Real-time tracking of the spatial diffusion of contact-based diseases, especially COVID-19, is a ... more Real-time tracking of the spatial diffusion of contact-based diseases, especially COVID-19, is a crucial point of recent academic studies and policymaking. Mobility networks provide a useful approach to grasp the complex and interrelated nature of spatiotemporal movement and the geographical spread of infectious diseases. In this simulation, we aimed at disclosing the spatial component of infection carried over by interpersonal encounters. The mobile call detail record (CDR) dataset we applied here is especially suited to estimate the number of interpersonal encounters enabled by co-locating the same space with an infected person within a definite timeframe. Based on the dataset, we elaborated a real-time lockdown model which can substantiate the smart urban pandemic management that fits into the smart city concept. A simulation was elaborated to prove that our model is suitable to scatter crowdedness around a central place and decrease personal exposure to infection. As our raster-level simulation showed that a wider area around the target site could be denoted with higher contamination risk, neighbourhoods are advised to be the spatial scale of smart intervention, which contributes to keeping infection risks at a manageable level. However, static visualisation can hardly represent the spatiotemporal dynamics that is taken place in the compelling interaction of smart closure at a central site and enhancing crowdedness at the boundaries. To overcome this, we elaborated a raster-rendered dynamic model throughout the day. The model addresses issues of real-time mobility sensing, spatiotemporally targeted actions, responsiveness to community problems and local resilience.
For a long time, tourism statistics were the only reliable source of information on tourism mobil... more For a long time, tourism statistics were the only reliable source of information on tourism mobility. Tourism statistics are inadequate for the analysis of tourist mobility within state borders and across Schengen Borders without using registered accommodations. Big data offers the opportunity to gain a better understanding of tourism movements, for example, same-day tourist flows in metropolitan areas. Here, we introduce the concept of the satellite traveller to more effectively investigate the nature of tourism between the large city and its surroundings. As tourists communicate via cellular devices, the use of mobile phones offers an opportunity for researchers to explore the mobility pattern of tourists. In this article, we discuss the specificities of mobility in Hungary by SIM card users registered in foreign countries. The analysis is based on the Telekom database. We seek to answer the question to what extent the information from the satellite tourists’ mobile phone use can ...
A tanulmány célja az egynapos látogatóforgalom (szatellit turizmus) nagyságának és speciális jell... more A tanulmány célja az egynapos látogatóforgalom (szatellit turizmus) nagyságának és speciális jellemzőinek elemzése a budapesti agglomerációhoz tartozó attraktív kisváros, Szentendre, példáján a Magyar Telekom mobiltelefon-hálózatának adatforgalma alapján. Elsőként meghatároztuk azokat a paramétereket, amelyek alkalmasak lehetnek a napi ingázás, ezen belül a külföldi és belföldi szatellit turisták azonosítására, majd ezeket egy saját fejlesztésű szoftver segítségével bizonyos időszakokra vonatkozóan lekérdeztük a cella-adatbázisból. A napi ingázási adathalmazból különböző validációs lépések segítségével elkülönítettük a turistákat a munkavállalási, a tanulási és a tranzit célú ingázóktól. Az adatbázisunk alapján 2019-ben kb. 510.000 főre becsültük a napi látogatóforgalom volumenét Szentendrén, amelynek 75%-a belföldi látogató. A hagyományos turizmushoz képest a szatellit turizmust kevésbé érinti a szezonalitás, de erőteljes hétköznap-hétvége dichotómia figyelhető meg, főleg a belföld...
Polycentricity is an issue that emerged as a spatial theoretical construction during the 1990s an... more Polycentricity is an issue that emerged as a spatial theoretical construction during the 1990s and that has indicated the increasing diversity and complexity of the enlarged European urban landscape. Since then the theory of polycentric urban development is widely considered as a panacea for structural weaknesses of cities at the European periphery and in the Western-European core in the same way. For a set of regions with dense urban pattern (Randstad, Rhine-Ruhr metropolis, the Flemish Diamond) in the European core region polycentricity became a development strategy to cope with negative consequences of extreme concentration. On the other hand, cities at the European periphery are provided with an adequate scale and size of agglomeration economy but purely embedded in urban networks. For them, polycentricity means a bundle of strategic actions to increase their availability in order to counterweight dominance of the robust European mega-city regions. As cities started to acknowledge political gains of polycentric networks, the concept has become part of the European spatial policy agenda since the end of 1990s. Under the framework of European spatial development policy, polycentric urban network is referred to as crucial requirement for sustainability and competitiveness and became a policy goal of spatial planning. Since 2004 the European economic area has been enlarged by peripheral countries of Central (and Eastern) Europe, where cities show solid marks of socialist urban development. Due to accession the urban network of Europe has been extended by overweight national capitals of predominantly monocentric intra-metropolitan structures. Moreover, the internal and external connectivity of urban network in Central Europe has remained limited since the fall of iron curtain which resulted in a weak hierarchical structure of Central European cities dominated by Vienna as the leading business headquarter. Beyond poor inter-metropolitan cooperation socialist urbanisation took also a long-run effect for intra-metropolitan relations, characterized by a core-city dominated metropolitan system of unidirectional flows directed exclusively to the monocenter. Scientific results on the current development of Central European urban network are however hardly available or theoretically poorly grounded (as polycentricity is conceived rather as a political conception). The POLYCE project funded by ESPON aimed at filling the gap of knowledge regarding the Central-European polycentric relations by using a common methodology. POLYCE investigated the morphological ad relational policentricity in Central Europe with both macro- (inter-metropolitan relations among the cities themselves and to rest of Europe and overseas) and micro-indicators (inter-metropolitan structures). It has been found that path-dependency of post-socialist cities is still a robust phenomenon as distribution of population and jobs in the metropolitan area of Prague, Bratislava, Ljubljana and Budapest was to a large extent concentrated to the core city in 2001. On the other hand, poly-directional relations among the core city and metropolitan subcentres or among subcentres – that could be undeniable facts for polycentric restructuring – were scarcely evolved in those four cities, except for Vienna. Vienna appears as a polycentric metropolitan region where despite the core-city dominance in population, functional relations have been evolved and strengthened among metropolitan centres and a plurality in directions of commuting flows emerged. Budapest and Prague, on the other hand, are prototypes for post-socialist monocentric metropolis with low level of reciprocal flows among metropolitan centres. Some evidences for restructuring towards a more polycentric and poly-directional metropolitan structure could be detected in Budapest. According to POLYCE findings the role of metropolitan subcentres has been strengthened and their ‘catchment area’ has been widened over the last decades. These trends clearly showed the restructuring of monocentric urban regions as it is described in the scientific literature. Further investigation is, however, needed regarding the geographical directions and dimensions of polycentric restructuring that is taking place around Central European metropolises.
Even though the concept of polycentric urban development has been high on the agenda in the liter... more Even though the concept of polycentric urban development has been high on the agenda in the literature it has rarely come to the fore in academic papers dealing with the postsocialist cities. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the evolving polycentric patt ern of urban development in the metropolitan region of Budapest. For the purpose of study we use commuting data of the 1990, 2001 and 2011 national census. The rapid transformation of Budapest aft er 1989 the re-establishment of market mechanisms, the privatisation of housing, the liberalisation of the property market, and the growing reintegration of the city to the world economy aff ected not only the core city but also the metropolitan periphery. The previously rather homogeneous structure of the metropolitan periphery experienced signifi cant changes in the course of the transformation. The advantages of location, which had been insignifi cant during the state-socialist period, once again became truly benefi cial which resulted in growing disparities in the metropolitan periphery. Since 1990 the functional interplay, cooperation, interdependence as well as physical infrastructural linkages between Budapest and its metropolitan zone have been further intensifi ed. Residential suburbanisation and the suburbanisation of business activities led to new fl ows of commuting within the metropolitan region. Our fi ndings show that the reallocation of urban functions took place in the wider metropolitan zone of Budapest among existing centres, which fi ts to the European version of post-suburbanisation concept rather than the US one.
A Tér és Társadalom 2010. évi 3. számában megjelent írásában Faragó László a magyar tervezési int... more A Tér és Társadalom 2010. évi 3. számában megjelent írásában Faragó László a magyar tervezési intézményrendszerből és kultúrából fájóan hiányzó településfejlesztési megközelítésre irányítja rá a figyelmet, Budapest metropolisztérségének tervezetlensége kapcsán. Faragó rámutat az etatista gyökerű magyar területfejlesztési gyakorlat eredményeképpen előálló, és a magyar városokat jellemző befelé fordulás diszfunkcióira. Világos összefüggést állít fel az agglomerációs gazdaságok növekedési kilátásai és szervezettségük/tervezettségük között, és a mellett az egyébként az európai városfejlesztési szcénában alapelvként alkalmazott felfogás mellett érvel, hogy a városi ersenyképesség (térszerkezeti és szervezési) alapja a hálózatosan szervezett metropolisz-régió. Időszerűnek gondoljuk a felvetést, hogy Magyarország nemzetközi szerepe kiemelkedően függ Budapestnek és várostérségének nemzetközi feladatvállalásától. Legutóbbi, metropolizációs témában szervezett konferenciánkon fővédnökünk, Enye...
There is a growing number of urban researches applying analytical tools of political economy avai... more There is a growing number of urban researches applying analytical tools of political economy available in Hungarian literature. However, the analyses refer almost entirely to the metropolitan core (in most cases, to Budapest), and rarely provide explanations of the mechanism producing suburban, or even increasingly urbanising rural spaces at the very periphery of a metropolis. This study aims to investigate the spatial structure of economic activity along the metropolitan edge around Budapest. Based on the spatial structure of entrepreneurial activity in the periphery, my goal is to interpret the urbanisation process and some particular findings on the political economy of the metropolitan periphery. I address the question of whether spatial morphology of joint corporations at the Budapest metropolitan periphery reflects typical spatial patterns of mature capitalist cities, i.e. specialisation and zonal settling of economic activity in the metropolitan region. Methodologically speaking, I use statistical data as well as a self-collected database of joint corporations, encompassing the whole metropolitan area of 56 settlements and 1312 companies. The data were geocoded and plotted. Based on the research findings I argue that there is neither sectoral, nor functional specialisation of joint corporations to be observed at the metropolitan periphery. This implies that urbanisation forms of mature capitalist city regions cannot be clearly identified around Budapest. The spatial economy of the Budapest metropolitan area seems rather to be boosted by the scale and size of the metropolitan market itself, than by global market integration. Based on the data analysis of joint corporations, the Budapest metropolitan area can provide just a few specialised services and products for the global market, and is able to an only limited degree to be integrated into the global commodity chains and production networks. Plotting corporations’ locations on the map shows a distribution of enterprises different in one settlement to that of another. Some local governments are able to concentrate economic activity to a few business parks within their administrative boundaries, but others seem to lose control over settling economic activities systematically. Some places seem to successfully internalise the pressure of neoliberal transformation, while others prove to be unresponsive to them. I argue that these differences are being produced by dissimilar relations between state and capital when comparing one settlement to another. I assume that the locally determined relations of state and capital lead to some variations in producing local economic spaces. To test that assumption I delimited a case-study area of three settlements (all of them showing dissimilar distribution pattern of entrepreneurial activities), where I made interviews with local decision makers, professionals and an investor. Discussing the interrelations between capital, state and place contributed to reveal state control and its mechanisms over producing places of economic activity. My interviewees pointed out the market-influencing practice and techniques of the local state, which reflects the neoliberal transformation of the capital-state interrelation.
Polycentricity is an issue that emerged as a spatial theoretical construction during the 1990s an... more Polycentricity is an issue that emerged as a spatial theoretical construction during the 1990s and that has indicated the increasing diversity and complexity of the enlarged European urban landscape. Since then the theory of polycentric urban development is widely considered as a panacea for structural weaknesses of cities at the European periphery and in the Western-European core in the same way. For a set of regions with dense urban pattern (Randstad, Rhine-Ruhr metropolis, the Flemish Diamond) in the European core region polycentricity became a development strategy to cope with negative consequences of extreme concentration. On the other hand, cities at the European periphery are provided with an adequate scale and size of agglomeration economy but purely embedded in urban networks. For them, polycentricity means a bundle of strategic actions to increase their availability in order to counterweight dominance of the robust European mega-city regions. As cities started to acknowledge political gains of polycentric networks, the concept has become part of the European spatial policy agenda since the end of 1990s. Under the framework of European spatial development policy, polycentric urban network is referred to as crucial requirement for sustainability and competitiveness and became a policy goal of spatial planning. Since 2004 the European economic area has been enlarged by peripheral countries of Central (and Eastern) Europe, where cities show solid marks of socialist urban development. Due to accession the urban network of Europe has been extended by overweight national capitals of predominantly monocentric intra-metropolitan structures. Moreover, the internal and external connectivity of urban network in Central Europe has remained limited since the fall of iron curtain which resulted in a weak hierarchical structure of Central European cities dominated by Vienna as the leading business headquarter. Beyond poor inter-metropolitan cooperation socialist urbanisation took also a long-run effect for intra-metropolitan relations, characterized by a core-city dominated metropolitan system of unidirectional flows directed exclusively to the monocenter. Scientific results on the current development of Central European urban network are however hardly available or theoretically poorly grounded (as polycentricity is conceived rather as a political conception). The POLYCE project funded by ESPON aimed at filling the gap of knowledge regarding the Central-European polycentric relations by using a common methodology. POLYCE investigated the morphological ad relational policentricity in Central Europe with both macro- (inter-metropolitan relations among the cities themselves and to rest of Europe and overseas) and micro-indicators (inter-metropolitan structures). It has been found that path-dependency of post-socialist cities is still a robust phenomenon as distribution of population and jobs in the metropolitan area of Prague, Bratislava, Ljubljana and Budapest was to a large extent concentrated to the core city in 2001. On the other hand, poly-directional relations among the core city and metropolitan subcentres or among subcentres – that could be undeniable facts for polycentric restructuring – were scarcely evolved in those four cities, except for Vienna. Vienna appears as a polycentric metropolitan region where despite the core-city dominance in population, functional relations have been evolved and strengthened among metropolitan centres and a plurality in directions of commuting flows emerged. Budapest and Prague, on the other hand, are prototypes for post-socialist monocentric metropolis with low level of reciprocal flows among metropolitan centres. Some evidences for restructuring towards a more polycentric and poly-directional metropolitan structure could be detected in Budapest. According to POLYCE findings the role of metropolitan subcentres has been strengthened and their ‘catchment area’ has been widened over the last decades. These trends clearly showed the restructuring of monocentric urban regions as it is described in the scientific literature. Further investigation is, however, needed regarding the geographical directions and dimensions of polycentric restructuring that is taking place around Central European metropolises.
Metropolis, medina, city, city state, polis – for millennia, communities of varying sizes have sh... more Metropolis, medina, city, city state, polis – for millennia, communities of varying sizes have shaped spaces and forms of coexistence – rhetorically as well as physically – and have attempted to provide the best possible answers to the current and foreseeable challenges of a particular age. New methods are sought and new theories are experimented with to enable settlements – at their borders and within their central areas – to be more successful, efficient, liveable and ‘communal’. At the Municipality of Budapest we have set ourselves no less a goal than attaining for Budapest the long term status of a successful metropolis in a transforming European Union. In support of this we not only set the basis of a metropolitan scale cooperation of metropolitan towns, but established the conceptual frameworks of a spatial development strategy of Budapest Metropolis. The Draft Metropolitan Structure Plan being in hand is the subsequent milestone of our ambitious initiative to provide a high-scale investment programme for the metropolitan Budapest. One such highlighted initiative is our programme called ‘Metropoly – Budapest Unlimited’, which provides an opportunity for the new urban coalition or metropolitan region forming around the Municipality of Budapest to share knowledge and form a joint co-ordinated development. We are also proud of our Danube programmes, which will revitalise the Metropolis’ ‘main street‘, the river Danube - known (or forgotten) as the city’s enduring symbol -, and which will involve the Danube in the life of the city, Hungary and, hopefully the European Union, too. Perhaps it is clear from the above that dialogue stands at the heart of our work in urban development. We build our programmes on interaction and reciprocity rather than on one-way communication, because we believe that all players of Budapest and the city region can only be successful in a New Europe if jointly accepted values and jointly applied new methods come into being through dialogue.
With the help of the case study of Aquaworld Resort Budapest (ARB) the paper focuses upon
the spe... more With the help of the case study of Aquaworld Resort Budapest (ARB) the paper focuses upon the specific features of the tourism in urban-rural fringe. Although importance of urban-rural fringe has increased in the post-industrial urban development period, the results of literature review show, that investigation of the tourism is rather incomplete in this zone, new analyses seems to be necessary (Weaver, D.B. 2005). This paper contains a descriptive case study of ARB, which is a hotel and water park complex in the urban-rural fringe of Budapest. While the hotel is focusing upon international guests, the spa complex is visited mostly by local residents. The results of research indicate that only the amalgamation of different services and visitors is able to lay the foundation of ARB. Aquaworld’s success is an inherent manifestation of post socialist and post suburban context of political, social and institutional arrangements of the millennial Budapest. In the fringe of this post socialist city, urbanization of capital makes significant gains from the transmittance of more compact city (e.g. more consumers live here), the weak planning environment, and post suburban restructuring in the urban-rural fringe.
A Tér és Társadalom 2010. évi 3. számában megjelent írásában Faragó László a magyar tervezési int... more A Tér és Társadalom 2010. évi 3. számában megjelent írásában Faragó László a magyar tervezési intézményrendszerből és kultúrából fájóan hiányzó településfejlesztési megközelítésre irányítja rá a figyelmet, Budapest metropolisztérségének tervezetlensége kapcsán. Faragó rámutat az etatista gyökerű magyar területfejlesztési gyakorlat eredményeképpen előálló, és a magyar városokat jellemző befelé fordulás diszfunkcióira. Világos összefüggést állít fel az agglomerációs gazdaságok növekedési kilátásai és szervezettségük/tervezettségük között, és a mellett az egyébként az európai városfejlesztési szcénában alapelvként alkalmazott felfogás mellett érvel, hogy a városi ersenyképesség (térszerkezeti és szervezési) alapja a hálózatosan szervezett metropolisz-régió. Időszerűnek gondoljuk a felvetést, hogy Magyarország nemzetközi szerepe kiemelkedően függ Budapestnek és várostérségének nemzetközi feladatvállalásától. Legutóbbi, metropolizációs témában szervezett konferenciánkon fővédnökünk, Enyedi professzor úr is megerősítette: a jelen és a közeli belátható jövő szempontjából Budapest metropolisz-régió fejlődése nemzeti érdek, hiszen az „hazánk egyetlen globális nagyvárosi régiója, amelynek sikere vagy hanyatlása alapvetően befolyásolja az ország egészének a sorsát”. Különösképpen értékesnek tartjuk Faragó felvetését az ország érdekében megszervezendő budapesti metropolisz-régióról, amelyhez azonban a legelső és kihagyhatatlan lépés egyfajta társadalmi konszenzus arról, milyen térszerkezetet szeretnénk, s ez milyen városhálózatot és infrastruktúrát igényel? Válaszunkban ez utóbbi felvetést kívánjuk továbbgondolni, érvelve az általunk alkalmazott területi fókuszú és térszerkezet-fejlesztésre alapozott gazdaságfejlesztési megközelítés mellett.
Even though the concept of polycentric urban development has been high on the agenda in the liter... more Even though the concept of polycentric urban development has been high on the agenda in the literature it has rarely come to the fore in academic papers dealing with the postsocialist cities. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the evolving polycentric pattern of urban development in the metropolitan region of Budapest. For the purpose of study we use commuting data of the 1990, 2001 and 2011 national census. The rapid transformation of Budapest after 1989 the re-establishment of market mechanisms, the privatisation of housing, the liberalisation of the property market, and the growing re-integration of the city to the world economy affected not only the core city but also the metropolitan periphery. The previously rather homogeneous structure of the metropolitan periphery experienced signifi cant changes in the course of the transformation. The advantages of location, which had been insignifi cant during the state-socialist period, once again became truly beneficial which resulted in growing disparities in the metropolitan periphery. Since 1990 the functional interplay, cooperation, interdependence as well as physical infrastructural linkages between Budapest and its metropolitan zone have been further intensifi ed. Residential suburbanisation and the suburbanisation of business activities led to new fl ows of commuting within the metropolitan region. Our fi ndings show that the reallocation of urban functions took place in the wider metropolitan zone of Budapest among existing centres, which fits to the European version of post-suburbanisation concept rather than the US one.
Real-time tracking of the spatial diffusion of contact-based diseases, especially COVID-19, is a ... more Real-time tracking of the spatial diffusion of contact-based diseases, especially COVID-19, is a crucial point of recent academic studies and policymaking. Mobility networks provide a useful approach to grasp the complex and interrelated nature of spatiotemporal movement and the geographical spread of infectious diseases. In this simulation, we aimed at disclosing the spatial component of infection carried over by interpersonal encounters. The mobile call detail record (CDR) dataset we applied here is especially suited to estimate the number of interpersonal encounters enabled by co-locating the same space with an infected person within a definite timeframe. Based on the dataset, we elaborated a real-time lockdown model which can substantiate the smart urban pandemic management that fits into the smart city concept. A simulation was elaborated to prove that our model is suitable to scatter crowdedness around a central place and decrease personal exposure to infection. As our raster-level simulation showed that a wider area around the target site could be denoted with higher contamination risk, neighbourhoods are advised to be the spatial scale of smart intervention, which contributes to keeping infection risks at a manageable level. However, static visualisation can hardly represent the spatiotemporal dynamics that is taken place in the compelling interaction of smart closure at a central site and enhancing crowdedness at the boundaries. To overcome this, we elaborated a raster-rendered dynamic model throughout the day. The model addresses issues of real-time mobility sensing, spatiotemporally targeted actions, responsiveness to community problems and local resilience.
For a long time, tourism statistics were the only reliable source of information on tourism mobil... more For a long time, tourism statistics were the only reliable source of information on tourism mobility. Tourism statistics are inadequate for the analysis of tourist mobility within state borders and across Schengen Borders without using registered accommodations. Big data offers the opportunity to gain a better understanding of tourism movements, for example, same-day tourist flows in metropolitan areas. Here, we introduce the concept of the satellite traveller to more effectively investigate the nature of tourism between the large city and its surroundings. As tourists communicate via cellular devices, the use of mobile phones offers an opportunity for researchers to explore the mobility pattern of tourists. In this article, we discuss the specificities of mobility in Hungary by SIM card users registered in foreign countries. The analysis is based on the Telekom database. We seek to answer the question to what extent the information from the satellite tourists’ mobile phone use can ...
A tanulmány célja az egynapos látogatóforgalom (szatellit turizmus) nagyságának és speciális jell... more A tanulmány célja az egynapos látogatóforgalom (szatellit turizmus) nagyságának és speciális jellemzőinek elemzése a budapesti agglomerációhoz tartozó attraktív kisváros, Szentendre, példáján a Magyar Telekom mobiltelefon-hálózatának adatforgalma alapján. Elsőként meghatároztuk azokat a paramétereket, amelyek alkalmasak lehetnek a napi ingázás, ezen belül a külföldi és belföldi szatellit turisták azonosítására, majd ezeket egy saját fejlesztésű szoftver segítségével bizonyos időszakokra vonatkozóan lekérdeztük a cella-adatbázisból. A napi ingázási adathalmazból különböző validációs lépések segítségével elkülönítettük a turistákat a munkavállalási, a tanulási és a tranzit célú ingázóktól. Az adatbázisunk alapján 2019-ben kb. 510.000 főre becsültük a napi látogatóforgalom volumenét Szentendrén, amelynek 75%-a belföldi látogató. A hagyományos turizmushoz képest a szatellit turizmust kevésbé érinti a szezonalitás, de erőteljes hétköznap-hétvége dichotómia figyelhető meg, főleg a belföld...
Polycentricity is an issue that emerged as a spatial theoretical construction during the 1990s an... more Polycentricity is an issue that emerged as a spatial theoretical construction during the 1990s and that has indicated the increasing diversity and complexity of the enlarged European urban landscape. Since then the theory of polycentric urban development is widely considered as a panacea for structural weaknesses of cities at the European periphery and in the Western-European core in the same way. For a set of regions with dense urban pattern (Randstad, Rhine-Ruhr metropolis, the Flemish Diamond) in the European core region polycentricity became a development strategy to cope with negative consequences of extreme concentration. On the other hand, cities at the European periphery are provided with an adequate scale and size of agglomeration economy but purely embedded in urban networks. For them, polycentricity means a bundle of strategic actions to increase their availability in order to counterweight dominance of the robust European mega-city regions. As cities started to acknowledge political gains of polycentric networks, the concept has become part of the European spatial policy agenda since the end of 1990s. Under the framework of European spatial development policy, polycentric urban network is referred to as crucial requirement for sustainability and competitiveness and became a policy goal of spatial planning. Since 2004 the European economic area has been enlarged by peripheral countries of Central (and Eastern) Europe, where cities show solid marks of socialist urban development. Due to accession the urban network of Europe has been extended by overweight national capitals of predominantly monocentric intra-metropolitan structures. Moreover, the internal and external connectivity of urban network in Central Europe has remained limited since the fall of iron curtain which resulted in a weak hierarchical structure of Central European cities dominated by Vienna as the leading business headquarter. Beyond poor inter-metropolitan cooperation socialist urbanisation took also a long-run effect for intra-metropolitan relations, characterized by a core-city dominated metropolitan system of unidirectional flows directed exclusively to the monocenter. Scientific results on the current development of Central European urban network are however hardly available or theoretically poorly grounded (as polycentricity is conceived rather as a political conception). The POLYCE project funded by ESPON aimed at filling the gap of knowledge regarding the Central-European polycentric relations by using a common methodology. POLYCE investigated the morphological ad relational policentricity in Central Europe with both macro- (inter-metropolitan relations among the cities themselves and to rest of Europe and overseas) and micro-indicators (inter-metropolitan structures). It has been found that path-dependency of post-socialist cities is still a robust phenomenon as distribution of population and jobs in the metropolitan area of Prague, Bratislava, Ljubljana and Budapest was to a large extent concentrated to the core city in 2001. On the other hand, poly-directional relations among the core city and metropolitan subcentres or among subcentres – that could be undeniable facts for polycentric restructuring – were scarcely evolved in those four cities, except for Vienna. Vienna appears as a polycentric metropolitan region where despite the core-city dominance in population, functional relations have been evolved and strengthened among metropolitan centres and a plurality in directions of commuting flows emerged. Budapest and Prague, on the other hand, are prototypes for post-socialist monocentric metropolis with low level of reciprocal flows among metropolitan centres. Some evidences for restructuring towards a more polycentric and poly-directional metropolitan structure could be detected in Budapest. According to POLYCE findings the role of metropolitan subcentres has been strengthened and their ‘catchment area’ has been widened over the last decades. These trends clearly showed the restructuring of monocentric urban regions as it is described in the scientific literature. Further investigation is, however, needed regarding the geographical directions and dimensions of polycentric restructuring that is taking place around Central European metropolises.
Even though the concept of polycentric urban development has been high on the agenda in the liter... more Even though the concept of polycentric urban development has been high on the agenda in the literature it has rarely come to the fore in academic papers dealing with the postsocialist cities. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the evolving polycentric patt ern of urban development in the metropolitan region of Budapest. For the purpose of study we use commuting data of the 1990, 2001 and 2011 national census. The rapid transformation of Budapest aft er 1989 the re-establishment of market mechanisms, the privatisation of housing, the liberalisation of the property market, and the growing reintegration of the city to the world economy aff ected not only the core city but also the metropolitan periphery. The previously rather homogeneous structure of the metropolitan periphery experienced signifi cant changes in the course of the transformation. The advantages of location, which had been insignifi cant during the state-socialist period, once again became truly benefi cial which resulted in growing disparities in the metropolitan periphery. Since 1990 the functional interplay, cooperation, interdependence as well as physical infrastructural linkages between Budapest and its metropolitan zone have been further intensifi ed. Residential suburbanisation and the suburbanisation of business activities led to new fl ows of commuting within the metropolitan region. Our fi ndings show that the reallocation of urban functions took place in the wider metropolitan zone of Budapest among existing centres, which fi ts to the European version of post-suburbanisation concept rather than the US one.
A Tér és Társadalom 2010. évi 3. számában megjelent írásában Faragó László a magyar tervezési int... more A Tér és Társadalom 2010. évi 3. számában megjelent írásában Faragó László a magyar tervezési intézményrendszerből és kultúrából fájóan hiányzó településfejlesztési megközelítésre irányítja rá a figyelmet, Budapest metropolisztérségének tervezetlensége kapcsán. Faragó rámutat az etatista gyökerű magyar területfejlesztési gyakorlat eredményeképpen előálló, és a magyar városokat jellemző befelé fordulás diszfunkcióira. Világos összefüggést állít fel az agglomerációs gazdaságok növekedési kilátásai és szervezettségük/tervezettségük között, és a mellett az egyébként az európai városfejlesztési szcénában alapelvként alkalmazott felfogás mellett érvel, hogy a városi ersenyképesség (térszerkezeti és szervezési) alapja a hálózatosan szervezett metropolisz-régió. Időszerűnek gondoljuk a felvetést, hogy Magyarország nemzetközi szerepe kiemelkedően függ Budapestnek és várostérségének nemzetközi feladatvállalásától. Legutóbbi, metropolizációs témában szervezett konferenciánkon fővédnökünk, Enye...
There is a growing number of urban researches applying analytical tools of political economy avai... more There is a growing number of urban researches applying analytical tools of political economy available in Hungarian literature. However, the analyses refer almost entirely to the metropolitan core (in most cases, to Budapest), and rarely provide explanations of the mechanism producing suburban, or even increasingly urbanising rural spaces at the very periphery of a metropolis. This study aims to investigate the spatial structure of economic activity along the metropolitan edge around Budapest. Based on the spatial structure of entrepreneurial activity in the periphery, my goal is to interpret the urbanisation process and some particular findings on the political economy of the metropolitan periphery. I address the question of whether spatial morphology of joint corporations at the Budapest metropolitan periphery reflects typical spatial patterns of mature capitalist cities, i.e. specialisation and zonal settling of economic activity in the metropolitan region. Methodologically speaking, I use statistical data as well as a self-collected database of joint corporations, encompassing the whole metropolitan area of 56 settlements and 1312 companies. The data were geocoded and plotted. Based on the research findings I argue that there is neither sectoral, nor functional specialisation of joint corporations to be observed at the metropolitan periphery. This implies that urbanisation forms of mature capitalist city regions cannot be clearly identified around Budapest. The spatial economy of the Budapest metropolitan area seems rather to be boosted by the scale and size of the metropolitan market itself, than by global market integration. Based on the data analysis of joint corporations, the Budapest metropolitan area can provide just a few specialised services and products for the global market, and is able to an only limited degree to be integrated into the global commodity chains and production networks. Plotting corporations’ locations on the map shows a distribution of enterprises different in one settlement to that of another. Some local governments are able to concentrate economic activity to a few business parks within their administrative boundaries, but others seem to lose control over settling economic activities systematically. Some places seem to successfully internalise the pressure of neoliberal transformation, while others prove to be unresponsive to them. I argue that these differences are being produced by dissimilar relations between state and capital when comparing one settlement to another. I assume that the locally determined relations of state and capital lead to some variations in producing local economic spaces. To test that assumption I delimited a case-study area of three settlements (all of them showing dissimilar distribution pattern of entrepreneurial activities), where I made interviews with local decision makers, professionals and an investor. Discussing the interrelations between capital, state and place contributed to reveal state control and its mechanisms over producing places of economic activity. My interviewees pointed out the market-influencing practice and techniques of the local state, which reflects the neoliberal transformation of the capital-state interrelation.
Polycentricity is an issue that emerged as a spatial theoretical construction during the 1990s an... more Polycentricity is an issue that emerged as a spatial theoretical construction during the 1990s and that has indicated the increasing diversity and complexity of the enlarged European urban landscape. Since then the theory of polycentric urban development is widely considered as a panacea for structural weaknesses of cities at the European periphery and in the Western-European core in the same way. For a set of regions with dense urban pattern (Randstad, Rhine-Ruhr metropolis, the Flemish Diamond) in the European core region polycentricity became a development strategy to cope with negative consequences of extreme concentration. On the other hand, cities at the European periphery are provided with an adequate scale and size of agglomeration economy but purely embedded in urban networks. For them, polycentricity means a bundle of strategic actions to increase their availability in order to counterweight dominance of the robust European mega-city regions. As cities started to acknowledge political gains of polycentric networks, the concept has become part of the European spatial policy agenda since the end of 1990s. Under the framework of European spatial development policy, polycentric urban network is referred to as crucial requirement for sustainability and competitiveness and became a policy goal of spatial planning. Since 2004 the European economic area has been enlarged by peripheral countries of Central (and Eastern) Europe, where cities show solid marks of socialist urban development. Due to accession the urban network of Europe has been extended by overweight national capitals of predominantly monocentric intra-metropolitan structures. Moreover, the internal and external connectivity of urban network in Central Europe has remained limited since the fall of iron curtain which resulted in a weak hierarchical structure of Central European cities dominated by Vienna as the leading business headquarter. Beyond poor inter-metropolitan cooperation socialist urbanisation took also a long-run effect for intra-metropolitan relations, characterized by a core-city dominated metropolitan system of unidirectional flows directed exclusively to the monocenter. Scientific results on the current development of Central European urban network are however hardly available or theoretically poorly grounded (as polycentricity is conceived rather as a political conception). The POLYCE project funded by ESPON aimed at filling the gap of knowledge regarding the Central-European polycentric relations by using a common methodology. POLYCE investigated the morphological ad relational policentricity in Central Europe with both macro- (inter-metropolitan relations among the cities themselves and to rest of Europe and overseas) and micro-indicators (inter-metropolitan structures). It has been found that path-dependency of post-socialist cities is still a robust phenomenon as distribution of population and jobs in the metropolitan area of Prague, Bratislava, Ljubljana and Budapest was to a large extent concentrated to the core city in 2001. On the other hand, poly-directional relations among the core city and metropolitan subcentres or among subcentres – that could be undeniable facts for polycentric restructuring – were scarcely evolved in those four cities, except for Vienna. Vienna appears as a polycentric metropolitan region where despite the core-city dominance in population, functional relations have been evolved and strengthened among metropolitan centres and a plurality in directions of commuting flows emerged. Budapest and Prague, on the other hand, are prototypes for post-socialist monocentric metropolis with low level of reciprocal flows among metropolitan centres. Some evidences for restructuring towards a more polycentric and poly-directional metropolitan structure could be detected in Budapest. According to POLYCE findings the role of metropolitan subcentres has been strengthened and their ‘catchment area’ has been widened over the last decades. These trends clearly showed the restructuring of monocentric urban regions as it is described in the scientific literature. Further investigation is, however, needed regarding the geographical directions and dimensions of polycentric restructuring that is taking place around Central European metropolises.
Metropolis, medina, city, city state, polis – for millennia, communities of varying sizes have sh... more Metropolis, medina, city, city state, polis – for millennia, communities of varying sizes have shaped spaces and forms of coexistence – rhetorically as well as physically – and have attempted to provide the best possible answers to the current and foreseeable challenges of a particular age. New methods are sought and new theories are experimented with to enable settlements – at their borders and within their central areas – to be more successful, efficient, liveable and ‘communal’. At the Municipality of Budapest we have set ourselves no less a goal than attaining for Budapest the long term status of a successful metropolis in a transforming European Union. In support of this we not only set the basis of a metropolitan scale cooperation of metropolitan towns, but established the conceptual frameworks of a spatial development strategy of Budapest Metropolis. The Draft Metropolitan Structure Plan being in hand is the subsequent milestone of our ambitious initiative to provide a high-scale investment programme for the metropolitan Budapest. One such highlighted initiative is our programme called ‘Metropoly – Budapest Unlimited’, which provides an opportunity for the new urban coalition or metropolitan region forming around the Municipality of Budapest to share knowledge and form a joint co-ordinated development. We are also proud of our Danube programmes, which will revitalise the Metropolis’ ‘main street‘, the river Danube - known (or forgotten) as the city’s enduring symbol -, and which will involve the Danube in the life of the city, Hungary and, hopefully the European Union, too. Perhaps it is clear from the above that dialogue stands at the heart of our work in urban development. We build our programmes on interaction and reciprocity rather than on one-way communication, because we believe that all players of Budapest and the city region can only be successful in a New Europe if jointly accepted values and jointly applied new methods come into being through dialogue.
With the help of the case study of Aquaworld Resort Budapest (ARB) the paper focuses upon
the spe... more With the help of the case study of Aquaworld Resort Budapest (ARB) the paper focuses upon the specific features of the tourism in urban-rural fringe. Although importance of urban-rural fringe has increased in the post-industrial urban development period, the results of literature review show, that investigation of the tourism is rather incomplete in this zone, new analyses seems to be necessary (Weaver, D.B. 2005). This paper contains a descriptive case study of ARB, which is a hotel and water park complex in the urban-rural fringe of Budapest. While the hotel is focusing upon international guests, the spa complex is visited mostly by local residents. The results of research indicate that only the amalgamation of different services and visitors is able to lay the foundation of ARB. Aquaworld’s success is an inherent manifestation of post socialist and post suburban context of political, social and institutional arrangements of the millennial Budapest. In the fringe of this post socialist city, urbanization of capital makes significant gains from the transmittance of more compact city (e.g. more consumers live here), the weak planning environment, and post suburban restructuring in the urban-rural fringe.
A Tér és Társadalom 2010. évi 3. számában megjelent írásában Faragó László a magyar tervezési int... more A Tér és Társadalom 2010. évi 3. számában megjelent írásában Faragó László a magyar tervezési intézményrendszerből és kultúrából fájóan hiányzó településfejlesztési megközelítésre irányítja rá a figyelmet, Budapest metropolisztérségének tervezetlensége kapcsán. Faragó rámutat az etatista gyökerű magyar területfejlesztési gyakorlat eredményeképpen előálló, és a magyar városokat jellemző befelé fordulás diszfunkcióira. Világos összefüggést állít fel az agglomerációs gazdaságok növekedési kilátásai és szervezettségük/tervezettségük között, és a mellett az egyébként az európai városfejlesztési szcénában alapelvként alkalmazott felfogás mellett érvel, hogy a városi ersenyképesség (térszerkezeti és szervezési) alapja a hálózatosan szervezett metropolisz-régió. Időszerűnek gondoljuk a felvetést, hogy Magyarország nemzetközi szerepe kiemelkedően függ Budapestnek és várostérségének nemzetközi feladatvállalásától. Legutóbbi, metropolizációs témában szervezett konferenciánkon fővédnökünk, Enyedi professzor úr is megerősítette: a jelen és a közeli belátható jövő szempontjából Budapest metropolisz-régió fejlődése nemzeti érdek, hiszen az „hazánk egyetlen globális nagyvárosi régiója, amelynek sikere vagy hanyatlása alapvetően befolyásolja az ország egészének a sorsát”. Különösképpen értékesnek tartjuk Faragó felvetését az ország érdekében megszervezendő budapesti metropolisz-régióról, amelyhez azonban a legelső és kihagyhatatlan lépés egyfajta társadalmi konszenzus arról, milyen térszerkezetet szeretnénk, s ez milyen városhálózatot és infrastruktúrát igényel? Válaszunkban ez utóbbi felvetést kívánjuk továbbgondolni, érvelve az általunk alkalmazott területi fókuszú és térszerkezet-fejlesztésre alapozott gazdaságfejlesztési megközelítés mellett.
Even though the concept of polycentric urban development has been high on the agenda in the liter... more Even though the concept of polycentric urban development has been high on the agenda in the literature it has rarely come to the fore in academic papers dealing with the postsocialist cities. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the evolving polycentric pattern of urban development in the metropolitan region of Budapest. For the purpose of study we use commuting data of the 1990, 2001 and 2011 national census. The rapid transformation of Budapest after 1989 the re-establishment of market mechanisms, the privatisation of housing, the liberalisation of the property market, and the growing re-integration of the city to the world economy affected not only the core city but also the metropolitan periphery. The previously rather homogeneous structure of the metropolitan periphery experienced signifi cant changes in the course of the transformation. The advantages of location, which had been insignifi cant during the state-socialist period, once again became truly beneficial which resulted in growing disparities in the metropolitan periphery. Since 1990 the functional interplay, cooperation, interdependence as well as physical infrastructural linkages between Budapest and its metropolitan zone have been further intensifi ed. Residential suburbanisation and the suburbanisation of business activities led to new fl ows of commuting within the metropolitan region. Our fi ndings show that the reallocation of urban functions took place in the wider metropolitan zone of Budapest among existing centres, which fits to the European version of post-suburbanisation concept rather than the US one.
Uploads
Papers by Tunde Szabo
Methodologically speaking, I use statistical data as well as a self-collected database of joint corporations, encompassing the whole metropolitan area of 56 settlements and 1312 companies. The data were geocoded and plotted. Based on the research findings I argue that there is neither sectoral, nor functional specialisation of joint corporations to be observed at the metropolitan periphery. This implies that urbanisation forms of mature capitalist city regions cannot be clearly identified around Budapest. The spatial economy of the Budapest metropolitan area seems rather to be boosted by the scale and size of the metropolitan market itself, than by global market integration. Based on the data analysis of joint corporations, the Budapest metropolitan area can provide just a few specialised services and products for the global market, and is able to an only limited degree to be integrated into the global commodity chains and production networks.
Plotting corporations’ locations on the map shows a distribution of enterprises different in one settlement to that of another. Some local governments are able to concentrate economic activity to a few business parks within their administrative boundaries, but others seem to lose control over settling economic activities systematically. Some places seem to successfully internalise the pressure of neoliberal transformation, while others prove to be unresponsive to them. I argue that these differences are being produced by dissimilar relations between state and capital when comparing one settlement to another. I assume that the locally determined relations of state and capital lead to some variations in producing local economic spaces. To test that assumption I delimited a case-study area of three settlements (all of them showing dissimilar distribution pattern of entrepreneurial activities), where I made interviews with local decision makers, professionals and an investor. Discussing the interrelations between capital, state and place contributed to reveal state control and its mechanisms over producing places of economic activity. My interviewees pointed out the market-influencing practice and techniques of the local state, which reflects the neoliberal transformation of the capital-state interrelation.
coexistence – rhetorically as well as physically – and have attempted to provide the best possible answers to the current
and foreseeable challenges of a particular age. New methods are sought and new theories are experimented with to enable
settlements – at their borders and within their central areas – to be more successful, efficient, liveable and ‘communal’.
At the Municipality of Budapest we have set ourselves no less a goal than attaining for Budapest the long term status of
a successful metropolis in a transforming European Union. In support of this we not only set the basis of a metropolitan
scale cooperation of metropolitan towns, but established the conceptual frameworks of a spatial development strategy of
Budapest Metropolis. The Draft Metropolitan Structure Plan being in hand is the subsequent milestone of our ambitious
initiative to provide a high-scale investment programme for the metropolitan Budapest.
One such highlighted initiative is our programme called ‘Metropoly – Budapest Unlimited’, which provides an opportunity
for the new urban coalition or metropolitan region forming around the Municipality of Budapest to share knowledge and
form a joint co-ordinated development. We are also proud of our Danube programmes, which will revitalise the Metropolis’
‘main street‘, the river Danube - known (or forgotten) as the city’s enduring symbol -, and which will involve the Danube in
the life of the city, Hungary and, hopefully the European Union, too.
Perhaps it is clear from the above that dialogue stands at the heart of our work in urban development. We build our
programmes on interaction and reciprocity rather than on one-way communication, because we believe that all players
of Budapest and the city region can only be successful in a New Europe if jointly accepted values and jointly applied new
methods come into being through dialogue.
the specific features of the tourism in urban-rural fringe. Although importance of urban-rural
fringe has increased in the post-industrial urban development period, the results of literature
review show, that investigation of the tourism is rather incomplete in this zone, new analyses
seems to be necessary (Weaver, D.B. 2005). This paper contains a descriptive case study of
ARB, which is a hotel and water park complex in the urban-rural fringe of Budapest. While
the hotel is focusing upon international guests, the spa complex is visited mostly by local
residents. The results of research indicate that only the amalgamation of different services
and visitors is able to lay the foundation of ARB. Aquaworld’s success is an inherent
manifestation of post socialist and post suburban context of political, social and institutional
arrangements of the millennial Budapest. In the fringe of this post socialist city, urbanization
of capital makes significant gains from the transmittance of more compact city (e.g. more
consumers live here), the weak planning environment, and post suburban restructuring in the
urban-rural fringe.
Időszerűnek gondoljuk a felvetést, hogy Magyarország nemzetközi szerepe kiemelkedően függ Budapestnek és várostérségének nemzetközi feladatvállalásától. Legutóbbi, metropolizációs témában szervezett konferenciánkon fővédnökünk, Enyedi professzor úr is megerősítette: a jelen és a közeli belátható jövő szempontjából Budapest metropolisz-régió fejlődése nemzeti érdek, hiszen az „hazánk egyetlen globális nagyvárosi régiója, amelynek sikere vagy
hanyatlása alapvetően befolyásolja az ország egészének a sorsát”.
Különösképpen értékesnek tartjuk Faragó felvetését az ország érdekében megszervezendő budapesti metropolisz-régióról, amelyhez azonban a legelső és kihagyhatatlan lépés egyfajta társadalmi konszenzus arról, milyen térszerkezetet szeretnénk, s ez milyen városhálózatot és infrastruktúrát igényel? Válaszunkban ez utóbbi felvetést kívánjuk továbbgondolni, érvelve az általunk alkalmazott területi fókuszú és térszerkezet-fejlesztésre alapozott gazdaságfejlesztési megközelítés mellett.
use commuting data of the 1990, 2001 and 2011 national census. The rapid transformation of Budapest after 1989 the re-establishment of market mechanisms, the privatisation of
housing, the liberalisation of the property market, and the growing re-integration of the city to the world economy affected not only the core city but also the metropolitan periphery. The previously rather homogeneous structure of the metropolitan periphery experienced signifi cant changes in the course of the transformation. The advantages of location, which
had been insignifi cant during the state-socialist period, once again became truly beneficial which resulted in growing disparities in the metropolitan periphery. Since 1990 the functional interplay, cooperation, interdependence as well as physical infrastructural linkages between Budapest and its metropolitan zone have been further intensifi ed. Residential suburbanisation and the suburbanisation of business activities led to new fl ows of commuting within the metropolitan region. Our fi ndings show that the reallocation of urban functions took place in the wider metropolitan zone of Budapest among existing centres, which fits to the European version of post-suburbanisation concept rather than the US one.
Methodologically speaking, I use statistical data as well as a self-collected database of joint corporations, encompassing the whole metropolitan area of 56 settlements and 1312 companies. The data were geocoded and plotted. Based on the research findings I argue that there is neither sectoral, nor functional specialisation of joint corporations to be observed at the metropolitan periphery. This implies that urbanisation forms of mature capitalist city regions cannot be clearly identified around Budapest. The spatial economy of the Budapest metropolitan area seems rather to be boosted by the scale and size of the metropolitan market itself, than by global market integration. Based on the data analysis of joint corporations, the Budapest metropolitan area can provide just a few specialised services and products for the global market, and is able to an only limited degree to be integrated into the global commodity chains and production networks.
Plotting corporations’ locations on the map shows a distribution of enterprises different in one settlement to that of another. Some local governments are able to concentrate economic activity to a few business parks within their administrative boundaries, but others seem to lose control over settling economic activities systematically. Some places seem to successfully internalise the pressure of neoliberal transformation, while others prove to be unresponsive to them. I argue that these differences are being produced by dissimilar relations between state and capital when comparing one settlement to another. I assume that the locally determined relations of state and capital lead to some variations in producing local economic spaces. To test that assumption I delimited a case-study area of three settlements (all of them showing dissimilar distribution pattern of entrepreneurial activities), where I made interviews with local decision makers, professionals and an investor. Discussing the interrelations between capital, state and place contributed to reveal state control and its mechanisms over producing places of economic activity. My interviewees pointed out the market-influencing practice and techniques of the local state, which reflects the neoliberal transformation of the capital-state interrelation.
coexistence – rhetorically as well as physically – and have attempted to provide the best possible answers to the current
and foreseeable challenges of a particular age. New methods are sought and new theories are experimented with to enable
settlements – at their borders and within their central areas – to be more successful, efficient, liveable and ‘communal’.
At the Municipality of Budapest we have set ourselves no less a goal than attaining for Budapest the long term status of
a successful metropolis in a transforming European Union. In support of this we not only set the basis of a metropolitan
scale cooperation of metropolitan towns, but established the conceptual frameworks of a spatial development strategy of
Budapest Metropolis. The Draft Metropolitan Structure Plan being in hand is the subsequent milestone of our ambitious
initiative to provide a high-scale investment programme for the metropolitan Budapest.
One such highlighted initiative is our programme called ‘Metropoly – Budapest Unlimited’, which provides an opportunity
for the new urban coalition or metropolitan region forming around the Municipality of Budapest to share knowledge and
form a joint co-ordinated development. We are also proud of our Danube programmes, which will revitalise the Metropolis’
‘main street‘, the river Danube - known (or forgotten) as the city’s enduring symbol -, and which will involve the Danube in
the life of the city, Hungary and, hopefully the European Union, too.
Perhaps it is clear from the above that dialogue stands at the heart of our work in urban development. We build our
programmes on interaction and reciprocity rather than on one-way communication, because we believe that all players
of Budapest and the city region can only be successful in a New Europe if jointly accepted values and jointly applied new
methods come into being through dialogue.
the specific features of the tourism in urban-rural fringe. Although importance of urban-rural
fringe has increased in the post-industrial urban development period, the results of literature
review show, that investigation of the tourism is rather incomplete in this zone, new analyses
seems to be necessary (Weaver, D.B. 2005). This paper contains a descriptive case study of
ARB, which is a hotel and water park complex in the urban-rural fringe of Budapest. While
the hotel is focusing upon international guests, the spa complex is visited mostly by local
residents. The results of research indicate that only the amalgamation of different services
and visitors is able to lay the foundation of ARB. Aquaworld’s success is an inherent
manifestation of post socialist and post suburban context of political, social and institutional
arrangements of the millennial Budapest. In the fringe of this post socialist city, urbanization
of capital makes significant gains from the transmittance of more compact city (e.g. more
consumers live here), the weak planning environment, and post suburban restructuring in the
urban-rural fringe.
Időszerűnek gondoljuk a felvetést, hogy Magyarország nemzetközi szerepe kiemelkedően függ Budapestnek és várostérségének nemzetközi feladatvállalásától. Legutóbbi, metropolizációs témában szervezett konferenciánkon fővédnökünk, Enyedi professzor úr is megerősítette: a jelen és a közeli belátható jövő szempontjából Budapest metropolisz-régió fejlődése nemzeti érdek, hiszen az „hazánk egyetlen globális nagyvárosi régiója, amelynek sikere vagy
hanyatlása alapvetően befolyásolja az ország egészének a sorsát”.
Különösképpen értékesnek tartjuk Faragó felvetését az ország érdekében megszervezendő budapesti metropolisz-régióról, amelyhez azonban a legelső és kihagyhatatlan lépés egyfajta társadalmi konszenzus arról, milyen térszerkezetet szeretnénk, s ez milyen városhálózatot és infrastruktúrát igényel? Válaszunkban ez utóbbi felvetést kívánjuk továbbgondolni, érvelve az általunk alkalmazott területi fókuszú és térszerkezet-fejlesztésre alapozott gazdaságfejlesztési megközelítés mellett.
use commuting data of the 1990, 2001 and 2011 national census. The rapid transformation of Budapest after 1989 the re-establishment of market mechanisms, the privatisation of
housing, the liberalisation of the property market, and the growing re-integration of the city to the world economy affected not only the core city but also the metropolitan periphery. The previously rather homogeneous structure of the metropolitan periphery experienced signifi cant changes in the course of the transformation. The advantages of location, which
had been insignifi cant during the state-socialist period, once again became truly beneficial which resulted in growing disparities in the metropolitan periphery. Since 1990 the functional interplay, cooperation, interdependence as well as physical infrastructural linkages between Budapest and its metropolitan zone have been further intensifi ed. Residential suburbanisation and the suburbanisation of business activities led to new fl ows of commuting within the metropolitan region. Our fi ndings show that the reallocation of urban functions took place in the wider metropolitan zone of Budapest among existing centres, which fits to the European version of post-suburbanisation concept rather than the US one.