The most important city development initiatives of Hungary (original) (raw)

Metropolitan region building and territorial development in Budapest: the role of national policies

International Planning Studies, 2016

This paper investigates the role of national policies in the process of metropolization and metropolitan region building in Budapest. In the long term, the example of Budapest clearly shows the twists and turns of national policy-making between concentration to increase competitiveness and equal distribution designed to enhance social integration. The geographical and geopolitical position of Budapest has altered significantly since the collapse of communism. From the periphery of Moscow, the city and its hinterland became a political, economic and cultural centre of Central Europe. Therefore, it is an intriguing question if national policies actively build on the role of Budapest as engine of economic restructuring and a gateway to the global flows of capital and innovation. The paper provides a critical analysis of current policies with special attention to the process of metropolitan region building. As research findings show, policy-making in Hungary has not focused on metropolisation and metropolitan region building in the last two decades. Policy-making has had a clear follow-up character and decision-makers from the administrative side could not efficiently contribute to metropolisation and enhance the competitiveness of the metropolitan region.

Same or Different Development Paths? A Comparative Study of the Large Cities and Regions in Hungary

Regional Statistics

According to specialist literature, the current development of agglomerations is by large urban areas evolving by the expansion and structural transition of larger urban zones, where “the formerly hierarchic division of settlements with a different size and role is replaced by horizontal cooperation, linking into a network” (Enyedi 2012, p. 17). The aim of the present paper is to examine, how equal the domestic large cities and their agglomeration can be considered by their development and competitiveness, and if there is an economic basis for them to cooperate horizontally in a network in the present case. The authors use different methodological approaches to examine the development and competitiveness of cities and their agglomeration, and spatial autocorrelation circumstances to model the economic base of outlined cooperation.

Regional Development and Governance in Hungary

2001

The paper’s aim is to analyse the interdependencies of territorial public administration and regional development policy in Hungary. The legislation on local governments has been impacted mostly by political values like autonomy, closeness to the citizens due to the attitude of legislators during the systemic changes. There are four aspects in which the Hungarian system of local governments dif¬fers from the Western European trends: too small municipalities, too weak coun¬ties, to large and powerful state sector in the territorial tier and too few associa¬tions. Because of these structural features the Act on Local Government was unable to guarantee the decentralisation, thus the local self-government sector could not become a dominant element of territorial administration. The contradictory structure of the medium tier, the weak position of territorial self-govern-ment not only caused disturbances in territorial administration but contributed to the over centralisation of the gover...

Local governance, socio-spatial development and segregation in post-transition Hungary

SAJ - Serbian Architectural Journal

The rescaling of the state and the general governance changes we have witnessed in Western Europe since the sixties occurred in Hungary in the last 25 years. In this paper I revisit the literature on phenomena relating to changes in urban planning governance brought about by neoliberal regimes, and highlight parallel issues in the after-transition Hungarian context. Challenges of local governance are discussed, focussing on the mechanisms that have fuelled segregation in the Hungarian urban context. The paper concludes that glocalisation has been the main outcome of the decentralisation of public administration also in Hungary, whereas more recently rolling out of the state through its development policies financed mainly from EU funds has attempted to address urban inequalities and segregation. In part, however, some of the urban rehabilitation attempts are based on 'diseconomies of conflict', which means that results may become unsustainable in the future.

Inner Territory and What Lies Behind It: An Inquiry Into the Hungarian Urban Hierarchy in 1930

Hungarian Historical Review. Volume 8 Issue 1, 2019

The study of the emergence of the Hungarian urban hierarchy raises a number of methodological questions concerning the complex settlement structure and the unique urban development of the Carpathian Basin. Research on the Hungarian urban hierarchy reveals a strong positive correlation between the position of the cities in the hierarchy and the complexity of their urban functions. The aim of my inquiry is to provide a complex picture of the Hungarian urban hierarchy of the 1930s, or, more precisely, the potential hierarchies. I approach this issue from various perspectives. As there are different definitions of cities in judicial (administrative), statistical, economic, sociological, and geographical contexts, the questions remain open: what do we consider a city, and what makes a settlement a city in the interwar period in Hungary? One of the cornerstones of my research is the issue of the outskirts. In administrative terms, we can speak about a unit, but due to the differing patterns of urban development in Hungary, the relationship between the core territory and its periphery is complex. Since the classic homestead theory has been challenged, hierarchical investigations have had to address the problems involved in dividing the data between urban cores and urban peripheries. Hierarchic rankings based on the incorporation of outskirts are quite different from rankings which omit the latter zones, which tend to be dominated by scattered farms not linked functionally to the urban core. The differences also show strong regional patterns. This study, based on statistical data, tries to highlight these differences in the urban hierarchy using this new approach. This way, it becomes possible to put the study of the Hungarian urban hierarchy in the interwar period on a new methodological footing which differs in several significant ways from the foundations of earlier research on the subject in Hungary.

Position and Possibility of Large HungarianTowns in the Hierarchy of the European Towns

programm.corp.at

There is a dual research objective: the position of the large Hungarian towns in the hierarchy of the EU on the other hand their possibilities and development directions. The population of the town dwellers has been gradually increasing during the last decades. It has resulted in the concentration of the new job openings, knowledge and possibilities. But unfortunately this particular trend has implied negative consequences as well. The issues such as sustainable development of towns, converting them places where well-being is guaranteed are both topical questions. The engines of the settlement networks s are such places where resources and activities are concentrated. Towns of the European Union can be arranged in groups based on several criteria. According to the research towns are terminated as European or trans-national towns (called mega) moreover national, regional and local centres (Rechnitzer 2007). Centres in Hungary-comparing to the capital-are significantly smaller settlements representing less population and more modest significance. The population of Budapest is about 2 million. The so called 8 big town's population is about 100-200 thousand.