5 Post-Socialist Change in Budapest – the Immediate Context of Research

of the 2 largest Hungarian urban settlements. Source of data: CSO, 200Census CSO, Source of data: Hungarianof the2largest urban settlements. Figure 5.1 rank-size regularities, Hungary can be considered as an extraordinary case in Europe with of the rank-size regularities identified for Hungary is the primateof all the 994; As type. Short, settlements 996). Figure 5. (Cséfalvay, the According shows general below, type to Auerbach’s of Budapest in the spatial structure of Hungary can be presented via the rank-size Theregularities urban network of Hungary can be best described as: 5.1 Budapest in the Hungarian settlement system 5 – Budapest in change Post-socialist Population 2001 100,00 150,000 200,00 250,000 300,00 50,000 the immediate context of research of context immediate the 0 0 0 0 Population of the largest Hungarian urban settlements 200. The rank-sizeregularities Hungarian ofthelargest urban settlements200. Population Budapest 1. 1,818,750 Debrecen 2. Miskolc 3. Szeged 4. Pécs 5. Gyõr 6. Nyíregyháza 7. Kecskemét 8. Székesfehérvár 9. Szombathely 10. Szolnok 11. Tatabánya 12. Kaposvár 13. Békéscsaba 14. Veszprém 15. Zalaegerszeg 16. over-centralised Eger 17. Érd 18. Sopron 19. Dunaújváros 20. The. relative position Nagykanizsa 21. 6748 05 population of the second largest city (Debrecen) hardly exceeding 0% of that of Budapest. Even thought there are other spatially centralised Western European countries like France, Austria or Belgium still the internal primacy of Budapest is remarkable (Nemes Nagy and Szabó, 200). Studying the population of the Hungarian settlements it is striking that after Budapest there is a large gap in the list. The category of cities with population between 200 000 and million is completely missing, which makes economic and cultural decentralisation almost completely infeasible (Cséfalvay, 994). The historical path dependency of the settlement structure and hierarchy is explained by the economic history and the territorial changes of Hungary. Due to the physical distance from the mainstream capitalist states as well as further factors related to the geopolitical position of the country and historical calamities, the grand steps in mode of production and related social transformation have all happened with a considerable delay and with somewhat less intensity than in the Western states. This produced marked distinctions in the nature in the stages of urbanisation. Enyedi (982) claimed that the urban boom, which took place in Western Europe in the 8th and 9th century and caused a spatially more or less evenly distributed social-economic transformation in few decades, took almost a hundred years in Hungary. This hundred years of urbanisation can be divided into three eras regarding the intensity of the urbanisation process. The first period happened as the consequence of the capitalist modernisation including rapid industrialisation of the 860s and was only concentrated to Budapest. It did not notably affect the lower segments of the settlement hierarchy then. The engines of the late industrialisation of the 9th century were not the towns as it was the case with the advanced capitalist countries, but it was generated by external impacts such as foreign capital investments and the high number of people of foreign origin in the capital city (Cséfalvay, 999). The spatially uneven degree of urbanisation was due to the fact that Hungary concentrated only few, less capital intensive branches of industry such as food processing, milling industry, manufacturing agricultural machinery. These industries were unable to accumulate the amount of capital needed for the economic consolidation of towns and the whole settlement system (Cséfalvay, 999). The only advantage of this over-concentrated industrialisation and urban development was that new waves of production technologies, technical civilisation, social ideology, various cultural and artistic trends took root in the capital city (Beluszky, 992; Cséfalvay, 999). Budapest as the mediator of the capitalist development attracted all capital, the intellectual power and the related infrastructure developments. Because of its favourable geographical position and the systematic concentration of the development potentials, all the traffic routes, railways, roads were developed in a mono-centric arrangement. The mutual dependency of the city and the countryside further strengthened the mono-centric structure of the major traffic infrastructure. The secondary city line was located on the market line stretching on the rim of the Carpathian Basin and created a relative balance in the settlement structure. This line of larger towns consisted of places like Kosice; Uzsgorod; Oradea and Timisoara; Novi Sad, belong to Slovakia; the Ukraine; Rumania and Serbia respectively. The mono-centric traffic and settlement system became a serious problem when the ring of the secondary cities linked with lateral traffic connections, which produced relative symmetry in the space structure, was detached from the country in 920. The Post-World War period with governments thinking in terms of revision did not produce any measures neither for the formation of a new strong secondary city ring nor 06 for the lateral traffic connections (Flesicher, 998). The period coincided with the aforementioned stagnation in economic and urban development, as defined by Enyedi (982). Socialist industrialisation generated the second major urbanisation boom. In the beginning of the communist period the over-centralised traffic and settlement system perfectly reflected the centralised power structure (Flesicher, 998). Following the extensive period of socialist- industrialisation concentrating all resources in the development of heavy industry, mining and machine industry, a new era of intensive economic development commenced in the late 960s. The urban population growth appeared in the settlement system more evenly than in the first urban boom having seen almost only Budapest attracting state investments for new industries and so new industrial labour force. However, the number of towns increased only by between 945 and 960. The pace of increase intensified later2. As the consequence of the socialist urbanisation based on the planned economy, the network of middle- and large-sized towns3 developed quickly but industrialisation was not coupled with the development of sufficient infrastructural background (including housing) for everyday life4. The lack of proper infrastructure background became the major source of tension in the socialist urban transformation. In spite of the fact that the socialist industrialisation diverted growth from Budapest to the middle-sized towns by artificial means and openly favoured the evolution of the town network, socialist urbanisation in the sense of living standards and quality of life never managed to level development equally among the settlements. Budapest and the other larger towns always – and ever since then – tend to stick out as islands from the sea of traditional villages and agricultural towns. As early as 97, Konrád and Szelényi revealed the contradictions of socialist urbanisation. The social tensions of the times were attributed to under-urbanisation by which they referred to the slow pace of urbanisation. Practically it meant the lack of the small-sized town network and the lack of infrastructure (including housing) needed for proper urbanisation. Comparing to what Enyedi calls the two periods of urbanisation growth, Konrád and Szelényi (97) claimed that the urbanisation was a lot more moderate between 94 and 970 than in the late 9th century5. As the outcome of the decentralisation of production the consequential decentralisation of the settlement system took place in the 970s (Enyedi, 982) and was the result of the new economic strategy. The growth of towns slowed down especially that of the larger ones. At the same time the number of small towns was increasing. The urban agglomeration areas appeared by 980 60% of the population lived in settlements belonging to some agglomeration. The political economic and social change exerted what Schneller (2002) calls positional shock effect on the settlement system of Hungary, primarily on the medium-sized and big cities, especially on Budapest and its immediate surroundings. As he explains it means the change regarding the value in the positionality and locality of certain built and natural elements of various scale in the geographical environment; a kind of quick up and downgrading with respect to certain towns, neighbourhoods, houses, real estate and lands of agricultural use. “These radical changes seemingly not connected directly to the internal structure of the settlement in reality exerted an immense impact on them transforming the value of particular parts and their relatedness to one another. That is what I call “shock effect” (Schneller, 2002, p. 129) 07 In spite of the fact that the positional shock effect caused by post-socialist transformation gains relevance at the neighbourhood level, we quote it here as it seems relevant on the level of the settlement system too. The indirect socio-economic effects aforementioned, manifested in terms of globalisation in the competition of places made the Hungarian settlement system radically re- structure. Beluszky (999a) in his analyses of the post-socialist transformation of the settlement system, assessed the economic, social, administrative, regional development and demographic conditions of re-evaluation of places and the consequential re-structuralisation in the settlement- system.

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