Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries

Polycentrism is one of the elementary directions of spatial development in Slovenia. The concept was designed in the first spatial plan during the 1960s and later confirmed twice: first in 1986 in the long-term plan of Slovenia and later in 2004 in the spatial development strategy. The purpose of polycentrism was to create conditions for a more uniform economic and social development of all parts of the former republic as well as to provide a uniform allocation of working places and social infrastructure. Today we are confronted with different economic environment and a changed regional planning. The purpose of a polycentric arrangement is therefore different, too. We can understand it as a re-establishment of approximately the same access to services and social infrastructure. In sight of the latter, the following issues of polycentrism are important: the number of regional centres, the number of hierarchical levels and instruments for execution of a polycentric concept.

According to the development of the settlement network in the Eastern-Central-European countries which had been primarily affected by the breakdown of the former communist “Eastern Block” the example of Austria having been a republican democratic state since the end of World War I –with some shorter interruptions (Austria-fascism and Nazi-rule) must be viewed in a different way. As opposed to the previous peoples republics which were ruled in a strong centralist way with, perhaps, the exception of Yugoslavia where the central government had delegated some administrative power on the regional level to its predominantly ethnic states, Austria, also as successor state of the Hapsburg Empire had decided for a federal republican administrative structure. This structure was based on the German speaking historic crown-land with the exception of the West-Hungarian Burgenland that was incorporated into Austria in 1923. Due to the new republican constitution the 7 former crown-lands became states or provinces of the Federal Republic of Austria. They were finally completed by the Burgenland and Vienna, which in addition to its function as the national capital city was also attributed the role of an own state (province). Thus Austria today comprises of nine states/provinces (Bundesländer). Since its introduction, the federal principle in Austria is as heavily questioned as it is advocated. Anyway, this federal structure is probably one of the most important factors steering the regional as well as the settlement development in Austria and is thus completely different from the situation beyond the former “Iron Curtain”.

The modern Romanian urban system appeared in the nineteenth century, and partly in the first half of the twentieth. The most important cities became significant in these periods, but the modern and effective city system was created in many steps mostly in the communist era. Cities with a regional importance were the first to appear, after that came cities with a sub-regional or county-level, and after 1968 the system of towns with a sub-county level was formed. After 1990 the urban system was made up of the following categories: regional cities with a population above 300.000 people, big cities with a population of 100.000–300.000, medium-level cities with a population of 50,000–100,000, big towns (25,000–50,000) and small towns (under 25,000). In the administrative system we can group them in two different ways: they can be county towns (generally the regional, big and partly the medium cities) or not; and they can be towns of county rank (Rom. municipiu—generally all the cities and the big towns) or simple towns (generally small towns). The Territorial Planning Act of 2001 led to a significant change in the settlement network. Now we have well-defined criteria to change the administrative category of a settlement by local initiatives. Thus, after 2001 the number of the towns increased. The number of regional cities increased too, thus it is necessary to create new regions, and this need supports the process of the administrative-territorial reform.

Serbia is suffering the consequences of crucial geopolitical changes during last decades, up to date. The very fact that the political position of Serbia has been under permanent changes in terms of borders and political systems of 7 (seven!) states (After the WW2 the states have been in sequel: NRJ, DFRJ, FNRJ, SFRJ, Serbia and Montenegro, and finally Republic of Serbia.) clearly indicates to permanent demographic changes, changes within the settlement network and transformations in settlement structures. From the geographic aspect the settlement is determined by: population duration (the presence or history of the settlement), organised and utilised functional areas and its territorial boundary in the narrower (border settlement) and broader sense (the boundaries of the settlement territory), the name, form and physiognomy, demographic, and internal and regional functional properties. Serbia was, at the end of the twentieth century, a centralised state at all levels, with the largest municipalities in Europe and no mid-level administration, with the exception of two provinces and the City of Belgrade. The new attempts with decentralisation of Serbia, two-level regionalisation (regions and districts), the new proclaimed policy of polycentrism and functional networking of municipalities around 24 cities could open new prospective for more dynamic system of settlement networking based on functional interests. The role of smaller towns and linking villages in wider urban systems should therefore be one of the major contributions to a more developed Serbia in the future.

The present Hungarian settlement network is a result of a long lasting historic development, in which our recent past played an undoubtedly important role. During the past two decades fundamental changes occurred both in legal and practical terms. Newly emerging impacts altered the ongoing processes forming the settlement network. The settlement and regional policy itself is not only new in its priorities, philosophy or approach, but also in its tools, methods etc. Settlements experienced the above changes in sharply different ways: their hierarchy level, relative position, functions and size differentiated them widely according to their adaptation tools among new condition. The present study analyses the main (de jure and de facto) implications of the change in the past twenty years.

The present study covers the issue of what similarities there are between the National Concept for Settlement Network Development (NCSND) of 1971 and the reform processes in the public administration of the time in a number of Western European countries.

Although some caution is justified due to differences in the economic-social systems and development levels, it can still be established that several parallelisms and analogies can be observed between the Hungarian and the Western European regulations, with regard to the objectives, contents or even consequences thereof. The study presents the most important components, impacts and consequences of the NCSND in the aspects of Hungary’s settlement network, public administration and regional organisation. Nevertheless, the study shall not take a stand in the debate on the positive or negative impacts of the Concept going on since it was drawn up. This is still the case even if the bare fact that the study examines the Western European analogies of regulations drawn up in a communist country involves the evaluation thereof, rendering its “sins” relative with the excuse that countries in the free, democratic West committed similar ones. The present work presents Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands in the form of case studies. Important aspect when choosing individual countries were the availability of reference literature and data in languages the author speak, and whether or not the chosen countries were exemplary to other countries or at least chronologically firsts, i.e. pioneers. It has been established that there were a number of similarities in the regulations of countries having implemented reforms in their public administration, as well as in the consequences of such reforms (e.g. significant reduction of the number of local governments, variations in the extent of consideration of differences between individual regions within countries, the gradual nature of the implementation of reforms or the protests against reform measures). It can also be stated that, strangely enough, the countries presented as exceptions also match the trend since, in a broader sense, they can be regarded as reformers even without any reforms (e.g. in France, they aimed at optimising, or at least, rationalising the number of local governments by means of establishing associations instead of uniting settlements, and Switzerland only breaks the limit of time but is no exception in terms of the basic concept and the consequences). Finally, a proposal is made for the clarification of the Hungarian terminology since the comparisons and analogies cannot be completely justified without an unambiguous system of concepts used in the given language and those translated into other languages being made corresponding to each other.

A study on settlement development and growth may encounter such deep-rooted contradictions whose detailed examination potentially results in the identification of considerable differences in planning. The comparison of developments along an economy-based time horizon will give sharp contours to the planning strategy, which used to be called simply plan directives, and now is known as development policy. Domestic examples have been studied to describe the development concept required by the European Union from the newly acceded countries, with one of the outcomes being the seven-year planning cycle after the three- and five-year projections of earlier periods. Obviously, areas that are predominantly industrial and agricultural should be examined from different perspectives, and their comparison would also add an interesting element to the overall picture in the light of the changes of planning concepts.

The present situation of settlements was strongly determined in the communist and the transition era. Villages made up the base of the settlement-and economic system of the Carpathian Basin until the middle of the twentieth century. Communist policy destroyed traditional economy and society and introduced a disadvantageous regional planning for the periphery. The “Hungarian village destruction” programme, called so by its critics, caused a massive depopulation trend in almost the whole village network. In the transition era there was no working comprehensive development policy, and the new competitive situation worsened further the position of villages with high unemployment and low income. Although migration turned towards the villages, depopulation continued through natural decrease in the nineties. The new era for Hungarian regional planning was started near the accession to the EU only. In the current period the NHRDP now contains village renewal goals, but the positive effects are coming slowly. In our paper we outline the main demographic tendencies in peripheral areas and describe the territorial differences of the processes in the Hungarian rural sphere. Villages were classified through the dynamic and social characters of their population, these visualised standardisations pointing out the spatial disparities in the village network.

The causal relationship between global economy, neo-liberal urbanism and gentrification transforming urban landscape to an increasingly large extent has been identified in a number of studies conducted at various places all over the world. This paper strives to outline how one-time “socialist” or “controlled” gentrification in post-socialist countries has been integrated and stimulated further by the urban restructuring of global capitalism. Our international studies reviewing the revitalisation of small and medium-sized towns reveal that the now independent local policies in East-Central Europe give green light to capital, thus helping market-driven gentrification, in the same way as their counterparts in the ‘West’. Within economic, social and political interconnections, at both local and global scales, a special emphasis is given to gentrification in the towns of Veszprém, Oradea and Sopot.

After the politico-economic transition, Central and Eastern European counties had to face several new challenges. One of these was the future renewal of disused or obsolete urban brownfields, under conditions of market economy. Within the confines of this paper, I attempt to shed new light on the entire process of brownfield revitalisation; based on the spatial conceptions of Henri Lefebvre and those of Edward Soja, I aim to establish a theoretical framework that might contribute to the redefinition of urban regeneration, including its aims and philosophical underpinnings. Their notion—the trialectics of space—might help us in linking the past, present and future of our cities.

Nowadays the cities of Hungary, and especially Budapest, suffer from massive urban decline, deprivation and social exclusion which is mainly the result of a long-lasting neglect of the building stock, the radical withdrawal of state from the housing market and the increasing social polarisation generated by the capitalist transformation of the economy. Local governments and investors have faced complications as a result of the postponement of renovation activities. Topical objectives of long-distance urban regeneration process have been changed many times in the last decade in Hungary, however, urban development experts and decision-makers recognised the social role and potentials of urban rehabilitation. The chapters below give a brief overview about the development paths and characteristics of urban regeneration processes in Western Europe and Hungary, on the other hand current urban rehabilitation strategies in Hungary will be introduced as well. The paper also highlights the most relevant impacts of urban regeneration both on the social environment and the quality of life.

This study draws lessons from studying historic towns in West-Hungary, i.e. tries to sketch the basic features of development and urban policy of the last 50–60 years. The study used the traditional empirical methods of urban geography, and concluded as follows. Until the end of the first decade after 2000 we cannot speak about real urban renewal in historic county towns in Hungary; urban renewal signified mostly by monument preservation had basically cultural and architectural motivations, the social and economic factors appeared very seldom, they came to leading position first in the rehabilitation efforts of the historic Budapest in the middle of the 1980s. This renewal lead by the public sector gave place to the private sector which carried out an intensive modernisation after the political transition, however the social processes are less definite. We are witnessing gentrification tendencies in the larger towns, and functional and social decline, the latter being particularly conspicuous in reconstruction areas, which, beside the further intensification of the existing conflicts of townscape, reflects a subsequent failure of this type of intervention of the socialist era complementing the monument protection of heritage conservation areas.

As a consequence of the disappearance of inner borders within the EU, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish migrants from tourists. These two forms of international mobility often overlap one another, so their real volumes cannot be measured easily. The hypothesis of this paper is that new mobile people go on a journey searching not only for tourist experiences, but also with the aim of finding new niches (homes) in which living standards and living conditions make them happy and satisfied. The exploration of niches (settlements as homes in this contribution) is in the focus of attention of both migrants and tourists. In the paper we are concentrating on one of the new phenomena situated in the blurred border zone between migration and tourism, with special emphasis on the theoretical aspects. The foreign real estate purchasers arriving at Hungary will be examined in the territorial level of settlements and efforts are to be made to explore the spatial characteristics of foreign purchasers and their specific activities in Hungary. The spatial pattern of foreign purchases is investigated in relation to the citizenship of the owners.

The study presents the reasons why cross-border suburban areas of a metropolitan come into being, how this process differs from phenomena happening within the country and what kind of effects are generated in the recipient area. Free border crossing and moving between member states, the freedom of ownership enable the cross border expansion of urban areas constrained by state borders. Under adequate geographical circumstances the urban population (and services and other actors in economy) takes advantage of this opportunity (e.g. Szczecin, Geneva etc.). Since the appearance of the phenomena (2005) we conducted empirical researches in Hungarian suburban areas of Bratislava. Besides the interviews, a questionnaire survey was conducted too, and for comparison other similar European geographical situations were examined. The study presents the reasons, consequences, effects of the phenomena as a model and shows its deviations from inner “traditional” suburbanisation.

The last decades were the years of the mass-urbanisation (mass migration from the rural areas to large towns) in Hungary. After 1990 new urbanisation trends started. The population of the large towns started to decline, while the population of the nearby villages and small towns started to grow because of the suburbanisation process. The population of the rural areas became on the same level in the last years. In the last three-four years these trends changed again. The population of the large towns, especially Budapest started to grow again because of the larger amount of the in-migrants from the rural areas. The rural areas have large migration and population loss again, while the increasing population and migration trends of the suburban areas still the same as in the last decade. In this paper we can see these processes with the main reasons of suburbanisation in Hungary.

Because of the effects of globalisation, 4 phases of urbanisation are identified, nevertheless there are different opinions about the universal character of urbanisation. According to some authors urbanisation shows the same model almost everywhere, there are particular characteristics, which are special in the society, in the history and in the area, but after some time every modern society will produce the peculiarities of the 4 phases—even if there are significant postponements. Research results have established that in the cities of the north-eastern part of Carpathian Basin (Kosice, Miskolc, Debrecen, Nyíregyháza, Uzsgorod, Satu Mare, Baia Mare), local characteristics are emphasised. Firstly the common, later the different historical time, the different social-economic system and the differences of cultural heritage appeared. Some periods of urbanisation did not show or did not begin at all, at the same time some common features do exist. The big towns of the region underwent different development in the four countries and nowadays they are in connection with separated systems. Until the beginning of the 1990s urbanisation caused early, fragmentary and relatively low concentration of the population and after this time new circumstances were created. Theoretically this process should continue among new conditions, but the values, habits and attitudes of population change more slowly and indirectly. We can presume that the different groups of population react to challenges in special ways. Because of the well-known and analysed effects in these towns, we cannot calculate, not even theoretically, with the same urbanisation model that was used earlier in the western societies.

The position of each settlement is determined by mostly unconscious, less typically conscious location decisions. During their lives, settlements change and transform their environment. In the case of an average settlement that has existed for centuries, the slow change of the environment is hardly recognisable. The environmental change may bring positive and negative results, and may modify the position of the given settlement in the hierarchy of the settlements. A specific group of towns in East and Central Europe, however, had a completely different development path. These twentieth century towns did not organically develop into towns, they were made towns right from the beginning, they were established as industrial towns. During their short existence—of 85–90 years—they went through very much different development paths; their interesting common feature is that their birth is due to dictatorships. The question is then how their fate has changed in the new historical situation, after the fall of the dictatorships.

The industrial areas, formerly named as zones of industrial activity by the academics of Hungarian settlement geography, have always played an important role in the structure of Hungarian cities and towns, usually making a separate zone. After the political and economic systemic change, considerable transformations of the industrial zones took place, the main reason for which was the shift to market economy. These transformations resulted in the change of the specification, appearance and image of the industrial zones, as well as their positions within the settlements; in fact, even their roles changed in a sense. This study is meant to enumerate these changes, introduce the tendencies of the transformation, the present features of the industrial areas and their current roles in the structure of Hungarian towns and cities.

Modern geography distinguishes between four different levels of functionality of cities (especially of big cities) as reported by Zehner (Stadtgeographie 239, 2001). Among these four functions growing emphasis has been placed on green belt or recreation areas. In Hungarian cities more than half of the areas controlled by the city are defined as green belt or recreation areas although they are not always utilised for such purposes as reported by Csapó (A magyar városok településmorfológiája 201, 2005). However, the mosaic characteristics of such areas, which means accessibility dimensions, are more important. In this study the attributes of green belt or recreation areas will be examined in the case of several Hungarian cities, highlighting both positive and negative examples.

The primary objective of our study is the examination of the factors of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and its local differences in Budapest. The secondary objective is the definition of the general state of health of the capital and its comparison with the Hungarian standards. On the one hand we use in our analysis Human Development Index (HDI)—on the level of Budapest’s district —for the measurement of quality of life (QOL). Besides applying HDI we also calculate an own made aggregated index to measure the differences of quality of life in Budapest. This index is based on objective factors, because from our perspective, quality of life may be defined as an objective measure of welfare which largely depends on the different environmental conditions in urban areas. On the other hand, we examine the main health indicators of the capital to define Budapest’s position in then “health” spatial structure of Hungary. From this analysis we can conclude that Budapest has an inconsistent situation in the country due to its favourable and unfavourable features.

As the result of the increasing significance of sports in recent decades, researchers in the field of urban geography have also devoted more attention to the influence that sports have on the structure of settlements. Although this phenomenon can be primarily examined in the case of larger events (e.g. Olympic Games), I believe that analyses on smaller scales can also yield important findings. According to researchers three categories of intra-urban locations of sport facilities can be identified: Using the example of Hungarian regional centres my paper is looking for answers to the following questions:

The almost uncountable infrastructural and other system elements make citizens’ life easier in post-modern societies. Normally these are all considered as obvious. Liveable urban places, their competitiveness and appreciation depends highly on the quality of the services available, such as the quality of public administration, finance system, energetic networks, economic capabilities, urban transportation systems, social entertainment, sport and recreation facilities and the like. The vulnerability of cities and their exposure to terrorist attacks arose after the 9/11 attacks. It give rise to many thoughts and associations if metropolises like New York, Washington DC, Tokyo, London, Paris, Madrid, Mumbai, New-Delhi, Bagdad, Istanbul, Athens are mentioned and since then, terrorism has become a frequent part of their obvious associations. How vulnerable the urban services can be that are now essential parts of their urban life? This study attempts to look beyond the terrorist threats of metropolises, cities and towns, and points out their defenceless exposures against their own infrastructural systems. Although an average city in Central-Europe has fortunately low risks from such points of view, other risk sources however, like accidents, natural disasters, and civilisation-based catastrophes are also retraceable. The authors attempt to find answers why urban studies in Central-Europe do not pay necessary attention to the city’s vulnerability analyses like their counterparts in the Western Countries do.