Chief Architect of Budapest, Mr László Fekete, executive director of the Budapest Tourism Office, while the Norwegian Civil Trust Fund, the financial supporter of the project, was represented by Ms Veronika Móra, the director of Ecopartnership Foundation. In general, the launch has had a big media success: all the most important and relevant media has covered it, not only electronic, but also the more traditional, such as numerous printed papers, TV and radio channels.

The Green Map of Budapest is an online platform with 29 categories of various services supporting sustainable lifestyles. In addition, 2 further themes, bike paths and traffic calmed/pedestrian zones will be added to the map as active layers soon. While we aimed to decrease the number of categories by merging various topics, another important feature is that the map contains only positive sites. 3 new categories and icons missing from the universal icon set have been added to: animal shelters, community teleservice centers, and narrow gauge railways. The heart of the database is a search engine working on geographical bases: using this users can found green services closest to them.

The site has, or will have, a range of other interactive functions as well: evaluated by users both in terms of quality and sustainablity, downloadable PoI databases, RSS, newsletter, self-organizing platform for map makers, blog on sustainable city living, and many more.

In the last months of the year we are going to organize several workshops on green map making in Budapest, both for and in partnership with other CSOs, as well as for the public in general. Data will be synchronized with OpenGreenMap too.

If you have any questions or recommendations, please feel free to contact us!