Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries: Past, Present, and Future

Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries

Tamás Csapó András Balogh Editors •

Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries Past, Present, and Future

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Tamás Csapó Geography and Environmental Sciences Human Geography University of West Hungary Károlyi Gáspár tér 4 9700 Szombathely Vas Hungary e-mail: [email protected]

ISBN 978-3-642-20313-8 DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-20314-5

András Balogh Geography and Environmental Sciences Human Geography University of West Hungary Károlyi Gáspár tér 4 9700 Szombathely Vas Hungary e-mail: [email protected]

e-ISBN 978-3-642-20314-5

Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of registered names, trademarks, etc., in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Preface

Settlement and urban geography is one of the most popular and successful segments of geography. The discipline which was squeezed into economic geography during the state socialism era is presently finding the very same position all over the post-socialist countries, therefore also in Hungary. The reasons are obvious. Urbanization, which is one of the most fundamental processes of the globalizing world, is playing a determining role. This process is so strong, that it can still increase the share of urban dwellers within the rapidly growing population figure. The majority of the Earth’s seven billion inhabitants can be found in urban areas, and the migration to urban areas is steadily continuing. It causes enormous crowdedness in certain cities, while empties rural communities and also distorts the demographic profile of both. Rehabilitation of cities in the developed world also emerges new challenges, the side effects of suburbanization and the modernization of rural settlements, while different ways and methods of environment management are also worth investigating. Significant differences can be felt with regard to the complexity of the issues depending on the location (Asia, Africa, America, or Europe) and also on the level (national or regional) of investigations. The regions are widely different in respect of their physical and social characters, their economic development and structure, and also in their interrelation of the aforementioned. The differences can be obviously felt the most in settlement level; therefore the analysis can guide us to draw more general conclusions. One of the most important of these is that in the course of the globalizing the world and not the states is the one! playing the most influential role. Globalization has been gradually displaced by the urban concentrations (megalopolises). Research can reveal the background of their birth and formation, their developmental attributes, and trends and directions in their structural transformation, contributing to the understanding of globalized urban spatial transformations. All of the above-mentioned processes and circumstances have reached Hungary recently. It means that researchers are to investigate in detail the specific problems, the development directions of the agglomeration, the suburbanization itself, and the strengthening international attraction of our only real-global city, Budapest. v

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The international regional functions of our counterbalancing cities are also to be strengthened; therefore the background researches are also fundamental for it. The size (328 units) and differentiation of the Hungarian urban network are questioned and debated by several disciplines. Nevertheless, from a public administration aspect the entire settlement network is nuclear and scattered; the research of future development directions cannot be postponed further. One of the key issues of that is the future of small villages, where public services cannot be guaranteed among present conditions for a limited population of one or two dozen people. Scattered farms in the Great Hungarian Plain are representing a unique speciality, the research of them is a fundamental duty expected from us by the international communities. The division of the historically unified settlement network of the Carpathian basin after the Great War by artificial borders results in a common international task for the neighboring countries to investigate the backward consequences and to look for development directions and possibilities in the new common, European context. It is evident that it encourages and increases the number of cross-border co-operation contributing to the European pentagon, for the stronger and more intense linkages to the European development centers. Consequently, settlement geography—certainly cooperating with further segments of geography and other disciplines—is conducting researches on the key issues of humanity (naturally including the Hungarians). Therefore it is a pleasure that settlement geographers are given the possibility for the seventh occasion now in Szombathely to share their new ideas and innovative thoughts in the course of conferences and also in this hard copy format. Pécs, 30 December 2010

Prof. József Tóth University Professor Member of IGU Hungarian National Committee

Contents

Part I

Settlement Network, Settlement Development

Polycentric Urban System Between State Regulation and Market Economy—The Case of Slovenia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vladimir Drozg Some Recent Trends in Settlement Development in Austria . . . . . . . . Walter Zsilincsar

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Changes in the Urban System of Romania, and Their Possible Effect on the Future Administrative Reform of the Country . . . . . . . . Ferenc Szilágyi

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The Settlement Network of Serbia: From the Past to the Prospective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Borislav Stojkov and Velimir Šec´erov

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The Development of the Hungarian Settlement Network Since 1990. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gábor Pirisi and András Trócsányi

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The National Concept for Settlement Network Development of 1971 and Some Western European Comparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zsolt Kocsis and Tibor Lenner

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A Comparison of Settlement Development in the Social Command Economy Versus the European Union’s Development Policy . . . . . . . . Mátyás Gulya

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On the Periphery of the Periphery: Demographic Trends and Development Differences in Hungarian Villages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tibor Kerese

Part II

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Sociology of Settlements, Urban Regeneration

Urban Restructuring in the Grip of Capital and Politics: Gentrification in East-Central Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Erika Nagy and Judit Timár

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Post-1990 Urban Brownfield Regeneration in Central and Eastern Europe: A Theoretical Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Márton Berki

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Strategic and Socio-Economic Implications of Urban Regeneration in Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tamás Egedy

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Urban Renewal of Historic Towns in Hungary: Results and Prospects for Future in European Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ferenc Jankó

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Real Estate Purchasing by Foreigners in Hungarian Settlement System as Seen from the Angle of Niche Concept . . . . . . . Sándor Illés and Gábor Michalkó

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Part III

Urban Geography, Urbanization

Cross-Border Suburbanisation: The Case of Bratislava. . . . . . . . . . . . Tamás Hardi

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Suburbanisation and Suburban Regions in Hungary After 1990 . . . . . Péter Bajmócy

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Urbanisation Development Trends of Cities in the North-Eastern Part of the Carpathian Basin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sándor Kókai Integration of ‘‘Made Cities’’ to Their Physical Environment . . . . . . . Zsolt Huszti

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Contents

Industrial Areas and Their Transformations in Hungary . . . . . . . . . . Tamás Csapó and András Balogh

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Analysis of Dimensions and Mosaic Pattern of Urban Green Areas on the Example of Several Hungarian Cities . . . . . . . . . Gábor Baranyai and Sándor Németh

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Health Related Quality of Life and Its Local Differences in Budapest After 1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Éva Izsák and Annamária Uzzoli

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The Relationship Between Sports and Urban Structure Through the Example of Hungarian Regional Centres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gábor Kozma and István Süli-Zakar

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On the Vulnerability and Reliability of Towns and Cities . . . . . . . . . . Attila Horváth and Zágon Csaba

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Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part I

Settlement Network, Settlement Development

Polycentric Urban System Between State Regulation and Market Economy—The Case of Slovenia Vladimir Drozg

1 Introduction Polycentrism is a concept of regional development, based on several towns with a similar level of centrality. Polycentrism is de-concentration and concentration of urban functions at the same time; de-concentration in the sense of preventing concentration in one town, usually the capital; and concentration in the sense of limiting dispersion or duplicate urban function in several small towns. Polycentrism is correction of centralisation (looking top down) and centralisation at the same time (looking bottom up). A polycentric country has parts of jurisdiction transferred to larger administrative units (such as regions, provinces, counties); these centres also covering some activities for smaller settlements/towns. The concentration of activities in larger towns is a natural process that increases regional diversities of all types; negative effects of concentration of population and work places occur, the environment is burdened, real-estate market shows high prices, etc. Polycentrism is a corrective measure with which we are trying to limit negative effects of centralisation. The regional development of Slovenia has been developing in the sense of polycentrism for the last 50 years. Even though the main idea remains the same, there have been some changes since its beginnings. This article will try to show the development of a polycentric concept from the periods of state regulation and market economy.

V. Drozg (&) Department for Geography, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, Koroška cesta 160, 2000 Maribor, Slovenija e-mail: [email protected]

T. Csapó and A. Balogh (eds.), Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-20314-5_1,  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

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2 The Source of Polycentrism: Situation in Slovenia in the Middle of the Previous Century In the 1950s, Slovenia was predominantly a rural country. Approximately 70% of the population lived from agriculture, about 20% were employed in the industry. Industrial plants were concentrated in larger cities, whereas the countryside was predominantly rural. After 1945, at the beginning of state regulation economy and industrialisation, the industrial centres became migration targets for many who stopped working on farmlands and moved to towns. This process quickly showed its negative side; the switch of the population from rural to non-rural professions accompanied migrations and the demographic changes in the rural area. The social set-up of the population wasn’t suitable for the needs of the economic development either. Educational level was low; differences between towns and the rural area were very large. One could say the same for health services and culture. Public infrastructure institutions were found in large cities only; the former were hardly accessible for the rural population. One needs to know that Slovenia has a very varied relief which influences the allocation and the number of settlements. The majority (90%) of today’s settlements have up to 500 inhabitants. Furthermore, the country is divided into several areas with local integrity (identity) that shows in a specific speech (dialect), clothing habits (national folklore attire) and culture in general. The long-term administrative division of individual countries/regions, found on the margins of the Habsburg Monarchy, contributed to the feeling of strong regional belonging (i.e. people from Upper or Lower Carniola) and the attachment to the regional centre, even though this might have been found outside of the Slovene national territory (such as Gorizia and Trieste in Italy as well as Graz and Klagenfurt in Austria, Zagreb and Rijeka in Croatia). These circumstances make it self-evident that the socialist authorities thought about the economic structure of the republic that would allow a more coherent development of all parts of the republic. Such concept would ensure: • A more coherent dispersion of work-places in the industry and consequently a more coherent development of the whole territory • Improved access to the social infrastructure • Prevention of depopulation of remote areas and taking advantage of endogenous developmental potentials • Maintenance of regional identity.

3 Setting up the Polycentric Territory The concept of polycentric set-up was approved in 1964 as part of the first regional plan of Republic of Slovenia. The main idea of the concept was to ‘‘develop centres that would be equally divided and would provide the same possibilities for

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work, living, recreation and social standing to all inhabitants’’ (Sinteza (povzetki) strokovnih gradiv 1977 p. 2). This idea suited the economic, social and ideological circumstances of the society in those times. Unifying living and working conditions can be understood as a form of social justice; doing the same with workplaces and public services (school system, health and culture) was to be achieved with government interventions at positioning economic activities. The latter is adjusted to the intervening role of the social state that would occur in the socialist system. The first concept was based on central towns and the urban system, which was adjusted to the Slovene circumstances by Igor Vrišer and Vladimir Kokole (Vrišer 1969) according to the Christaller theory. Functions, which towns have or should have, were set for individual hierarchical levels of central towns. The level of centrality was set according to the type of functions and the number of workplaces in manufacturing, which was the most important urban activity in those times. About 13–15 towns would form the frame of such polycentric concept (a more precise number was not set); those were equally divided across Slovenia. Urban functions included: administration, secondary school, hospital, library, cultural institution, bus and train station, museum, radio station, head office of a financial institution.

4 Modification of Concept Ten years after the concept was implemented, political changes occurred in Yugoslavia that would inhibit the implementation of the polycentric system. In 1974, the new constitution of the SFRY was approved, according to which municipalities became not only administrative but also the economic units, responsible for economic development. This increased the economic position and power of municipalities. Municipal centres would now develop as economic centres. Instead of 13 (15) regional centres, as known in the first polycentric concept, there were suddenly 64 centres (the same as the number of municipalities). We believe that this period caused a faster development of smaller towns and the rural areas, because the regional centres improved in their power. After 1975, the number of towns with industrial plants increased enormously; each settlement with more than 500 inhabitants had at least one industrial plan and the basic social infrastructure. The level of urbanisation of the land area increased, too, especially if one measures it with the number of daily commuters or the amount of recently built houses. The demographic growth of regional centres, on the other hand, started to decrease. In 1986, the second spatial plan for Slovenia was approved for the period 1986–2000. Polycentrism remained the basic concept of spatial development, even though the economic role of regional centres was brought forward instead of the previous cohesive dispersion of social services A new regional development goal was introduced; namely keeping the inhabitants at less developed and demographically challenged areas that had lately considerably increased in numbers.

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If the first document saw a (moderate) concentration of activities, the second saw a (moderate) dispersion of economic and social activities. The second plan also introduced a larger number of regional centres than the first. This was definitely a consequence of negative demographic, social and economic processes that had started in rural areas after 1960.

5 Adjustment of Concept The third spatial plan was approved in 2004 under the working title ‘‘Slovene spatial development strategy’’. This one again saw the polycentric development of the country as the foundation and the central theme for development of other activities. Towns were no longer seen as industrial centres only; but rather as centres of culture, provisioning, administration, service activities and traffic junctions. After a period of a large de-concentration of urban functions, the concept of the 1990s again sees the need towards the concentration of urban functions in regional centres. The polycentric system is set-up by a ‘‘two-level settlement network’’; namely regional centres of international importance (Ljubljana, Maribor and Koper) and regional centres of national importance. The first group includes the three largest towns—centres of the so-called ‘‘macro region’’; the second group includes regional centres (towns that have even before served as the framework of urban network). This type of arrangement deviates slightly from the previous concepts. The definition of these centres is the most important part of the new strategy, because it includes the international aspect which can be seen as a consequence of global approaches and connections of the Slovene economy with neighbouring regions. The second novelty is specialisation of activities in regional centres. Some activities were previously exclusively reserved for the largest towns; the new proposal also sees them in regional centres (such as vocational colleges, research organisation, media activities and specialised cultural activities).

6 Comparison of Concepts The most important issue of polycentrism is the number of regional centres and their functions. A large number of regional centres is not rational from the point of view of national economy; if the number is too small, the basic idea—a coherent economic and social development of the whole territory and an equal access to services—is affected. Choosing the right number of regional centres is therefore the most crucial problem of a polycentric concept. The number of levels therefore matters, because it is connected to the volume of functions that should be performed by individual centres. Polycentrism requires a certain level of political, economic and social autonomy. It also stands for simultaneous concentration and

Polycentric Urban System Between State Regulation and Market Economy Table 1 Regional centres in different concepts 1. concept 2. concept Higher level Ljubljana Maribor Celje Novo Mesto Koper Medium level

Murska Sobota Ptuj Slovenj Gradec Kranj Jesenice-BledRadovljica Zagorje-TrbovljeHrastnik Krško-Brezˇice Nova Gorica

Ljubljana Maribor Celje Novo Mesto Koper Nova Gorica Murska Sobota Ptuj Slovenj Gradec-RavneDravograd Kranj Jesenice-Bled-Radovljica

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3. concept Ljubljana Maribor Koper

Murska Sobota Ptuj Slovenj Gradec-RavneDravograd Kranj Jesenice -Radovljica Zagorje-TrbovljeHrastnik Krško-Brezˇice-Sevnica Nova Gorica Celje Velenje Novo Mesto Postojna

Source Zasnova urbanizacije p.59, Dolgorocˇni plan SR Slovenije za obdobje od leta 1986 do leta 2000 Fig. 1, Strategija prostorskega razvoja Slovenije p.24

de-concentration of activities. Regional centres take over parts of responsibilities from the towns of the highest rank, while at the same time concentrating activities from towns of lower rank. The higher the number of levels, the more diverse is the set-up of central towns at individual level.

6.1 The Number of Regional Centres The selection of regional centres was each time performed on the basis of different criteria. The first plan considered the number of inhabitants, the size of gravitational areas and the presence of central activities. 13 towns were defined in this plan, forming the framework of polycentric system. The second concept from 1974 defined 15 towns, selected on the basis of presence of central social services and the number of workplaces. The third concept included 15 (13 ? 2) regional centres, selected on the basis of the number of inhabitants. Different concepts of polycentric development of Slovenia saw a similar number of regional centres of the highest level; the first one had 13, the second and third 15. The increased number of regional centres in the second concept is the mirror of economic de-concentration and social services; the third shows an improved level of prosperity where the centrality level increased in almost all towns. Table 1

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Table 2 The number of hierarchical levels in each concept (figures in parentheses denote the number of towns on each level) 1. concept 2. concept 3. concept Other centres (33) Lower regional centre (8) Regional centre (4) Capital of the republic (1)

Local centre (16) Higher local centre (21) Municipality centre (33) Lower regional centre (6) Regional centre (5) Capital of the republic (1)

Local centre (16) Important local centre (20) Important municipality centre (20) Regional centre (14) National important centre (12) International important centre (3)

Source Drozg 2005: 153

6.2 The Number of Levels and the Type of Activities in Regional Centres The first concept defined four hierarchical levels of central settlements; the second and third saw six levels. This change is connected to improved prosperity. The concepts differ more in the number of settlements at each level than in the number of levels. Given that one cannot compare categories, we must limit ourselves to the settlements at the highest level. The first concept included 13 towns of the highest level, the second concept had 12 towns, the third already 29. Similarly to the increase of the number of regional centres is the increased number of levels—one would rather expect a drop in the number of levels because of increased prosperity and not the opposite. Table 2, Fig. 1

7 Measures for Implementation Given that polycentrism is the opposite of spontaneous development, the set-up of a polycentric system requires special measures that would work as a corrective measure in the centralisation process. The polycentric concept measures thus touch upon numerous and different units of the national administration. It might sound as a paradox, but in Slovenia, these measures have so far never been defined in detail. The concept was carried out through larger formal institutional factors: • Spatial plans of the state and municipalities • Strategic documents, referring to regional development • Programmes for encouraging development of less developed and demographically threatened (challenged) areas • Division of Slovenia into administrative regions of (for example); Surveying and mapping authority; regional Health protection institutes, administrative units, the Court of audit, statistical regions, regional development agencies (for the list of regional breakdown of Slovenia, please see internet 1) The principle of cohesive dispersion was used for arranging activities in regional centres. Very important in this case were also informal factors, especially

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Fig. 1 Regional centres of polycentric development

local patriotism, which is the heritage of historic divisions of Slovenia into Upper Carniola, Styria, Carinthia, Lower Carniola, Inner Carniola, the Slovenian Istria and Prekmurje. Market economy did not change measures much, but the meaning of those measures did change. The role of formal institutional factors (instruments) remained unchanged. What changed though is the method of distributing the national funds. A former centralist decision-making ‘‘according to the regional principle’’ was replaced by national public calls for development projects (Nared 2007:36). This considerably decreased the regional aspect of distribution of governmental investments (with the exception of areas that fall under the new law on development grants). The role of informal institutional factors, such as individual associations of interest, civil initiatives, and lobbies improved considerably, because those are very often organised according to a regional principle.

8 Consequences of the Polycentric Development of Slovenia Consequences of polycentrism cannot be evaluated easily. Evaluation instruments have a indirect character; many of them only give directions. The professional public therefore often talks about the so-called ‘‘free-ride effect’’ (Ger. ‘‘Mitnahme Effekt’’; according to Maier and Tödtling 2002: 185)—something, that could change or be implemented also without regional policy measures. The following effects are most commonly quoted:

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• Small regional disparities in the area of economic and social circumstances. Vrišer estimated regional differences being the largest around 1950s; they decreased considerably later on (Vrišer 1989). The major decrease was noted between the years 1971 and 1976. They later on increased slightly; however, they were never as large as at the beginning of the analysed period. If one excludes the central Slovenian region (Ljubljana), the deviations became very small and only ranged between 1:1.34 and 1:1.79. After the year 1991, they started increasing again, the deviation between the least and the most developed region ranged from 1:1.8 to 1:2.62. Even if one doesn’t consider the central Slovenian region (Ljubljana), the differences remained larger than before the year 1990, because they ranged from 1:1.3 to 1:1.9. Regional differences increased slightly later, as the ratio between the most and the least developed region increased to 1:3.2 (this value cannot be entirely compared to the evaluations of the previous periods, because the statistical data collection method changed). What is important is that regional disparities in the social environment are much smaller than in the economic environment, which is definitely a consequence of a cohesive dispersion of social infrastructure in the time of state regulation economy. • The consequence of polycentric concept is a large dispersion of workplaces across the country. In 1991, at least one company was registered in one third of 6,000 settlements; this number increased to half of the settlements today. We would also like to emphasise that there are 23 towns that have a similar level of urban functions, even though the number of population in their gravitational area ranges from min. 15,000 to max. 400,000 inhabitants. • Slovenia is even today still relatively equally inhabited; there are hardly any densely depopulated areas or areas with a large emigration. There is of course a concentration of inhabitants who move from rural areas toward town regions. However, one can still not talk about demographically challenged (threatened) or empty areas. • Given that many people still live in rural areas despite their work in towns, one notices a modest demographic development of towns. Slovene towns are small. Among 54 towns, there are more than half with less than 15,000 inhabitants. The largest town, Ljubljana, counts a population of 270,000. Approximately half of the Slovene population lives in towns, 410,000 of which in the three largest ones, which leaves 190,000 inhabitants for the remaining regional centres.

9 The Future of Polycentrism Experience from Slovenia shows that the success of a polycentric urban concept is not linked to the political system; social and economic circumstances, in which the concept is being carried out, are more important. Polycentrism was most successful in its early stages when the emphasis was placed on ensuring working places and the basic social infrastructure. In the times of improved prosperity, the

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efficiency of the concept cannot be recognised so easily. The polycentric concept will be exposed to new changes in the near future. It is believed that the following circumstances will influence the its changes: • Mobility of inhabitants increased enormously; 66% of all households owned a vehicle in 1988; in 2009 this percentage raise to 80% (Slovenija v številkah. 2003 and 2010). Also finished was the highway network between the largest towns. The 30-minute access isochrones around regional centres cover almost the entire state territory. We assume that the mobility will even increased in the future. • The dispersion of the population changed—there is now a larger concentration of population and economic activities in the vicinity of larger towns. The majority of smaller towns are demographically and economically stagnating. The decrease of the number of population means the decrease of urban functions, especially in smaller towns. • Towns look very similar in terms of urban functions, the need for a large number of regional centres therefore decreased. Accessibility to regional centres is almost equally important as the accessibility to biggest towns. • The process of centralisation of economic activities in large towns as well as urban agglomerations has increased much in the last decade. The growing social heterogeneity and individualisation of lifestyles encourages the growth of large towns, while at the same time causing a set-back for smaller towns. • In market economy, the country does not have the possibilities of arranging activities in private ownership; it can only do so with social services, which are (primarily) a governmental property. Market economy circumstances, which see the economic initiative strongly in the hands of private investors and less regulative power of the government, seem to show that the concept of polycentric development will change in the sense of reducing the number of centres at the lower level and limiting the functions in the cities at the higher level. It is very likely that the economic position of the capital, Ljubljana, will improve even more, which will further increase the centralisation of urban activities versus polycentrism.

References Dolgorocˇni plan SR Slovenije za obdobje od leta 1986 do leta 2000. Zavod SRS za druzˇbeno planiranje. Ljubljana, 1986, p 99 Drozg V (2005) Koncepti policentricˇne ureditve Slovenije. In: Dela 24. Univerza v Ljubljani, Ljubljana, pp 147–158 http://www.stat.si/publikacije/pub_katalogrds.asp Maier G, Tödtling F (2002) Regional- und Stadtökonomik. Springer, Wien, p 245 Nared J (2007) Prostorski vplivi slovenske regionalne politike. ZRC-SAZU, Ljubljana, p 202 Sinteza (povzetki) strokovnih gradiv, ki zadevajo prostorski plan SR Slovenije. Zavod SR Slovenije za druzˇbeno planiranje. Ljubljana, 1977, p 154 Slovenija v številkah. Statisticˇni urad Republike Slovenije, Ljubljana, 2003, 2010 Strategije prostorskega razvoja Slovenije. Ministrstvo za okolje, prostor in energijo. Ljubljana, 2004, p 75

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Vrišer I (1989) Policentrizem v Sloveniji. In: IB 1989/5, pp 34–42 Vrišer I (1969) Mala mesta v SR Sloveniji. Inštitut za geografijo Univerze v Ljubljani, Ljubljania, p.169 Zasnova urbanisacije. Regionalni prostorski plan za obmocˇje SR Slovenije. Zavod SR Slovenije za regionalno prostorsko planiranje. Ljubljana, 1974, p 269

Some Recent Trends in Settlement Development in Austria Walter Zsilincsar

1 Administrative Structure and Competence Distribution The nine self-ruling independent Austrian states/provinces are subdivided into altogether 98 political administrative districts and 2,357 communities. The state of Styria includes 17 administrative districts and 542 communities with an average population of 2,229. Only Lower Austria has got a bigger number of communities (573) with a mean population of 2,806 which already points to one of the many problems of settlement structure: number, spatial and population size of Austrian communities. The federal state as well as the nine single states/provinces are ruled by their own parliaments (Landtage) elected by the public. The state parliaments are constituted according to the votes the political parties had gained in the general election requiring a minimum of 5% of all votes in order to enter the state parliament. The state government is headed by a governor (Landeshauptmann) who selects his ministers (secretaries = Landesräte) from his own political party or from the nominees of other parties in case of a coalition or proportional government. Legislation and its execution are the main tasks of the governments following the agenda that have been delegated to them by the federal government. The political districts are functioning as mere administrative sub-units of the state without any legislative competence. Each Austrian community has its own elected representation with a mayor on its top and a community council at its side. Communities are locally self-governed administrative bodies with remarkable competencies especially in the fields of local, and indirectly regional planning, zoning-ordinance, or building regulations. W. Zsilincsar (&) Institut für Geographie und Raumforschung, Universität Graz Heinrichstraße, 36 8010 Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected]

T. Csapó and A. Balogh (eds.), Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-20314-5_2,  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

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The competence structure of the Austrian constitution provides that in the important field of spatial/regional planning as a complex subject area all of its concerns be exclusively in the competence of the states. State competence is attributed e.g. to agenda like population policy (the state of the Burgenland successfully prevented the installation of a third Austrian primary reception camp for refugees in Eberau near the Hungarian border which the federal ministry of the interior had planned in early 2010), land reform, spas and health resorts, nature and environment protection, building, regulations, real estate taxes, land-fees, land-improvement, zoning, protection of the built environment (e.g. historic towns), etc. In 1962 the term ‘‘Raumplanung’’ (regional or spatial planning) was introduced into the Austrian federal constitution transferring the agenda of regional planning to a binary system which from then on was in the hand of two administrative bodies: the state who was competent in the regional and the community in the local level (OROK, 1978, p. 23). From now on the communes took responsibility for the essential task of zoning i.e. of dividing a town or city into tracts of land for the purpose of land-use planning. Each zone is assigned a set of permitted uses (residential, commercial, industrial, recreational, agricultural, etc.). Additional regulations may concern density, design, size, or height ( Gregory et al. 2009, p. 816). Another agenda on the community level with far-reaching consequences for the local and regional population relates to enacting and legislating building regulations being aware of the fact that the power of the states advances the general interests over individual ones. The local mayors as the first and the community councils as the second decision-making instances in planning and building affairs thus are accumulating a substantial power in their hands. The dangers resulting from this specific situation cannot be neglected. In the first place the danger of corruption and pulling strings must be mentioned. It results from various facts like party political interests, personal connections and preferences, bureaucratic practices, etc. which are an issue especially in small predominantly rural communities where citizens and local politicians very often know each other personally. A further problem stems from the fact that in rural towns due to their historically based agricultural backgrounds, most of the developing land and future construction areas are still the property of only a few farmers. This bestows on them an disproportionately high influence in communal policy (Fig. 1). It seems clear that farmers as mayors or communal council members have a great interest in steering the local resource-of-land-policy according to their needs and desires and to those of their farmer-colleagues. This, of course, is being heavily denied officially. As study of the author from 1993 has demonstrated, in the surrounding political district of Graz with an average agrarian population of 3.8% (1981) more than one quarter (25.3%) of all communal council members in the 60 communities of the district belonged to the agrarian sector. In one third (19) of the communities the mayors were full-time or part-time farmers (Zsilincsar 1993, pp. 380 ff.).

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Fig. 1 Proportion of community council members, who were born in the community, 1990. Source Zsilincsar 1993, p. 383

Although the farm population is steadily decreasing in Austria from 5.4% (2003) to below 5% today the Austrian Farmers Association which is a political organisation of the Austrian Peoples Party (ÖVP) still plays a decisive role in Austrian interior policy. The Vice-Chancellor of the Republic as well as the Vice-Governor of the State of Styria belong to the above party organisation. Like the federal and single state administrations, also the communities as autonomous economic bodies are entitled to set private operative measures consistent to the spatial structures.

2 Compensatory Financing The question of how to equally and justly distribute incomes and expenditures on all administrative levels is not simply one of the most crucial, challenging and political explosives bearing items of interior policy, but indeed it is the key problem of policy making in general and for the development of settlements and their areas of influence in particular.

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So the credibility of planning policy, be it settlement or region oriented, depends largely on the availability of the necessary financial resources. Many local, regional, and national governments failed because they were unwilling, unable, or incompetent to solve these financial problems. Size, structure, situation, and spatial distribution of settlements also influence their development. However, today the focus of our interest should be globalisation and marginalisation, population growth and depopulation, access to national and international transportation networks, the formation and support of economic clusters, the role the knowledge society will play in the future, a regulated or uncontrolled immigration, the question whether ‘‘multi-culti’’ is a success story or a failure, and again above all, the question how to finance all these issues and how to implement them politically. There is no doubt that settlement development cannot be examined and evaluated without its relation to and interdependence with regional development. Since the end of World War I which resulted in the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire and the installation of Communist-ruled peoples republics in the successor states until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, later a strict binary political, social, economic, and especially administrative history has been impressed on the western and eastern halves of Central Europe: on the one side more or less federal structures of administration bound to a system of market economy, on the other side a centrally steered political and administrative system embedded into a rigid Marxist command-economy. Even a geographically untrained person, no matter whether from the ‘‘East’’ or ‘‘West’’, could see and feel the huge differences in landscape and settlement structures or images on both sides of the borders. The course of the former ‘‘Iron Curtain’’ through Europe can still be well observed more than twenty years after its fall. Therein lies a decisive reason for impatience and discontent with regional development among large parts of the population and those younger generation communal politicians in Eastern-CentralEurope who are striving for change. They, too, often forget that in Austria it also needed a time span of some twenty years to recover from the set-backs caused by the rule of Nazi-Germany and World War II. Economically booming regions and settlements need different ruling and development structures and policies than backward or stagnating ones. The recipes, however, how to solve these specific problems are manifold, and are quite often controversial. In a multi-party-democracy like Austria such contradictions do not so much result from conceptual and pertinent differences but rather from party-political and, sometimes, even personal sentiments. A resulting blockade policy which can be found on all administrative levels with majority rules is one main reason for the delayed implementation or prevention of many fruitful regional and urban development projects. To prove this thesis we should throw a short glimpse on the recent Styrian/ Austrian institutional implementation policy. Implementation policy aims at altering and restructuring the organisation of the institutional arrangement of

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corporate bodies in order to change the distribution of power between the actors and the relevant processes (Bussmann 2008, p. 392). Institutional policy deals with political institutions be they federalist, more or less direct democratic, or concordantly oriented. It is based on reflections about whether and in how far specific political institutions are still actual and if they are not, how they could be reformed. Each pace referring to such considerations has to keep the deeply rooted perseverance of political institutions in mind. A very new commentary of the president of the Association of Austrian Communities, Mr. H. Mödlhammer, on the present situation in Austria with the background of the still enduring world economic crises speaks out what the real present cares of the towns and cities are and why they feel so uneasy (Mödlhammer 2010). Mr. Mödlhammer castigates those experts of institutional reforms who are jeopardising communal autonomy. Communal self-governance, one must know, is a ‘‘holy cow’’ within the Austrian administrative system. Why this is so, results mainly from the accumulated power of the communes which reaches from financial sovereignty within their particular sphere of administrational activity—including those expenditures and incomes which are to be distributed among communes, or between a community and the provincial or the federal government—to local zoning agenda and all community based planning measures. A far spread opinion (in rural areas) before the middle of the nineteenth century about the three most important persons in a community had ranked the mayor second after the parish priest and before the teacher. At least as to the mayor, this ranking in many cases is still valid although increasingly opposed by the mayors themselves. They feel overburdened through a steadily spreading bureaucracy, through the allocation of new costly, time- and labour-consuming expenses by the federal government without a just and sufficient financial aid, as in the cases of social welfare, immigrant and refugee support activities, provision of ample kindergarten and primary school facilities, security affairs (local fire brigades), public culture (public libraries, folklore, music schools), sports- and playing grounds, (indoor-)swimming pools, private and public clubs, etc. The rising communal expenditures can no longer be equated by community incomes which overwhelmingly stem from taxes (mainly land and trade taxes, reimbursements, equalisation payments from the state and federal governments). It cannot be denied that the present dramatic situation of Austrian community households is being severely influenced by the current monetary crises which has affected almost every EU member state. On the other hand one can also not neglect the fact that much of the crises is simply ‘‘home-made’’ and results mainly from the unwillingness, incompetence, and inability of politicians on all levels of administration not only to find adequate solutions for the problems waiting in line but, moreover, even if solutions exist, to implement them immediately. Still partypolitically or personally motivated considerations are paralysing decision-making processes. This is especially true for the modernisation of the Austrian administrative structure in the sense of a New Public Management (NPM). To underline the necessity of such a demand one must be aware of the fact that in 2009 only 31 (!) out of Austria’s total 2,356 communities were clear of debts, which provoked

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heavy criticism of the Austrian Community Control. In Styria according to latest internal information some 200 of its communes (i.e. 37%) will fail to pressure a balanced ordinary budget for 2013. The years after are expected to turn out even more dramatic because the high debits from borrowing in the money market during the years of depression and high unemployment rates compensate by far the meanwhile rising tax incomes resulting from a general economic recovery which seems to be under way. Biwald (2010, pp. 12–14) in his analyses of the state, future perspective, and reform requirements of the Styrian communal finances discusses measures necessary for consolidation. His rather pessimistic expectations predict no further communal household surpluses, declining investments, or such financed by additional debts only. If the level of investments is to be kept on that of the period from 2004 to 2008 some 190 million € will be needed to cover the communal consolidation costs until 2013. Communal household consolidation in Biwald’s opinion would require sharp interventions like: • Encroaching measures: … strengthening of communal competencies to decide … reduction of the off-the-top costs in advance as to shares of proceeds (a reduction from 12.7% to 6% would generate 50 mil. €. … limitation of the rate of increment with transfer payments until 2013 on the level of 2010 (could save 130 million €) … distribution of the yields of revenue from the fiscal compensation following allocated duties … enhancement of the communal shares in the joint revenues of the federal institutions … strengthening of communal tax incomes • Communal-intern measures: … blocking of regular expenses (saves approximately 100 million € until 2013) … reduction of regular expenses including a reduction of costs for personnel and materials (a reduction of 5% until 2013 saves 100 million €) … rising of the portion of the fees. The recent general elections in the Austrian provinces/states of Styria and Vienna in September and October 2010 highlighted once more the main problems as seen and felt by the voters: uncontrolled immigration mainly with an Islamic background, unsuccessful integration policy, crime, unemployment, unsolved problems in social and educational policy and development, increasing tax burdens. As one easily can see from this listing all the problem fields addressed disclose a more or less direct connection with the present situation of Austrian towns and cities. It is the urban places that suffer most significantly from the economic, financial, and immigrant or asylum seekers’ crises which are closely interlinked. Despite this

Some Recent Trends in Settlement Development in Austria Table 1 Austria’s biggest agglomerations

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Rank

Name

Province/state

Inhabitance

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Vienna Graz Linz Salzburg Innsbruck Bregenz Klagenfurt Wels Wiener Neustadt Villach

Vienna Styria Upper Austria Salzburg Tyrol Vorarlberg Carinthia Upper Austria Lower Austria Carinthia

1.996.885 325.891 281.515 218.969 193.742 192.275 104.921 81.795 71.255 70.431

fact one should release that there exists a much deeper-reaching, longer-enduring, and more important open question to be answered: administration reform. Ever since the debate in Austria had arisen how to handle and contain galloping public sector deficits, the solution recipes as offered by the two leading parties, the Social Democrats, and the conservative Peoples’ Party were mainly directed towards either deficit spending or rising taxes and reducing expenditures. Meanwhile there seems a consensus to have been found that budget-consolidation should be achieved in 60% through saving and economic growth and in 40% through taxation. However, the by far biggest budget-saving potential as repeatedly stressed by the Austrian opposition parties, by the president of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, or the president of the Federal Court of Auditors, namely a substantial administration reform, is passed on from one government to the other like a hot potato. The main reason for this very unsatisfactory situation must be seen in Austria’s federal structure with a blown-up administration-system as a heritage of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in which ‘‘authority’’ played a predominant role. The still very common term ‘‘Ortskaiser’’ (local emperor) for a long-serving and powerful mayor tells its own tale.

3 Austria’s Administrative Structure Austria’s administration can afford 9 states on a total area of 83.871 km2 hosting 8,383.784 million Inhabitants (2010). The biggest urban agglomerations in 2010 (Table 1) were Vienna (1.996.885 inh.), Graz (329.950 inh.), Linz (281.515 inh.), and Salzburg (218,969 inh.) extending into neighbouring Freilassing in Bavaria (Österreich: www.citypopulation.de, 10/2010). It is not very difficult to understand that behind this over-dimensioned administrative division there conceals an enormous political power according to the high number of necessary political, administrative, legislative, and executive positions and jobs. Which political party in power would be such self-destructive

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Fig. 2 Austria’s administrative structure. Source Frühwirth 2010, own adaptation

to deliberately abandon this potential of influence? As to Austrian administrative structures (http://docs.google.com) Fig. 2. It is one of the Austrian political peculiarities passionately discussed but nevertheless still firmly anchored in Austria’s traditional political party dualism to divide the whole country and its institutions up into clearly defined and separated spheres of (political) influence. Where such a separation was neither wanted nor possible, the simple solution was and still is—although furiously rejected by the parties involved—proportional division i.e. if the director of a state owned institution or firm belonged to the influence sphere of the conservatives then he was given a vice-director from the social-democrats as a support and vice versa even if there was no real necessity for such a support. This politically motivated proportional division can also be found with the official agencies of the Austrian communities the ‘‘Österreichischer Gemeindebund’’ (Austrian Association of Communities) and the ‘‘Österreichischer Städtebund’’ (Austrian Association of Towns and Cities). While the first represents the smaller communities with a more or less rural background forming the vast majority in Austria, the latter—although representing only one tenth (247) of Austria’s 2,357 communes—is hosting 55% of the country’s population within its administrative bodies. The ‘‘Gemeindebund’’ is dominated by the Peoples Party whereas the Social Democrats are holding a commanding position in the urban ‘‘Städtebund’’. Both institutions are official representatives of the Austrian communities and acknowledged as such by the federal government (Österreichischer Städtebund wikipedia.org, 10/2010). In a statement for the press in the course of a working-visit of a delegation of the Austrian Association of Communities in Brussels in Oct. 2010, some of the currently most urgent communal topics were addressed: the so-called ‘‘Schwellenwerteverordnung’’ (regulation of threshold levels) fixing higher threshold levels for the allocation of public orders which shortens allocation procedures for the public sector, the stability pact, the preservation of rural areas, and the so-called ‘‘local people models’’ securing a chance for the local population of tourist areas to buy building lots for their own purposes at reasonable prices. Communal policy in Austria is complaining about the fact that for many years now the areas of activity and the financial burden for the communes are constantly

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rising without an adequate compensation from the state and federal governments. Being reinforced by the late financial economic crises, this has lead to a dramatic debt ratio of Austrian communities leaving them no further scope for new community investments. The exploding costs for a compulsory pre-school kindergarten-year which the communes are obliged to offer since autumn 2010 by federal law as well as the rising expenditures for nursing subsidies, and an old-age and disabled social security system have been leading the majority of Austrian towns and cities into an almost perspectiveless financial situation. As a consequence, the communities are pleading for a higher monetary contribution of the population benefiting from public social security. Since these are political decisions which are not at all popular and might cost votes for the next election, they are not very likely to be implemented soon (Österreichischer Gemeindebund www.ots.at 10/2010). In context with the communal financial crises, the demand for a stronger control of the community budgets is getting louder although strictly rejected by the Association of Communities who fear a stroke against communal autonomy. Apart from this dispute, a recent study by the Association of Communities has proved a permanent aggravation of the frame conditions especially for small communities. The main reason for that must be sought in their population losses. Since 2001 communities with less than 2.500 inhabitants have lost around 33.000 people although Austria’s total population grew by 300.000 during the same period. In 2001, 27.3% of Austria’s population lived in small communities, in 2008 this percentage diminished to 25.9%. The rank and size development of the communities is by far more important for the single unit from a financial than from a mere statistical point of view. This is because the shares on the yields of the federal budget which are redistributed among the federal state, the 9 provinces/states and the communities, follow a special financial equation key which is based on the number of inhabitants. Therefore, the small communities have not only lost inhabitants since 2001 but also 23 million € from the federal budget. The annual allotment for each small community below 2.500 inhabitants in 2009 was 696 €/person which is 12.5% below the average for all communities. The reason for this difference lies in a gradated basis of calculation which gives the larger communes a bigger share, i.e. communities larger than 50.000 inhabitants received 1.132 € per capita per year. Representatives of the smaller communities on the other hand have made clear that their administration costs of only 158 € per capita per year are significantly below those of the larger cities [50.000 population with 566 €, simultaneously using this comparison as an argument against a general demand for the unification or incorporation of smaller communities to make them more effective, and an for an administration reform. They themselves plead for a new stabilisation treaty between the federal provincial and communal administrative levels allowing the communes except Vienna to generate budgets with negative account balances up to -0.3% of the GDP (Fig. 3).

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Fig. 3 Surplus of running budgeting. Source Österreichischer Gemeindebund, 2010, own adaptation

All these discussions underline impressively the doubts of Bussmann (2008, p. 393 ff) as to the willingness of the Austrian administrative bodies not only to discuss administration reforms but also to evaluate and implement them. The modernisation of the Austrian communal administration has failed so far, apart from the reasons mentioned above mainly because of the heterogeneity of the communes themselves. Thus ‘‘best practice’’-models are not very likely to be successful.

4 Prognoses for the Future As the development of Austrian settlements during the past has shown, making long-term prognoses concerning their future situation is difficult if not impossible. The globalisation and marginalisation processes, the collapse of the Soviet Realm, international terrorism, immigration streams and waves of refugees mainly from outside Europe, the recent world-economic, real-estate-market and bank crises—to mention just a few—not forgetting about phenomena like global warming, natural hazards, water and nutrition shortages, have created an environment which turns out increasingly hostile to a successful and balanced development of our settlements whichever size they are. What can be done then? Resign and accept the inevitable? There is neither time nor a reason for resignation what means that every single citizen, scientist, economist, planner, environmentalist, journalist and politician is challenged to contribute to finding solutions which—and this seems extremely important to accept—cannot be expected to have positive consequences only for the single citizen but also for the community he or she lives in. The population development of the Austrian settlement today is mainly steered through migration instead of natural increase. Following the newest

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migration balance 2002–2008 as published by the Austrian Regional Planing Conference (ÖROK Österrichische Raumordnungkonferenz 2010), Austria’s population since 2001 has mainly grown from immigration. The winning states from this development were Vienna (+8.8%, 2002–2008), Vorarlberg, Tirol, and Lower Austria. As seen from a regional point of view, a general pattern can be detected which allocates the biggest growth rates to the main urban agglomerations, whereas peripheral and/or structurally weak areas suffer from population losses. Thus high migration gains could be registered in the Vienna agglomeration area (Vienna +6.8%, the districts Vienna Surroundings +11.2%, Eisenstadt +10.0%, Rust +9.5%, Korneuburg +8.8%, Baden +8.2%, Graz +8.2%, Graz Surroundings +7.0%, Linz +4.0%, Klagenfurt Surroundings +4.5%, Innsbruck +4.4%, etc. Population loss has affected, among others, peripheral districts like Murau in Styria -4.4%, Tamsweg in Salzburg -3.1% or Wolfsberg in Carinthia -2.6%. (ÖROK, Bl. 01.06.10/2010). The present situation especially of marginalised settlements in rural areas in the state of Styria reveals a dark perspective for their male population. Following a report in the Austrian Radio (ORF 2010), two-thirds of rural Styrian communities are suffering from notable population losses which are affecting mainly young females. This has created a male surplus up to 40% in many rural towns. The main reasons for the exodus of predominantly young educated women between 20 and 29 years of age are the lack of suitable jobs with opportunity for advancement, insufficient educational facilities, and a limited availability of partners. The development of the regional population structure is expected to continue its present trends i.e. urban core areas and their fringes will grow further whereas remote districts will loose population (ÖROK, Bl. 01.07.10/2010). These trends are equally mirrored in the regional distribution of the purchasing power. For the state of Styria this means that only the city of Graz and a few communities along the A9 and A2 highways in the urban fringe dispose of a consuming power above the Austrian average. The purchasing power index for Styria in 2009 has risen from €16.790 (2008) per year and head to €16.870. However, this amount is still only 94.3% of the Austrian average whereas Graz (109.4%) could surpass it. The purchasing power index rates for the poorest Styrian districts Feldbach (80.9% of Austria’s average), Hartberg (83.7%), and Murau (84.9%) demonstrate impressively the interrelationship between demographic, economic and regional or settlement development respectively (Fig. ???, Statistik Austria, 2009; cf. also Ruhsam 2010, pp. 38–39). Taking this as one conclusion from this contribution, yet another one should not be neglected although commonly accepted: local frame conditions are constantly loosing influence on settlement development, whereas the role of supra-regional or global events and changes—be they political, social, economic or physical—have increasing influence on its future.

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References Biwald P (2010) Gemeindefinanzen—Status, Ausblick, Reformerfordernisse. Zentrum für Verwaltungsforschung. Managementberatungs- und Weiterbildungs GmbH. 22 p. In: www.kdz.or.at, (Steirischer Städtetag 2010. Bad Aussee) Bussmann W (2008) Evaluation institutioneller Politik in der Schweiz, Deutschland und Österreich im Vergleich. (www.digi.univ.wortschlag.net), pp 392–399 Frühwirth T (2010) Die österreichische Verwaltung. Aufbau und Verfahren. In: www.schulnote. com/html/5808.htm, 15.10.2010, Bild 1 u. 2 Gregory D et al (2009) The Dictionary of human geography. Wiley-Blackwell Publ, Padstow, p 1052 http://docs.google.com/viewer?pid=bl&scrid=ADGEES;Nn5bW9G9SZBwlCX9MSL… Mödlhammer H (2010) Gemeinden sind Garanten für Lebensqualität und Effizienz. In: www.ots. at/presseaussendung/OTS_20100910_OZS0099/moedlhammer-gemein-; 15.10.2010 ORF (Österreichischer Rundfunk-Regional-Steiermark/Styria): Österreichbild, Nov 25, 2010 ÖROK (Österr. Raumordnungkonferenz), 2010: Atlas zur räumlichen Entwicklung Österreichs. Wien, Bl. 01.06.10/2010, ‘‘Wanderungsbilanz 2002–2008’’; Bl. 01.07.10/2010, ‘‘Kleinräumige Bevölkerungsprognose für Österreich 2010–2030 mit Ausblick bis 2050’’ ÖROK (Österr. Raumordnungskonferenz), ed. 1978: Raumordnung in Österreich. Wien, 89 p Österreich: Agglomerationen. In: www.citypopulation.de/oesterreich-agglo_d.html (10/2010) Österreichischer Gemeindebund, 2010: Gemeindefinanzen: Kleine Gemeinden leiden besonders unter Ausgabenbelastungen. In: http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20100909_OZS0088/ gemeindefinanzen-kle…; 15.10.2010 Österreichischer Städtebund, 2010: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki%C3%9österreichischer_St%C3% A4dtebund; 15.10.2010 Ruhsam M (2010) Kaufkraft läßt noch zu wünschen übrig. In: Woche. Graz und Umgebung. Nr. 47. 13.10.2010. Graz, pp 38–39 Zsilincsar W (1993) Probleme der Landwirtschaft im großstädtischen Raum (am Beispiel des Bezirkes Graz-Umgebung). In: Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur mit Geographie. 37. Jg., H. 56–6, Wien, pp 358–385

Changes in the Urban System of Romania, and Their Possible Effect on the Future Administrative Reform of the Country Ferenc Szilágyi

1 Introduction Romanian settlement geographers distinguish a few classical periods in Romanian history, with the same number of city generations. These periods are not continuous, and for example the cities from the first or second period have not existed constantly from their formation in the ancient times until now. Their existence was interrupted in the late antiquity, and some of them were reborn, resettled after a few hundred years in the Middle Ages. The cities from the third period (from the Middle Ages) already had a semi-continuous existence, with the possible interrupting periods (the wars, the Invasion of the Mongols etc.) causing great step-backs in their development, but only a small interruption in their existence (Bóna 1988). We can say that the modern (actual) city system and the oldest cities have their origin in the Middle Ages. Some of them are settled on the ancient ruins of the oldest cities but they are not the same units, we cannot speak about their continuous existence. This case is also characteristic of the Roman cities from the former Pannonian province, for instance Savaria-Szombathely, Scarbantia-Sopron, Arrabona-Gy}or or Aquincum-Óbuda from the actual territory of Hungary (Beluszky 2003a).

1.1 The First Generation of Cities Although Romanian settlement geography speaks about five historical city generations, the first two belong to the cities from the antiquity. In the first period some Greek colonies (polis) appeared at the coast of the Black Sea: They were F. Szilágyi (&) Partium Christian University, Str. Prima˘riei nr. 36, Oradea, Romania e-mail: [email protected]

T. Csapó and A. Balogh (eds.), Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-20314-5_3, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

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Fig. 1 The Greek colonies

commercial settlements: Histria (or Istros) in the north, Tomis in the middle and Callatis in the south (Fig. 1) (Posea 1982), each of them existing since the seventh century BC. Later they became Roman, and after that Byzantine cities, and they were abandoned in the period of migrant people. One thousand years after the foundation, the port of Histria was filled up with mud, so this city lost its importance in the Byzantine period, and it has remained the most important archaeological site in Romania up to now (Vofkori 2006). On the other hand, Tomis and Callatis were resettled and reconstructed in the Middle Ages by the Italians (from Genova) and by the Turks, their relics from antiquity was partly destroyed.

1.2 The Second Generation of Cities They appeared in the Roman period. After the Dacian conquest one (later three) Roman province was organised there. The cities from this area had a military, administrative or mining function. They were: Porolissum in the north, near the actual city of Zala˘u, Napoca in Somesßul-Mic-valley, the actual Cluj-Napoca (Pop 2001), Potaissa in Ariesß-valley, the actual Turda, Apullum, in the central part of the province, in the valley of the river Muresß, the actual Alba Iulia, Ampelum, the city of gold-mining, in Ampoiul-valley, the actual Zlatna, Sarmisegetusa Ulpia Traiana, which was the successor of the Dacian capital, and one of the most important municipalities from the Roman province, and in the southern part of the

Changes in the Urban System of Romania

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Fig. 2 The Roman cities

province the following towns appeared: Tibiscum, Dierna (the actual Orsova), Drobeta (later Szörényvár, the actual Drobeta Turnu Severin), which was the first Roman beach-head, in the north of the Danube in this area, and Romula-Malva (Fig. 2) and so on (Posea 1982; Tóth 1988). There were also many Roman cities in the Romanian part of the Moesia Inferior province (the actual Dobrogea region), with a greater settlement density in comparison with the Dacian provinces. The former Greek colonies were part of this city system: Histria, Tomis, Callatis and many new municipalities like Tropheum Traiani, Carsium, Noviodunum, Aegyssus (actual Tulcea), and so on.

1.3 The Third Generation of Cities The third generation of cities, and we can say the first units from the actual settlement system appeared in the Middle Ages. The actual territory of Romania was divided into three separated political entities which had a special and separate historical evolution—and in this way we can speak about three individual settlement and urban networks. The first medieval state from this area was the Hungarian Kingdom. After the year 1,000 the Hungarian administrative system was successfully formed, and the first cities and castles appeared as centres of counties or duchies. The administrative organisation process of the Hungarian Kingdom was completed until the middle of the thirteenth century. In an earlier period these central settlements had a defensive (military) and administrative

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Fig. 3 The medieval cities

function (Makkai 1988; Süli-Zakar and Csüllog 2003), and later, after the formation of the East-Hungarian and Transylvanian market lines they received commercial importance, too. In the earlier part of the history of Transylvania the central settlements along the market line were: Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia), Torda (Turda), Kolozsvár (Cluj), Doboka (Da˘bâca), Küküll}ovár (Cetatea de Balta) and Temesvár (Timisßoara); Arad and Bihar (Bihor) appeared along the east Hungarian market line (Makkai 1988). Bihar was quickly replaced by Várad (Oradea). Centres like Bihar, Doboka and Küküll} ovár, later lost their importance, instead of these there appeared the Saxon centres like Hermanstadt (Hun. Nagyszeben, Rom. Sibiu) and Kronstadt (Brassó, Brasßov) in the southern parts, Mediasch (Medgyes, Mediasß), Schassburg (Segesvár, Sighisßoara) in the central part, and Bistritz (Beszterce, Bistritßa) in the northern part of Transylvania (Beluszky 2003a). Beside these there appeared some smaller Hungarian feudal centres, too, like Székelyvásárhely (later Marosvásárhely, Rom. Tg. Muresß), Dés (Dej), Fogaras (Fa˘ga˘rasß), Déva (Deva) and Nagybánya (Baia Mare—as a centre of gold-mining) (Fig. 3). During the Middle Ages they usually did not gain international importance, and their population numbers remained under 5.000, with a few exceptions like Gyulafehérvár, Kolozsvár, Nagyszeben and Brassó (Beluszky 2003a). The Moldovan Voivodship appeared under the sovereignty of the Hungarian Kingdom in the fourteenth century (Fernández-Armesto 1994). Its most important urban centres (not too many in its history) appeared in the north-western part of this territory, in the first period they included the small capitals: Suceava, Baia and Siret. Later some commercial centres were founded too, in the central part (Tg. Neamtß, Roman, Iasßi) and in the southern part of the state (Vaslui, Baca˘u, Galatßi) (Posea 1982; România–Atlas istorico-geografic 1996).

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Fig. 4 New poles of urbanisation in the eighteenth, nineteenth centuries

The Walachian Voivodship appeared in the same time like its Moldovan twin, and its first urban centres were its first capitals, too: Câmpulung, Curtea de Argesß and Târgovisßte—all in the northern part of the region, near the Carpathians. From the fifteenth century the importance of Târgusßor and Bucharest increased, they were mostly commercial centres. Turnu Ma˘gurele, Giurgiu and Bra˘ila were initially Turkish beach heads in the northern bank of the Danube (Posea 1982). In the west Craiova became the second city of Walachia, but only after the eighteenth century. It was the capital of the Oltenian Banat, too (România 1996; Történelmi világatlasz 1991).

1.4 The Beginning of the Modern Era In the nineteenth century all three regions took part in a modernisation process; they lost their feudal characters (Hajdú 2005), the construction of railway lines and industrialisation began. This process made great changes in the urban network (Beluszky 2003b). The greatest poles were evidently increasing: Temesvár, Arad, Kolozsvár, Várad, Brassó, Iasßi, Galatßi, Bra˘ila, Bucharest and Craiova (România 1996). Some important historical towns fell in depression or stagnation (Vofkori 1996) like Gyulafehérvár, Tg. Neamtß, Curtea de Argesß, Câmpulung, Târgusor. There appeared some new industrial or commercial centres, too, like Szamosújvár (Rom. Gherla, in the eighteenth century), or later Resicabánya (Resßitßa), Stájerlakanina (Anina), Petrozsény (Petrosßani), Vajdahunyad (Hunedoara), Turnu Severin, Ploiesßti, Constantßa, Focsßani, Ca˘la˘rasßi (Fig. 4) (Posea 1982).

30

F. Szilágyi

Fig. 5 Before the first World War

The urban network in the actual territory of Romania was evidently born until the twentieth century, but it was weak, deficient and without a strong relation between the two/three political parts (Fig. 5). In the Hungarian half of this territory the cities were more advanced than their eastern mates. In 1900 in the Hungarian half of this area Kolozsvár (Cluj), Várad (Oradea), Arad and Temesvár (Timisßoara) were cities with regional importance and all with a population of more than 50–60.000 people (Zentai and Kósa 2003). Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare), Brassó (Brasßov) and Nagyszeben (Sibiu) were also important urban centres with a semi-regional importance and with a population number of 25,000–30,000. The population of Marosvásárhely (Târgu Muresß) and Máramarossziget (Sighetu Marmatßiei) remained a little under 20,000, but they increased very fast (Szilágyi 2007). In Moldova the greatest city was the former capital Iasßi with 70.000, but the Moldovan Danubian port Galatßi was very close to it with a population of 65.000 people. Above 20.000 were Botosßani and Bârlad, but Piatra Neamtß, Baca˘u and Roman fell only with a little under 20,000. In Walachia the Romanian capital already had almost 300.000 inhabitants, Bra˘ila and Ploiesßti had 50–60,000, Craiova 40,000, and Buza˘u more than 20,000, but Giurgiu, Pitesßti and Turnu Severin also had almost 20.000 inhabitants.

1.5 Between the Two World Wars Before the communist era and the communist administrative system (from 1946) the relations between the cities, towns, their attraction area and the administrative

Changes in the Urban System of Romania

31

Fig. 6 Urbanisation between the two World Wars

units (counties) were weak, the cities did not have an impact in this point of view. In Transylvania Oradea, Cluj, Timisßoara, Arad were municipalities for the entire period, but Satu Mare, Brasßov, Târgu Muresß and Sibiu kept this position only partly in this era (Szilágyi 2007). In the old Romanian Kingdom they were Iasßi, Galatßi, Constantßa, Bra˘ila, Craiova, Ploiesßti and Bucharest. Each of them was county capital at the same time (Fig. 6). Most of the counties didn’t have (strong) cities, their administrative centres were only small towns without a suitable polarisation power, like in the case of Somesß, Bistritßa-Na˘sa˘ud, Sa˘laj, Ciuc, Fa˘ga˘rasß, Târnava-Mica˘, Hunedoara, Gorj, Olt, Romanasßi, Vâlcea, Vlasßca, Ialomitßa, Teleorman, Râmnicu, Tulcea, Fa˘lciu, Baia, Câmpulung and Dorohoi countries. Some countries had two or multi-polar structures, with two or more same-level (but usually weak) cities or towns, like Satu Mare, Sa˘laj, Ciuc, Târnava Mare, Alba, Hunedoara, Severin, Târnava Mica˘, Baia, Argesß.

2 The Early Communist Era In 1950 a new administrative system was introduced in Romania. The former territorial configuration (with the small counties) was replaced with a new one: the new type of unit was called region (which was divided into raions, Vofkori 1996), and this was much bigger in comparison with the earlier county-size. The purpose was to create and support a real regional city network (system) with considerable industrial power. The newly appointed regional cities got a large area of influence

32

F. Szilágyi

Fig. 7 The regions from 1950

(generally 10–16.000 km2). First (in 1950) 28 units were designated with the same number of cities: Baia Mare, Bistritßa, Oradea, Cluj, Târgu Muresß, Arad, Timisßoara, Caransebesß, Deva, Sibiu, Brasßov, Câmpulung, Botosßani, Baca˘u, Iasßi, Bârlad, Focsßani, Galatßi, Buza˘u, Constantßa, Ca˘la˘rasßi, Bucharest, Ploiesßti, Rosßiori, Pitesßti, Râmnicu Vâlcea, Tg. Jiu and Craiova (Fig. 7). Some units were created under the acceptable size. It was determined that the ideal size of a unit should be above 10.000 km2, with 800.000–1.000.000 inhabitants, and many of the new units, due to the local communist lobby, remained only half-sized contrasted with the initial intention (Vofkori 1996), like Botosßani, Suceava, Iasßi, Bârlad, Putna, Buza˘u, Ialomitßa, Teleorman, Vâlcea, Severin, Rodna, Arad. Many of the new regional administrative cities did not have a real regional potential like Câmpulung (11 thousand inhabitants), Bârlad (24), Focsßani (28), Ca˘la˘rasßi (25), Rosßiori de Vede (15), Râmnicu-Vâlcea (17), Tg. Jiu (18), Caransebesß (14), Deva (14), Bistritßa (16). Some possible regional poles have lost their administrative function like Satu Mare, Bra˘ila. In 1952, after the correction the number of the units was reduced to 18, Rodna, Sibiu, Severin, Botosßani, Putna, Teleorman, Ialomitßa, Buza˘u, Râmnicu and Gorj regions were abolished. In this way many small centres like: Bistritßa, Caransebesß, Tg. Jiu, Râmnicu Vâlcea, Rosßiori de Vede, Ca˘la˘rasßi, Focsßani lost their importance, but Buza˘u, Botosßani and Sibiu too (Fig. 8). Instead of Câmpulung Moldovenesc Suceava (with only above 10.000 inhabitants) got an administrative function because of its central position in the new Suceava region. In 1960 two regions were abolished again: Arad and Bârlad, and in this way their residence cities lost their regional status (Fig. 9).

Changes in the Urban System of Romania

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Fig. 8 The regions from 1952

Fig. 9 The regions and the Romanian city-network after 1960

The remaining 16 cities were increasing fast until 1966, with values between 33 and 272% (Table 1). The great importance of this period was that it was successful in the creation of the regional level of the cities (Vofkori 1996), all (10) with a population number above 100.000 in 1966. Despite the fast increase, some regional cities like Deva or Suceava did not get a real regional importance, because this period

34 Table 1 The growth of regional cities between 1848 and 1966

Table 2 Population growth rate in some other (new industrial or later residence) cities

F. Szilágyi City

Popul. 1948 Popul. 1966 Increase Incr. % 1948–1966

Suceava Baia Mare Baca˘u Deva Pitesßti Brasßov Constantßa Galatßi Târgu Muresß Craiova Iasßi Cluj Timisßoara Ploiesßti Oradea Bucuresßti

10.123 20.959 34.461 12.959 29.007 82.984 78.586 80.411 47.043 84.574 96.075 117.915 111.987 95.632 82.282 1.025.000

37.697 64.535 73.414 26.969 60.113 163.345 150.256 151.412 86.464 148.711 161.023 185.663 174.243 146.922 122.534 1.367.000

27.574 43.576 38.953 14.010 31.106 80.361 71.670 71.001 39.421 64.137 64.948 67.748 62.256 51.290 40.252 342.000

272 208 113 108 107 97 91 88 84 76 68 57 56 54 49 33

City

Popul. 1948 Popul. 1966

Increase Incr. % 1948–1966

Hunedoara Onesßti Sibiu Piatra Neamtßi Târgu Jiu Alba Iulia Satu Mare Ca˘la˘rasßi Sfântu Gheorghe Bra˘ila Arad Buza˘u Râmnicu Vâlcea Zala˘u Focsßani Botosßani

7.018 5.000 60.602 26.303 17.698 14.420 46.519 24.448 14.224 95.514 87.291 43.365 17.238 11.652 27.960 29.145

62.067 30.663 48.913 19.549 13.107 7.795 23.250 11.236 6.544 43.228 38.709 18.572 6.629 3.492 7.134 6.075

69.085 35.663 109.515 45.852 30.805 22.215 69.769 35.684 20.768 138.802 126.000 61.937 23.867 15.144 35.094 35.220

884 613 81 74 74 54 50 46 46 45 44 43 38 30 26 21

was too short. In the same period, in the case of the former county centres which had lost their function, the increase was slower, especially in the absolute number of increase. A few exceptions were the new industrial poles of the early communist era like Hunedoara or Onesßti (former: Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej). The exceptional increase of Hunedoara (884% in 18 years) hindered the development of Déva too (Table 2).

Changes in the Urban System of Romania

35

3 The Late Communist Era After the state reform of 1968 the counties were reintroduced and the new priority was the development of medium-level towns (Apostol et al. 1969; Vofkori 1996). The administrative unit number increased to 38 plus Bucharest. Later three new units were created: Giurgiu, Ca˘la˘rasßi and Ilfov, with the same number of county capitals. Some former county cities did not regain their status like Sighetu Marmatßiei, Dej, Turda, Lugoj, Mediasß, Târna˘veni, OdorheiuSecuiesc, Fa˘ga˘rasß, Caracal, Turnu Ma˘gurele, Tecuci, Bârlad, Roman, Fa˘lticeni, Ra˘da˘utßi, Câmpulung, Husßi and Dorohoi. New county cities were Resßitßa, Slobozia and Alexandria. Until 1990 the cities of the regional level had increased to above 300.000 inhabitants: Constantßa, Galatßi, Iasßi, Craiova, Brasßov, Cluj-Napoca, Timisßoara, and a semi-regional city level was formed with some units above 200.000 (Ploiesßti, Bra˘ila, Oradea, Baca˘u). A large county city level was formed with a population number between 100.000 and 200.000 inhabitants, without regional importance: Arad, Sibiu, Târgu Muresß, Baia Mare, Satu Mare, Drobeta-TurnuSeverin, Pitesßti, Focsßani, Piatra Neamtßi, Botosßani, Suceava. A large group of medium level county cities was also formed with population numbers between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants: Bistritßa, Zala˘u, Sfântu Gheorghe, Alba Iulia, Deva, Resßitßa, TârguJiu, Slatina, Alexandria, Giurgiu, Târgovisßte, Slobozia, Ca˘la˘rasß, Tulcea, Vaslui with an administrative function, and Mediasß,Turda, Hunedoara, Petrosßani, Lugoj, Bârlad, Onesßti, Roman without it (Posea 1982). There existed an evident difference in the increase rate between the medium city level with and without an administrative function in the period of 1966–1992 (Table 3).

4 The Present Romanian City Network In 1989 the communist era and the period of forced industrialisation and the urbanisation process came to an end (Illés 2002). Since 1990 urban populations have been decreasing due to the suburbanisation process. In the last 20 years the Romanian urbanisation process and the territorial planning policy were not harmonised. The parliamentarian administrative–legislative work does not take into consideration the realities of the urban system. For example in 1997 when the NUTS 2 regions were founded (Horváth 2003; Vofkori 2006), some regional cities like Brasßov, Iasßi, Galaitßi, Constantßa, Oradea, Ploiesßti remained without regional capital status. Only Timisßoara, Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Craiova, Bra˘ila and some smaller centres like Alba Iulia, Ca˘la˘rasßi, Piatra Neamtßi have got this status. In spite of this fact the Territorial Planning Act of 2001 (Legea 351) defined the different urban categories exactly:

36

F. Szilágyi

Table 3 Population growth rate in the case of medium level cities between 1966 and 1992 County cities Popul. 1966 Popul. 1992 Increase 1966–92 Incr. % Vaslui Zala˘u Slobozia Slatina Bistritßa Târgovisßte Sfântu Gheorghe Alba Iulia Tg. Jiu Deva Tulcea Alexandria Resiitßa Other (non-residence) cities Roman Bârlad Onesßti Turda Lugoj Mediasß Hunedoara

17.591 15.144 12.443 19.250 25.519 29.763 20.768 22.215 30.805 26.969 35.561 21.898 56.653

80.614 68.404 56.048 85.168 87.710 98.117 68.359 71.168 98.238 78.438 97.904 58.478 96.918

63.023 53.260 43.605 65.918 62.191 68.354 47.591 48.953 67.433 51.469 62.343 36.576 40.165

358 352 350 342 244 230 229 220 219 191 175 167 71

39.012 41.060 35.663 42.307 36.542 46.384 69.085

80.328 77.518 58.810 61.200 50.939 64.484 81.337

41.326 36.458 23.147 18.893 14.397 18.100 12.252

106 89 65 45 39 39 18

Level 0 (National city level) includes only the capital, Bucharest. Level 1 (Regional cities) includes 11 cities: Baca˘u, Brasßov, Bra˘ila, Galatßi, ClujNapoca, Constantßa, Craiova, Iasßi, Oradea, Ploiesßti, Timisßoara. Only the cities from the first two categories can organise metropolitan areas (Fig. 10) in their suburban vicinity. Up to now only five of them have already organised their metropolitan areas: the first was Iasßi, followed by Brasßov, ClujNapoca, Constantßa and Oradea. In the near future the other six metropolitan areas will start operating: the Galatßi-Bra˘ila conurbation area (under the name of Cantemir), and the other five metropolitan areas: Bucharest, Baca˘u, Ploiesßti, Craiova and Timisßoara. We can observe that this area is very small in the case of Craiova, and we can speak about a real urbanised territory with more municipalities and towns only in the case of Cantemir, Constantßa, Brasßov, Ploiesßti and Bucharest. In the other cases the metropolitan areas are a bit strained and they have mostly rural characters. On the other hand the Planning Act does not allow the cities from level two to organise urban areas (Table 4). In certain cases we can speak about urban agglomerations around a city from this level, for example in the case of Nagybánya, Petrozsény, Râmnicu Vâlcea agglomerations, and Deva-Hunedoara, Turda-Câmpia Turzii conurbations. The first version of the planning act was modified in 2007 (Lege 100). After the promulgation of the first version there was a big wave of declaration of new

Changes in the Urban System of Romania

37

Fig. 10 The actual city network of Romania Table 4 The Romanian metropolitan areas Metropolitan Total Pop. of the central Pop. of the area pop. city suburb. area

Nr. of Nr. of mun. towns

Nr. of comm.

Rate of rural pop. %

Bucharest Cantemir Constanitßa Brasßov Iasßi Cluj-Napoca Timisßoara Craiova Ploiesßti Baca˘u Oradea

1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

87 21 8 8 13 16 15 5 9 17 8

16 15 7 10 19 16 14 4 6 30 16

2,400 605 446 400 397 378 367 313 282 250 245

1,900 500 299 ? 216 = 515 90 310 136 284 116 320 77 318 60 317 50 300 13 232 50 175 75 206 39

6 0 6 3 0 0 0 0 3 0 0

communes, towns and municipalities (50 new administrative units appear). After the promulgation of the second version of this act, which was more rigorous than the first, the changes in the settlement network ended.

5 The Possible Future Nowadays there exist some intentions of the Romanian government to execute a territorial-administrative reform. They want to change the NUTS regions and the county system as well. The general unit size of the counties can be reduced,

38

F. Szilágyi

Fig. 11 The possible new Romanian administrative system, and its effect on the city network

but their administrative role should be partially given to the NUTS 2 units (Szilágyi 2008). The new NUTS 3 and 2 units will be designated in conformity with the city levels 1 and 2. The number of the NUTS 2 units is going to increase from 8 to 12–16, and the number of the counties can double (Fig. 11). The possible new regional capital cities can be: Baia Mare, Oradea, Târgu-Muresß, Brasßov, Ploiesßti, Constantßa, Galatßi, Baca˘u and Iasßi.

References Apostol G, Bobocea G, Desmireanu I, Dumitrescu F, Ianovici I, Moraru I, Rosßu A, Sßtefa˘nesßci Sß, Vasilescu M (1969) Judetßele româniei socialiste. Editura Politica˘, Bucuresßti, p 548 Beluszky P (2003a) Magyarország településföldrajza. Dialóg-Campus, Budapest-Pécs, p 568 Beluszky P (2003b) Magyarország településhálózatának átalakulása 1848–2000 között. In: Süli-Zakar I (ed) A terület-és településfejlesztés alapjai. Dialóg-Campus, Budapest-Pécs, pp 47–87 Bóna I (1988) Daciától Erd} oelvéig (271–896). In: Köpeczi B (ed) Erdély története. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, pp 107–235 Fernández-Armesto F (1994) The times guide to the peoples of Europe. Harper Collins Publisher, London, p 410 Hajdú Z (2005) Magyarország közigazgatási földrajza. Dialóg-Campus, Budapest-Pécs, p 332 Horváth Gy (2003) Európai regionális politika. Dialóg-Campus, Budapest-Pécs 501 Illés I (2002) Közép-és Délkelet-Európa az ezredfordulón. Dialóg-Campus, Budapest-Pécs, p 362 Lege 100 pentru modificarea ßsi completarea legii nr. 351 din 2001 privind aprobarea Planului de amenajare a teritoriului natßional—Sectßiunea IV-a—Retßeaua de localita˘ßi. t In: Monitorul Oficial al României, Anul XIX. nr. 284 (24.04.2007)

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Legea 351 privind aprobarea Planului de amenajare a teritoriului natßional—Sectßiunea IV-a— Retßeaua de localita˘ßi. t In: Monitorul Oficial al României, Anul XIII. nr. 408 (24.07.2001) Makkai L (1988) Erdély a középkori Magyar Királyságban (896–1526). In: Köpeczi B (ed) Erdély története. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, pp 235–542 Pop PG (2001) Depresiunea transilvaniei. Presa Universitara˘ Clujeana˘, Cluj-Napoca, p 274 Posea G. (ed) (1982) Enciclopedia geografica˘ a româniei, Editura ßstiintßifica˘ ßsi Enciclopedica˘. Bucuresßti p 847 România—Atlas istorico-geografic (1996), Editura Academiei Române, Bucuresßti, p 157 Süli-Zakar I, Csüll}og G (2003) A regionalizmus történelmi el}ozményei Magyarországon. In: Süli-Zakar I (ed) A terület-és településfejlesztés alapjai. Dialóg-Campus, Budapest-Pécs, pp 17–47 Szilágyi F (2007) Partium közigazgatási földrajza, Studia Geographica 17, Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, Debrecen, p 197 Szilágyi F (2008) Partium in the mirror of the newest regional conceptions. In: Süli-Zakar I (ed) Neighbours and partners on the two sides of the border. Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, Debrecen, pp 271–281 Tóth E (1988) Dacia római tartomány. In: Köpeczi B (ed) Erdély története. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, pp 46–107 Történelmi világatlasz (1991) Kartográfia kiadó, Budapest, p 237 Vofkori L (1996) Erdély közigazgatási és etnikai földrajza. Balaton Akadémia, Vörösberény, p 157 Vofkori L (2006) Románia turizmusföldrajza. Proprint, Csíkszereda, p 367 Zentai L, Kósa P (2003) A történelmi Magyarország atlasza és adattára 1914. Talma Kiadó, Pécs, p 247

The Settlement Network of Serbia: From the Past to the Prospective Borislav Stojkov and Velimir Šec´erov

1 Introduction The settling, and the settlement network as a result of settling, mostly depends on different geographic factors. But geopolitical system together with economy, especially under market conditions, is becoming a prevailing factor nowadays. The network is getting transformed to a more dynamic system and networking is substituting traditionally static network. The layout of settlements, its hierarchy and structure is under dynamic changes, the relation between urban and rural settlements is taking new shape. As some authors points the Twentyfirst century will be the first urban century…in which the majority of humanity will have an urban (or suburban) existence.1 On the other side N.P. Milanovic, discussing the population trends, says that the most notable features were increase in absolute and relative decline of population in Southern Europe (Milanovic 2007) with specific role of cities in the process of agglomerating the population and with decline of traditional rural settlements. In that sense the settlement network in 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 1

Gilbert et al. (1996) B. Stojkov (&) Republican Agency for Spatial Planning, Kralja Milutina 10a, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia e-mail: [email protected] V. Šec´erov Faculty of Geography—Institute for Spatial Planning, Studentski trg 3/III, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia e-mail: [email protected]

T. Csapó and A. Balogh (eds.), Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-20314-5_4,  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

41

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B. Stojkov and V. Šec´erov

and political systems of 7 (seven!) states2 clearly indicates to permanent demographic changes, changes within the settlement network and transformations in settlement structures. Significant spatial and demographic changes have been among the key characteristics of the Republic of Serbia in the second half of the twentieth century, mainly caused by the dynamic primary urbanisation process, i.e., intensive migration flows from country to town.3 The demographic processes are marked by ageing and decreasing in the period of transition, with demographic imbalance where big parts of the country are leaving their homeland (eastern, southern and, to lesser extent, western parts), going abroad or shifting to big cities in the country core axis (Novi Sad-Belgrade-Nish) and along it. The population growth in towns of Serbia, which has mainly been due to immigration, has resulted in formation of demographic expansion areas leaving on the other side the areas of constant depopulation.4 The economy and some social reasons, but the quality of life also, has made huge impact to these processes, changing the settlement network especially during nineties in twentieth century and coming to stabilisation at the beginning of the Twentyfirst century.

2 The History of Settling in Serbia Serbia under Milan Obrenovic in the nineteenth century was a regionalised state. The Constitution of 1882 enabled efficient decentralised governing within the Kingdom and self-managed organising and management of the local community, similar to that which exists in Europe today and is considered the basis for polycentric development. Serbia at that time was divided into 21 districts (okrug), each of them had 3–5 smaller units (srez) and almost every settlement was a municipality, with the possibility of dividing urban settlements into several municipalities. There were only two cities-Belgrade and Majdanpek, whereas almost every settlement, except for small mountain villages, was a municipality.5 Cities in the Kingdom of Serbia and under the Austro-Hungarian Empire changed their structure and began resembling the model of the medieval city. In comparison to the situation in Europe, this development of cities was in significant delay. (Pusic 1987) In the late nineteenth century, Serbia was therefore an extremely decentralised state, up till the end of World War II.6 In the short period between

2 After the WW2 the states have been in sequel: NRJ, DFRJ, FNRJ, SFRJ, Serbia and Montenegro, and finally Republic of Serbia. 3 Spasic and Petric (2001) 4 Ibid, p. 182. 5 The Municipality Assembly consisted of practically of all the inhabitants that had citizen rights. 6 More on this topic in the part related to the legislative framework.

The Settlement Network of Serbia: From the Past to the Prospective

43

1949 and 1951 Serbia was divided into regions.7 After this districts were formed, the regional spatial entities with 200–300,000 inhabitants. In the second half of 1950 they grew to 500–600,000 inhabitants. They were abolished in 1965, when during a ten-year period the mezzo-level did not exist. Sentic´ (1954) refers to the regionalisation of Serbia in 1954 concluding that it was established for purposes of statistical research, on the principles of homogeneity of characteristics and the principle of economic gravitation. This division lacked an intermediate stage of authority between the municipalities and districts on the one side and the Republic on the other side, which represented a difficulty for statistical work. Everything took place on the relation state-municipality. The Constitution of 1974 enabled the Republican territorial organisation on the level of inter-municipal regional communities, by a simple political decision (law) without going into detail regarding their planning and development potential, which Serbia proper has done since 1975.8 Inter-municipal regional communities during the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century in many cases adopted plans, i.e., programs of integral development. In a way, it can be said that in the mid-seventies of the twentieth century regionalisation in Serbia proper was carried out with distinctive regional structures and contrasts. The good practice of inter-municipal regional communities, was derogated by the Constitution of 1989 which restored full centralisation at the national level with formally inaugurated districts of similar size as former counties but without any prerogatives of power. In Serbia, the newly created municipality (a total of 190) lost a large number of competencies and authorisations in relation to earlier municipalities.9 The changed political situation in the period between the late 1980s and early 1990s of the twentieth century, accompanied by profound disturbances in the sphere of economic activity imposed the need to preserve and stabilise economic activities and flows, but under completely changed external and internal circumstances. The entire economic system had to experience great changes and transformations, especially in the domain of property rights, governance mechanisms, structural adjustment in constrained and limited opportunities of enhancing production deprived of export and import flows and exchanges (Fig. 1). The whole political-administrative situation reflected on the settlement network, with specific relations to urban and rural settlements. Functional links of urban centres with the surroundings created an urban–rural system (nexus) in which firm but also flexible links were established. They are often uneven, oneway or within themselves unrelated but with a tendency to meet in the city centre. The magnetism of nodes (urban centres) provokes a situation in space in which 7 The division had been made according to the principle: the Capital ? 2 provinces ? 5 districts. 8 By the Constitution of 1974 AP Vojvodina and AP Kosovo acquire all attributes of a state. 9 By the Law in 1995 municipalities are denied the possibility of planning their own territory (spatial plans of the municipalities were not foreseen by the law). Due to non-existing regions, planning of the municipality was left to the partial solutions within the urban plans or utterly superficially for the municipality level through the plans of higher order (e.g. PPPPN).

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B. Stojkov and V. Šec´erov

Fig. 1 Development axes in Serbia Source Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia 1996.

links are more intense in the direction towards the city, but regardless of the strength of their impact they are not be able to function autonomously. Large cities within their territory establish a system which usually has a dominant centre and several secondary centres which function independently and towards which smaller settlements gravitate, while others function as mono-centric urban structures with a dominant centre. (Stojkov 2003) Therefore, the structure of the system goes in the direction from the smallest settlements towards the settlement community centres up to the central place—the city. What links them are the functions and connections which each unit in this organism has independently and is able to transfer to other surrounding settlements. On the other hand, development axes are the connective tissue of the bearers of development for a specific gravitation area. Such axes with their influence shape the specific regional whole. Development axes appear as a firm

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45

and consistent whole on a higher level of economic development. They represent an organic spatial unity with a high level of infrastructural equipment that connects the poles of growth and development (cities). In Europe and throughout history and today there have been very distinct development axes. The valley of the Rhine, Danube, Rhone and others have always been economically powerful and organically linked. It is similar in Serbia. The dominant development axis in Serbia is the Danube-Sava axis. The largest urban centres in the Republic belong to this axis. In addition, the axis in the direction of the Corridor X (Velikomoravska) and its branch towards Budapest is also one of the first-class development directions in Serbia today. In eastern Serbia there are no intensive continual development areas, while in the west they are lined along the West-Morava river development direction and the possible, but infra-structurally still unconnected, Podrinje belt.

3 Polycentricity and Lack of Polycentrism in Serbia 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 (Stamenkovic et al. 2010). The Statistical Service of Serbia in 1952 adopted the following definition: the settlement is a specific anthropogeographical territorial unit with a special name regardless of the number of houses which are accentuated by four groups of characteristics-population, territory, number of houses and the name. The contemporary spatial planning practice in Serbia defines a settlement as a built functionally unified space which provides conditions for life and work and the common needs of residents. (Law of Planning and Construction 2009). Contemporary practice introduces polycentrism as a policy that supports polycentricity as system of functioning of urban centres in a certain country. The policy of polycentrism assumes overall decentralization, by which the levers of development management descend to the lower (local or regional) level. Instead of a model in which territorial units depend on the will and power of the central government, in a decentralised country they depend on the success and power of its regions and local communities. On the other hand polycentricity is the network of settlements in the morphological sense and displays the physical layout of settlements in an area. It is the condition for the polycentrism policy, because a good distribution of centres in a country allows its efficient implementation. Today polycentrism surpasses the boundaries of state borders in individual countries. It has been brought up to the European level in order to harmonise the development of its entire territory. The polycentricity of Serbia has been confronted with a lack of polycentrism, the state policy supporting polycentricity as a system, in the period between 1989 and date (Stojkov 2005). During this period of development of systems of cities in

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Serbia, set guidelines lacked in the sense of reducing the concentration of people and activities in the Republic centre and province centres, and encouraging qualitative changes in their economic and socio-economic structure, with more intense use of construction funds, land and advantages of sites, professional, scientific and development resources at their disposal. At the same time the role of medium and small cities was completely neglected, which led to their economic and social distortion and retrogression. The network of urban centres in Serbia should be considered in relation to: • the hierarchical structure of urban centres; • the spatial system of urban centres; • the zones of intense relationship of regional centres and the strategy for achieving the proposed draft of the spatial model of the network of centres. In addition to the previously mentioned division, Serbia based its network of urban centres at the end of the twentieth century on the following established hierarchy of centres: centre of national and international significance, macro regional centres, regional centres, sub-regional centres, Belgrade is classified in the category of centre of national and international importance and at the same time the centre of its own macro region. This time it was attempted to define the functional scopes of macro-regional centres. Analysis of the functional scopes indicates that the Belgrade macro-region is (Fig. 2).10 This macro-region at that time connects the eastern and western part of Serbia spreading its influence up to Kladovo and Negotin on the east and to Sabac, Koviljacˇa spa and Valjevo in the west, but to a much lesser extent than twenty years ago when it was the capital of a three times larger country than today. The bold idea of marking the boundaries of functional regions (especially the great Belgrade region) had many development consequences. Eastern Serbia lost its regional centre and is fully focused on Belgrade, which only partially corresponds to the situation on the terrain. Bearing in mind the condition of roads, the demographic situation in the area, proximity to Romania and the existence of closer regional centres (Bor, Zajecar), the assumption is that a new similar division would take into account the mentioned facts. The second-largest makro-region of Novi Sad, thanks to the role of the capital city of the autonomous province of Vojvodina, practically influences all of Vojvodina, but also overlaps with the functional area of the city of Belgrade. The third-largest, Nis functional region has an impact on the area from Pirot in the east to Vranje and the Macedonian border in the south. Characteristics of settlements at that time in Serbia can be summarised as (Macura 1995): 10

Belgrade MEGA (functional area) includes approximately 2 million people (according to the Census 2002) which is about 35% more than its total population (1,576,124). In the total number of inhabitants, it represents 25.4% of the population on 7.4% of the territory of Serbia. The most intense relationships of Belgrade MEGA have an impact in the first circle of the surrounding municipalities whereas they decrease with departing from the city (total of 6 municipalities).

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Fig. 2 Zones of influence of macro-urban centres in Serbia, 1995, much larger than its administrative territory, Source Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia 1996.

• A system consisting of an individual city-small and poorly dynamic settlements that have no significant relationship with the surroundings in which they emerged. • A system consisting of the city as the centre of a group of nearby villages and mixed settlements with which it maintains not only constant daily functional links, but can be physically connected as well. • A system consisting of a powerful city which is the centre of a group of settlements in which villages, mixed settlements and smaller towns are included. Links between settlements are functional, based on daily cycles, and physical (regional city). This system in Serbia comprises the largest cities: Nis, Kragujevac, Novi Sad. Until the nineties of the twentieth century, the policy of regionalisation was based on encouraging the development of underdeveloped areas, especially in mountainous and border areas. (Veljkovic, Tošic´, Jovanovic´ 1995). Contemporary regionalisation of Serbia is founded on the established network of centres was launched through the Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia, enacted 1996, which established the basic principles, instruments and measures for the realisation of the concept of spatial organisation of the country. This Plan evaluated the basic potentials and resources of Serbia and established criteria for their optimal use and organisation of space as a basis for defining strategies and policies for regional development. The functional decentralization was based on the formation of:

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• One centre of national/international importance (Belgrade) • 6 macro-regional centres (Belgrade-and in the role of macro regional centresNovi Sad, Pristina, Nis, Kragujevac, Uzice) • 21 regional centres • 9 sub-regional centres • and other urban centres of lower rank. The hierarchy of urban centres that have their area/region of influence has been established. Although over time there has been resistance and it still exists relating to the number of centres, the criteria for selection of centres, their territorial organisation and balance, this hierarchy has set the basic modality of future territorial organisation of Serbia and the settlement network within its framework. The concept of functional urban areas is under consideration in Serbia during the nineties of the twentieth century, but with different interpretations. In the spatial planning practice of the European Union (through the system ESPON) functional areas are defined as functional urban regions, while two-way daily population commuting is treated as the main indicator of their delimitation, i.e., it is used in defining the territorial scope of regional and municipal centres or subcentres and in Serbia as well. What could be regarded as a methodological difference in reference to the current practice is that under the notion of functional areas during the period of the nineties of the last century, regions that covered the entire territory of the Republic were observed, including several municipalities around centres of different significance.11 The territorial and functional components of regional centres were not defined, nor their hierarchy. Although at that time it was concluded that the functional areas had the role of functional urban regions, i.e., daily urban systems, commuting was not used as an indicator for their definition. Consequently, areas that gravitate towards certain centres of development were not determined on the basis of criteria that could be today comparable with European practice. The influence of the macro region of Belgrade, although dominant, is significantly overemphasised, covering the territory from eastern to western Serbia, i.e., the part that overlaps with the Novi Sad and Kragujevac regions. In general, the formation of 6 macro-regional and 34 regional centres with their functional areas did not influence the decentralisation of functions to the expected extent and did not achieve a greater homogeneity of the territory of the Republic and integration of space within the established centre. On the other hand, belts of intense development remained related to the former, established development directions. The Danube-Sava and Velika Morava development axes were confirmed to be of prime importance with branches of lower hierarchical importance diffusely distributed in the territory of Serbia. The division was based on their connections (roads and infrastructure), economic and demographic potentials and natural characteristics. In addition to connecting urban 11

In this way the actual situation is that Serbia is 100% covered with functional areas without defining FUA. Functional areas are not defined by criteria that could today be relevant and comparable with the European practice.

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centres into a unique system, in this way a possibility was open for trans-border connecting regions of Serbia with neighbouring and farther regions. The role of macro-regional centres from that aspect is very important. Identified as generators of development with the greatest functional impact, these centres should be the basis for forming a unique system (macro-regional centres—regional centres—municipal centres—local settlements) and connecting to a network of urban centres in the neighbouring and farther surroundings. Serbia was therefore, 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.12 The new Constitution of the Republic of Serbia from 2006 opened the possibility of its decentralization and regionalisation, with very little guidance on how to execute it, so that the serious issue of regionalisation and the role of cities in this process were left over to lower legal forms. Apart from a clear definition of competencies through legislation, of these or similar regions, it is necessary to define the following: • definition of national regional development policy • definition of a national urban development policy • definition of intra-regional strategies. In this way, Serbia would catch up with the European countries that have already made these policies. In the realisation of this task it is necessary to use a wider application of best practice and developing models adapted in the regional/ local surroundings. It is obvious that the cities and their functional regions are the pillar and driving force of future regional development of Serbia and the main point for future co-operation with neighbouring countries.13 Therefore, it is necessary to yield certain levels of competence to the city and regional level with a clearly established hierarchy among them and a new model of territorial organisation of the state territory, and precisely determine the role and importance of urban areas. Similarly, it is necessary to execute further inter-regional decentralization with the formation of a settlement network within it. The period between the years 1990 and 2000 was also characterised by a serious political and economic crisis. As stated by Stojkov (Stojkov 2005), city administration was taken over by different political parties, state ownership was being abolished,14 the jurisdiction of institutions was declining, standards, criteria and responsibilities for activities in space were disappearing. This was a time of massive illegal construction, without plans, with the dominance of investors, unclear strategies, misuse of plans in favour of suspicious individual or group 12

Districts, as formal middle-range administrations are the direct exponent of the state without realistic influence and possibilities to manage and plan development. 13 In the Republic of Serbia today formally exist 24 cities 23 in the central Serbia and Pristina in AP Kosovo and Metohija). This classification, in the strict legislative sense, is not always related to the size of the regional centres in Serbia and their unique effects on the surrounding area. 14 In cities today it is still not resolved. The issues of restitution and denationalisation of land and facilities are awaiting their legal precondition and mode of solution.

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interests, the collapse of big industrial plants with serious repercussions on the surrounding area, with the closing of the state borders and suspension of serious cross-border co-operation. All this has serious consequences on the demographic situation in Serbia and, indirectly on the settlement network.

4 The New Position of Settlements The present time is characterised by an extremely poor situation, as a result of the previous period. The phase of the transition requires many structural changes in society and therefore in the position, structure and role of settlements. Public and private interest and public and private property are back on the scene, as well as the beginning of a more serious impact of the public in the process of elaborating and adopting strategic planning documents, but with the growing influence of various political parties in power. There is a growing understanding of the necessity for complete renovation of cities and their surroundings and active participation in Europeanprojects and strategies (Stojkov 2007). In Serbia there is a total of 6,155 independent settlements, of which, a certain number, according to their relevant characteristics, certainly do not qualify. In the debate about the geographical distribution of the population it has already been commented that our country is characterised by a large number of settlements, whose number is more or less continuously increasing year by year. After all, since 1971 (6,049 settlement) to 2002, 106 independent settlements appeared in Serbia, which also influenced the creation of new characteristics in the general and specific spatial dispersion of settlements, where now there is one settlement per 14.4 km2 of territory, and the average distance between the settlements is 4.3 km. In the last interval between censuses, from 1991 to 2002, the number of settlements in the central Serbia and Vojvodina increased by 13. The first prerequisite for the revival of villages and their qualitative transformation is the implementation of co-ordinated activities that include: (a) institutional and organisational support, (b) effective physical and networking communications of rural settlements in the settlement network (c) connecting rural population and organisations with civil services and market entities. The establishment of village communities is being planned, which should be defined by the local government with a recommendation that the village community centre should be planned to cover a gravitation area of about 3,000–10,000 inhabitants. This can be executed through a series of measures and instruments that will be applied in the implementation of planning strategies and priorities. The following is proposed for urban centres: stimulation of selective development of urbanindustrial centres of various hierarchical level—by measures and instruments of stimulation/discouragement and methods of direct targeting, without clear and specific guidelines. Similarly, there is the need for relatively rapid investment in the infrastructure of small and medium-sized cities. In this way, better communication between urban centres of different ranks would be achieved and the

The Settlement Network of Serbia: From the Past to the Prospective Table 1 Changes in the network of settlements in Serbia by main units from 1971 to 2002. Source Thematic book of settlement networks Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia 2010

Year

1971 1981 1991 2002

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Number of settlement

Serbia

AP Vojvodina

Central Serbia

AP Kosovo and Methohija

451 464 466 467

4,163 4,243 4,238 4,239

1,435 1,445 1,449 1,449

6,049 6,153 6,153 6,155

possibility opened for their networking. For villages, the harmonisation of goals of the agricultural policy and regional development policy is necessary, further the establishment of a system of monitoring and evaluation of programs supported by funds from the agricultural budgets/public revenue and encouraging private investors to invest in appropriate programs, as well as improving the data base on agricultural land and ensuring resources for stimulating economic development of agriculture (Table 1). Small urban settlements dominate in the spatial and functional organisation of the network of central settlements. From the total number of 168 urban settlements in the year 2002, 51 settlements have less than 5,000 inhabitants, 41 settlements have between 5,000 and 10,000 inhabitants, 58 settlements have 10,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, 14 settlements 50,000–100,000, while there are only four settlements with more than 100,000 inhabitants: Belgrade (city proper population of 1,119,642) Novi Sad (191,405 inhabitants), Nis (173,724 inhabitants) and Kragujevac (146,373 inhabitants). In 25 municipalities in Serbia (excluding the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija), according to the methodology of state statistics, there are no settlements or urban areas (Table 2). The tradition of planning in Serbia always paid considerable attention to the development of settlements and their organisation. However, empty spaces between settlements were in fact those that were neglected. According to the legislation, they were treated through plans, but practical cases showed an opposite trend. At the same time the planning of development of towns and villages was not (and still is not) in an equal ratio. This is especially the case in the past two decades, where rural areas were practically not treated appropriately. They were part of the planning process, but only formally. At the same time, in the period between the years 1996 and 2003 (the period between the two laws on planning) it can be concluded that the state had no concern for the village. Although the legislative determined that plans had to be prepared and adopted for village territories and their districts, this was simply not done. This situation has had different effects in different parts of Serbia. Traditionally, well distributed and organised villages with a defined system of functioning, for example in Vojvodina, were not significantly damaged by this situation.15 On the other hand, suburbia and villages

15

Especially due to the fact that in the preceding period (until mid 80s) they were almost completely covered by some document which had guided their development, either those were plans of different types, development plans (‘uredjajne osnove’), programs of development, etc.

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Table 2 Differentiating types of settlements in central Serbia and Vojvodina in 1991 and 2002. Source Thematic book settlement network in Serbia, the Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia, 2010 Category Number of settlements Total population 1,000,000 and more inhabitants 100,000–999,999 inhabitants 10,000–99,999 inhabitants 2,000–9,999 inhabitants less than 2,000 inhabitants Total

1991

2002

1991

2002

1 4 80 430 4,178 4,693

1 3 81 404 4,217 4,706

1,168,454 602,708 2,125,845 1,656,253 2,269,535 7,822,795

1,119,642 511,502 2,267,044 1,587,428 2,012,385 7,498,001

near large cities began to develop spontaneously. The absence of relevant policies in many cases initiated illegal construction, especially in villages, but in towns as well throughout Serbia. Left to themselves and burdened by economic problems, the villagers made surplus income by parcelling out, fragmentation and sale of their real properties. In this way, agricultural land was quickly converted into construction land, creating new forms of settlements, primarily along the main roads. The accumulation of new building lots close to urban centres increased the number of urban dwellers, while the depopulation of remote villages continued intensely and led to an extremely negative demographic situation. Practically abandoned, demographically aged, too old for employment, villages and their inhabitants, were unable to stop this negative trend. Due to uncontrolled exodus, the architectural and spiritual significance of rural areas was beginning to disappear. Therefore, today there is an effort, with help of the new legislative proposals, to restore the quality of life for people in rural areas. They require, in most cases full or some kind of selective renewal. The elementary requirement is a minimum of economic and cultural life that city residents enjoy or at least partial contents that can be compensated by good traffic links with the city centre.

5 The Settlement Network Prospective in Serbia The prospective of urban and rural settlements in Serbia calls for a new urban– rural relation based on functional links between urban centres and their functional (basically rural) surroundings. The concept of development of the network of centres and functional urban areas in terms of balanced territorial development of Serbia should be directed towards: • the possibility of integrating space outside functional urban areas with some of the urban centres by: – increasing the economic power of centres – increasing accessibility

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– development of social contents of a centre and sub-centres – positive development policies • the possibility of independent development of settlements that remain outside the functional urban areas (which cannot be functionally integrated with an urban centre) • interest networking of urban areas within the territory of Serbia and trans-border connecting with neighbours in the surrounding countries. This concept is aimed at enhancing territorial cohesion and activating the territorial and human capital of Serbia, which is necessary for its successful development in the future. The creation of clusters of urban areas closely corresponds to the dominant axes of development in Serbia (the Danube-Sava, Morava, Nišava axes), while intense trans-border co-operation is possible in the border areas, particularly in the direction of Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the year 2020, on the basis of this model, the territory of Serbia should have, in the ideal case, 92.4% of the population living in one of the functional urban areas of different levels (6,920,875 inhabitants), while their spatial coverage would be 78.4% of the entire territory of Serbia (60,564 km 22) (excluding AP Kosovo and Metohija) . On the basis of the analysis of possibly integrating the territory of Serbia in one of the existing areas of city influence, the categorisation of functional urban areas has been presumed, on the basis of which in 2020 in Serbia there will be16: • 1 centre in the category of European metropolitan growth areas (MEGA4)— City of Belgrade • 2 centres of international significance—the cities of Novi Sad and Nis • 21 centres of national significance—Cacak, Kragujevac, Kraljevo, Krusevac, Kikinda, Leskovac, Loznica, Novi Pazar, Beograd, Pancevo, Pozarevac, Sabac, Smederevo, Sombor, Sremska Mitrovica, Subotica, Uzice, Vranje, Valjevo, Zrenjanin and Zajecar • 2 centres of regional significance-Pirot and Vrsa The categories MEGA and FUA on the international level have not changed (although they have grown in size) as compared to the situation in 2009, while the greatest change has been made between the centres of national and regional level, namely the transfer from lower to higher hierarchical order (Šec´erov, Nevenic´ 2010). Thus, by the functional merging of municipalities, 5 FUA’s, of regional significance have been transferred into a higher national rank (Kikinda, Pozarevac, Valjevo, Zajecar, FC). Only 2 FUA’s, Pirot and Vrsac, will remain with reduced, regional, impact on the surrounding area until 2020. By the same projection the percentage of population living in one of the FUA will increase by 12%, while the surface that they cover will be higher by 17%. FUA has the largest coverage in Vojvodina (over 95% of

16

On the territory of AP Kosovo and Metohija. Due to the lack of relevant data, situation remains defined the same way as in 2009.

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Fig. 3 Settlement network in Serbia in 2010. Source Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia, 2010

the population and territory) and lowest in eastern and south-western parts of central Serbia. The most intensive functional connectivity will remain in the city zones and in strong industrial centres where the permanent relocation of the population in function of employment has already been executed, while extreme daily migrations are expected in inter-city areas, along transportation routes. Areas that are far from strong economic centres and commercial zones will be oriented towards the smaller work centres, integrating an insignificant number of small settlements around them (Fig. 3).

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Fig. 4 Belgrade metropolitan (functional) area 2020. Source Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia, 2010

6 The Role of the City of Belgrade and its Metropolitan Area The influence of the Belgrade metropolitan area will grow and with the current 1.7 million inhabitants, it will integrate 2,056,200 inhabitants by 2020, functionally binding 10 municipalities of the immediate and farther surrounding. The central part of the agglomerations will continue to be the dominant gravitation area for the most intensive daily migration from the city outskirts. In this sense, the concept of spatial development of Belgrade should go in the direction of reduction of working places in the core of the city. Decentralization of functions and the creation of stronger sub-migration systems in the metropolitan area would enable the use of the model of decentralised concentration of population and functions (Fig. 4). The stimulation of the functional transformation of the agricultural settlements in rural areas outside the metropolis, would provide the possibility of locating processing plants of industrial character and activities of the tertiary sector. The aim of these activities does not have to be only to provide services to the inhabitants, but employment as well. By the development of central and service functions and the role of micro-developing centres on one side, and by connecting to a higher quality network of roads and intensifying city public transport, on the other, would stimulate the commuting of labour and thus slow down the migration flow to the central parts of Belgrade (Nevenic´ 2009). In fact, the development nuclei (6 urban centres within the territory of the City of Belgrade) should get the role of centres of functional decentralization of the metropolitan. In this sense it is necessary to apply the model of ‘‘decentralised concentration’’ of the population and activities, for which there is an initial basis in the current settlement network of the Belgrade agglomeration.

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Fig. 5 Functional integration (action area) of the metropolitan of Belgrade and Novi Sad, Source Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia, 2010

The boundaries of the future metropolitan area of Belgrade on the north side will not change significantly. Intense merging and functional connectivity with the functional area of the city of Novi Sad will be the basis for the eventual formation of the bipolar agglomeration of the most intense development area in Serbia (Fig. 5). Together with the towns Pancevo, Smederevo, Pozarevac, Sabac and Sremska Mitrovica, it will be further extended into the zone which represents the most influential and socio-economically most developed belt of Serbia on the Danube and Sava development axis. Significant expansions may be expected on the south side of the existing area of impact of the city of Belgrade. Increasing transportation accessibility and better connectivity with the wider surroundings, the construction of primary roads to the south (Belgrade-Pozega highway) and north (‘‘Banat highway to Hungary’’), is expected to increase the mobility of the population, reducing travel time and activating the working zones along these routes (Šec´erov, Nevenic´ 2010). The construction of inter-city roads and reducing the intensity of traffic in the central zone of the City will provide a better frequency and greater flow of population from sub-centres in the wider surroundings.

6.1 Other Regional Areas in Serbia The territory of AP Vojvodina is generally the most developed area of Serbia. A good distribution of medium-sized cities (50,000–100,000 population) makes it possible to cover over 95% of its territory with functional urban areas of different levels (with the same number of people living in them). Apart from three municipalities that remain outside the direct influence of one of the urban centres (Bac, Ada, Novi Knezˇevac), all the others potentially gravitate to one of the analysed cities. In terms of the hierarchy of urban centres the situation is similar to that observed today in Vojvodina. The city of Novi Sad17 is a functional urban area

17

According to the Law on Local Self-management (2007), the Republic of Serbia has 23 cities and the city of Belgrade.

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Fig. 6 Functional integration (activity area) of the metropolitan area of Nis, Source Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia, 2010

of international importance, with an enlarged spatial coverage by the area of two municipalities and it is expected to reach a population of 567,240 inhabitants by the year 2020, occupying 4.6% of the Serbian territory. Functional urban areas of national importance will be the town of Subotica (253,218 inhabitants), which dominates the northern part of Vojvodina and the city of Sombor, as well as the city of Zrenjanin in the eastern part. The gravitation area of the city of Sremska Mitrovica will not significantly change, as well as Vrsac whose functional area remains on the level of a regional centre. The perspective of this area is intense trans-border co-operation with Hungary in the north and Romania on the east, after the expected progress of Serbia in European integration. Almost all urban areas in Vojvodina have a complex structure dominated by the most influential centre, with a few sub-centres with a much lower impact zone. The city of Vrsac is an exception, a functional urban area of the regional level, which consists of only the municipality of Plandiste. Therefore, it is necessary to execute internal decentralization in the complex (polycentric) urban area and ensure an even distribution of socio-economic and public facilities with increase of accessibility, especially among centres, and construction or reconstruction of local roads. The system of urban centres in Vojvodina is the basis for further networking of urban areas on the territory of northern and southern Europe. Today, this type of co-operation is intensified towards Hungary, Romania and Croatia where, in the near future even more intense co-operation can be expected in order to establish stronger and more permanent links because of the need to increase the competitiveness of the entire region. Potential threats to the process of strengthening territorial cohesion in this area may be administrative and formal barriers (often of political nature) that can lead to obstruction of the initiated activities. They refer both to the external and the internal borders of Serbia, in relation to central Serbia. The territory of the southern part of Serbia is dominated by the metropolitan area created by the functional strength of the city of Nis. It is expected that the impact zone of this city will expand for about 2.000 km2 (5.1% of Serbia) and the expected population growth will be approximately 130,000 people (452.000 inhabitants), as a result of merging four new municipalities. The impacts will grow especially to the north-west and south-west in the direction of the municipalities Aleksinac and Prokuplje, and to the east where a more intense gravitation is expected by the municipalities of Svrljig and Bela Palanka towards the city of Nis (Fig. 6).

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Nis is the cross-road of the South-Morava axis (together with Leskovac and Vranje) and the Nisava river development axis of Serbia (in the direction of the future branch of Corridor X towards Sofia and Istanbul). Leskovac and Vranje retain the national rank in the network of settlements in Serbia. The city of Leskovac remains with an unchanged field of impact (except for prospective expansion in the direction of the municipalities of Vlasotince-Crna Trava), while the city with its surrounding cities of Vranje will be in functional connection with the urban centres in the municipalities of Surdulica and Trgoviste (182,855 inhabitants, 2.681 km2) and in the future a more intense relationship can be expected with the municipality Bosilegrad. The city of Pirot, in the south-eastern part of Serbia, although expanded by the area of the municipality Babušnica, is still not strong enough to progress to the higher, national rank. The morphological barriers and poor transportation links cause its expansion towards the north (Knjazevac), while the construction of the highway and liberalisation of administrative barriers towards EU (Bulgaria) would be the basis for its more intense trans-border connections towards the east. The Šumadija area (Velikomoravska) is supported by the City of Kragujevac (national rank), which will have a stronger relationship with its surroundings in the future and a population of about 225,357 inhabitants on a territory of 1.645 km2 (2.1% of the territory of Serbia) and provide strengthening of settlements in its vicinity. It is in the contact zone of influence of the City of Belgrade with which it ‘‘shares’’ the area of Topola municipality, which remains outside the distinct zone of one of the dominant centres (its southern part is indirectly connected with Kragujevac and its northern part with Belgrade). The territory of the municipality of Svilajnac, with future better connections with Raca and Lapovo, will expand the functional area of the city of Kragujevac towards the east. The city of Kragujevac and its metropolitan area are linked to the system of cities of lower rank, in the direction of Zapadna Morava (Kraljevo, Krusevac, Cacak). The city of Kraljevo in the period until 2018 will significantly expand its field of influence, while the city of Krusevac with its functional surroundings will have a population increase of about 110,000 inhabitants (over 284,000 inhabitants) with an area of 4.2% of the territory of Serbia. In the Danube belt area significant urban centres include the towns of Smederevo and Pozarevac. In the area of intense gravitational influence of Smederevo no significant changes are expected, while the functional area of the city of Pozarevac, by merging with the municipality of Veliko Gradiste, will move to a higher (national) rank (population of 122,448 inhabitants on 2.9% of the state territory). The significant conurbation along Corridor X in the direction BelgradeNis is made up of the continual area of urban centres with 3-cities CuprijaJagodina-Paracin, dominated by the city of Jagodina. The idea of ‘‘3-cities’’, although with intense functional relations (according to all criteria) has not yet been realised due to isolation of the cities within their municipality boundaries. The Sava development axis is dominated by the functional areas of the cities Sabac and Loznica. Both have potentials for cross-border co-operation with neighbouring cities and municipalities in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and

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Fig. 7 Model of functional urban areas in Serbia 2020. Source Spatial Plan of Republic of Serbia, 2010

within Serbia the cities of Sremska Mitrovica (on the north) and Belgrade on the east. The direction from Sabac towards Uzice and Loznica in the west part of Serbia, lies along an unattractive area with poor transportation connections, but has a possible perspective on the Podrinje axis, where more intensive development in Serbia is proposed. The functional area of Sabac and Loznica will remain unchanged until 2020, while the zone of influence of Uzice will expand westward, in the direction of the municipality Bajina Basta and reach a population of 160,000 inhabitants on a territory of about 2.400 km2 (3.1% of Serbia). Prospectively, the city of Valjevo and its surroundings will move to the category of the national rank together with the municipalities of Lajkovac i Mionica, and will have a population of over 130,000 inhabitants, in the territory of 1.8% of Serbia. The territory of south-west Serbia is a very incoherent area without a strong centre which has the functional potential of gathering a larger number of municipalities (Šec´erov 2007). The city of Novi Pazar, although of national importance, cannot be distinctly extended due to its poor disposition and weak economy, so that it will have the expected population of 143,000 until 2020, in a territory of over 2.100 km2. The other settlements form a semi-functional region in this part of Serbia with separate centres in Sjenica Prijepolje, Nova Varos, Priboj and Ivanjica. Connectivity is expected in the existing direction of Ivanjica-Arilje-Pozega, towards the city of Uzice and partially towards Kraljevo, while the municipalities of Priboj and Prijepolje remain in functional relation with neighbouring municipalities in Montenegro. The lack of strong industrial and economic capacities limits the possibilities of a broader field of activity for these settlements and only integrates the space of their administrative territory. Therefore, by establishing stronger links between them, recognising common forms of activity (tourist zones in high-quality areas—e.g. Uvac), improving transportation and infrastructure utilities, public and social facilities etc. but also with a defined aid by the state, this area could gradually became more attractive for potential investment and move to a higher level of development (Fig. 7). Another area that is faced with similar development problems is the territory of eastern Serbia. Although expansion of the city of Zajecar over the municipality of

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Boljevac is expected, as well as its upgrading into the category of national centres (with a population of about 119,000 inhabitants and a large area of over 3.000 km2) it is not conceivable that its influence will continue spreading. Therefore, there is also a possibility here for the creation of a multifunctional region with potentially strong industrial centres in Bor and Majdanpek, and with city settlements of a lower degree of influence in Kucevo, Kladovo Zagubica, Despotovac and Negotin. In accordance with the dynamics of ownership restructuring (privatisation) and the activation of the extraordinary potential of this area (mineral raw materials, industry, tourism, natural, cultural and spiritual heritage, etc.), the intensification of cross-border co-operation with Romania and Bulgaria, and improvement of national and local roads and better accessibility, the territory of eastern Serbia should be transformed from a depressed development area to an area of more prospective future.

7 Concluding Remarks The traditional network of settlements in Serbia still practically exists with a lot of weaknesses related to small/medium urban centres and especially to rural settlements. These weaknesses and lack of national or regional support are producing demographic, economic and social consequences jeopardising the whole development of Serbia. The settlement network is still reflecting traditional polycentric morphology with urban centres relatively equally dispersed, with expressed domination of the City of Belgrade and, to a minor extent, of the City of Novi Sad and Nish. Weaknesses of Serbian economy in the last two decades have directed large masses of population from the east, south and west to central developmental axes (trans-European corridor X) and to the largest cities: the city of Belgrade, city of Novi Sad and city of Nish. Due to the still centralised country the opening is the problem of small and medium towns and their weak role in regional and local development. The position of rural settlements (over 4.500) is in terms of demography (ageing, social structure, migrations) and in terms of economy. This is the consequence of centralisation at all levels, national, regional and local. Local centralisation keeps all the power in urban centres (municipality seats) but in sequel with their high dependence on central budgeting. The network of settlement is therefore at the very beginning of sporadic functional networking among municipalities, i.e., very static in traditional way of settlement network. 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 major contributions to a more developed Serbia in the prospective.

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References Gilbert R et al (1996) Making Cities Work. Earthscan Publisher, London, p 6 Law of Planning and Construction (2009) Milanovic PN (2007) European urban sprawl: Sustainability, cultures of (Anti) urbanism and ‘‘Hybrid Cityscapes’’ in TERRITORIUM 6/7, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Geography Nevenic´ M (2009) Znacˇaj Beograda u regionalnoj integraciji jugoistocˇne Evrope, Faculty of Geography University of Belgrade Šec´erov V (2007) Mouy'yocn yyagpee¥a cnpaneirou gkaybpa¥a upaloda b ¥bxodbx peuboya y Pegy,kbwb Cp,bjb, Ueoupaacrb aaryknen Eybdeppbnena y <eoupaly, <eoupal Šec´erov V, Nevenic´ M (2010) Functional urban areas in Srbia, In spatial plan of republic of Serbia, RASP Spasic N, Petric J (2001) Sustainable development of towns in Serbia, In sustainable spatial development of towns and cities. In: Proceedings, International scientific conference, IAUS, p 181 Spatial plan of Republic of Serbia (1996) Spatial plan of Republic of Serbia (2010) Stamenkovic S, Tosic D, Gataric D (2010) Network of settlements in Serbia, In spatial plan of republic of Serbia, RASP Stojkov B (2003)’’Peuboyakbpawbja rao ocyod peuboyakyou papdoja Cp,bje’’, y ‘‘Peuboyakbpawbja Cp,bje, npaycupaybxya capal¥a b cowbo-ryknypyb gpowecb y Jyuobcnoxyoj Edpogb’’, Ueoupaacrb aaryknen Eybdeppbnena y <eoupaly, <eoupal Stojkov B (2005) ’’Gokbweynpbxyb papdoj Cp,bje’’, y ‘‘Cp,bja b cadpeveyb gpowecb y Edpogb b cdeny‘‘, Ueoupaacrb aaryknen Eybdeppbnena y <eoupaly, <eoupal Stojkov B (2007) ‘‘Cnanyc upala, leweynpakbpawbja b gokbweynpbxyocn Cp,bje’’ y ‘‘E cycpen yodov cnanycy upaloda y Cp,bjb-peakyocn b gonpe,e’’, GAKUO weynap, <eoupal Veljkovic´ A, Jovanovic´ R, Tošic´ B (1995) Gradovi Srbije - centri razvoja u mrezˇi naselja. Posebna izdanja Geografskog instituta Jovan Cvijic´ SANU 44. Beograd

The Development of the Hungarian Settlement Network Since 1990 Gábor Pirisi and András Trócsányi

1 Introduction Analysing the Hungarian settlement network is a challenging task, even if we look back only on the past two decades. Indeed fundamental effects have exerted an impact on the structure since the political system change, however, this period is negligible in historical scope and scale. Consequently, our paper starts with the overview of the (historical and near) past, introducing the context in which the settlement system can be interpreted. The network transformation (Berényi and Dövényi 1996; Rechnitzer 2002) is not only a process of settlements, it is affected by the changing natural environment, economy, society, and also by the infrastructure, shortly: by the geographical space. Thus it is a complex question, so in the framework of this study we mainly can focus on the changing legal-administrative, as well as real economy (market) impacts (Kovács 2002). Due to the complexity of the process, most of the Hungarian geographers dealt with the analysis of partial processes and phenomena, e.g. we have a considerable knowledge on the settlement phenomena around the capital city, on agglomerations, suburbanization (Dövényi and Kovács 1999), inner migration patterns (Bajmócy 2010), population change (Hajnal and Bugya 2006), on the relationship of transport and settlements (Erd} osi 2003), on changes in urban morphology (Csapó 2005). Similarly intensively studied area is the fit of socialist industrial new towns (Germuska 2008) in the system, and also transformation of small towns (Pirisi 2009; Pirisi and Trócsányi 2007) is very well documented, and the awards G. Pirisi (&)
A. Trócsányi Department of Human Geography and Urban Studies, Institute of Geography, University of Pécs, Ifjúság útja 6, 7624 Pécs, Hungary e-mail: [email protected] A. Trócsányi e-mail: [email protected]

T. Csapó and A. Balogh (eds.), Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-20314-5_5, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

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of town status have also been a popular topic in the past decade (Pirisi and Trócsányi 2009), as are the issues related to the settlement-transforming effects of tourism (Aubert 2003). The transformation of rural areas is now in the focus of investigations related to falling behind and peripherization (Balogh 2006), transforming borderline areas (Mohos 2002) represent another current topic, and there are more and more publications on the differentiation of scattered farms (Csatári 2000), which are unique creatures of the Hungarian settlements. Knowing all of these results we try to publish a comprehensive synthesis, however, being aware that a deeper analysis is impossible in this case.

2 Historical: Geographical Basis Hungary is situated in the Eastern part of Central-Europe, in a large region, where the European urbanization developed relatively late and in a restricted manner, bearing several distortions due to limited local resources (Enyedi 2000). Consequently, the historical Hungarian Kingdom—that included among others a part of the present Slovakia, Western and Transylvanian areas of Romania, and also regions of Serbia that lie North from the Danube—is characterized in European comparison with a relatively low density of population, scarce settlement network, and cities that are small, underdeveloped in their functions and less western in their morphology. Furthermore, a peculiar structure evolved where urbanization could only be relatively intense at the edge of the country, at some parts of the mountain range frame, and mainly there it resulted in cities by European standard. On the contrary, in the central, Great Plain regions the agricultural town type was more widespread: this is basically a settlement form with relatively large territory and population, but rather village-like in its morphology (Beluszky 2005). However, after the first wave of industrial revolution, at the turn of the nineteenth–twentieth centuries, a coherent settlement network existed, which covered the whole territory of the country, and had a dynamically developing capital city, Budapest in its centre, and some partial or total regional centres that urbanized and modernized in a fast pace (Bratislava, Kosice, Debrecen, Cluj-Napoca, Timisßoara, Szeged, Subotica, Zagreb). This organic development was interrupted by the peace treaty system that closed World War I and fragmented the historical Hungary, and left behind a capital city oversized compared to the size of the country, and a circle of functionally weak small- and medium-sized cities (Fig. 1). Conditions of the transformation of the settlement network significantly changed during the decades of socialism following World War II. Like elsewhere, ideological-political aspects became dominant also here. It is important to emphasize that the settlement policy of socialism was mainly city-friendly; consequently it was more or less openly against villages and especially against scattered farms. A forced industrialization took place in cities, often in new industrial cities, the human and material conditions of which could only be created

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Fig. 1 Settlement rings according to their hierarchy level in the Carpathian Basin. Source Tóth 2004

Fig. 2 The scattered settlement pattern of Hungary. Source edited by Pirisi

by doing harm to the countryside. Most of the Hungarian villages found themselves at that time on a down-ward slope, due to the intentional destruction activity of wealthy peasantry and forced collectivization of the 1950s. In fact, an accelerated (second) industrial revolution (and urbanization wave) took place, with consequences that have an aftermath still today (Fig. 2). The other interesting aspect in the analysis of this period is strong centralization. The settlement policy aimed at the creation of a strongly hierarchical system already explicitly after the declaration of the National Settlement Network

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Fig. 3 The increase in the number of towns (1886–2009). Source edited by Trócsányi

Development Concept of 1971, where the settlements had to possess a clearly described and comparable set of functions. This system was at least three-fold centralized, with Budapest on the top again that dominated also the economic life, even against the—not too dedicated—efforts to restrict its dominance with administrative measures. Miskolc that had a traditional industrial role among the former regional centres, was appointed to build a counter balance, however due to the strong redistributive mechanisms actually the county level was emphasized. Consequently, the county centres developed very spectacularly in the 1970s. The same took place one level lower with the district seats, and as a result, lots of small towns with 15–30 thousand inhabitants were able to strengthen their functions. Settlements with strong industrial character took a very favourable position within the system, while borderline areas became disadvantaged. The villages became in a more favoured situation after 1968 with the reforms resulted the transformation of agriculture, however, it became strongly differentiated: e.g. first signs of agglomerations appeared, resort- and other specialized settlements coloured the palette (Fig. 3).

3 Factors Influencing the Development of Settlement Network After 1990 3.1 Legal, Administrative Framework One of the cardinal legislative activities of political system change was the one that eliminated (Act on Municipalities 1990) the former system of councils and established local municipalities. The earlier hierarchical structure practically dissolved, the settlements became autonomous and legally equal, and got broad

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Fig. 4 Formal urbanisation in Hungary (1986–2009). Source edited by Trócsányi

authorization in free administration of local issues. However, the two decades passed since then proved that they were unable to take an advantage on their freedom, since their chances are strongly restricted by the permanent lack of resources. The other important factor that fundamentally influences the legal framework is the Euro-Atlantic integration of the country, reaching its peak with Hungary’s accession to the European Union in 2004. This inserted the settlement policy in European dimensions on the one hand, on the other hand it opened door to the financial tools of the Community that enabled a much more intense and varied development activity on the settlement level than before. The other important related consequence was the differentiation of the country’s borders. Today there are three types (Schengen internal, internal outside Schengen, and external) of border (control) sections around the country. A part of the borders became permeable already before, and in contrast to those times, the borderline location turned from disadvantage into an advantage, from barrier into a space of interactions—first of all in Austrian-Hungarian relation. Another important node of the changing legal framework was the institutionalization of spatial policy since the second half of the 1990s. There was a planning low-tide at the beginning of the decade, and there were no thoughtful programmes to deal with the spatial differences that increased with an accelerated speed as a consequence of the system change. However, after these, several legal measures were taken, national, regional, general and sectoral plans were born, including comprehensive national developmental plans between 2000 and 2010, that were typically financed with the help of European sources. The plans are mainly region- and not settlement-centred. Additionally, from a decade distance it can be seen that though all of them give a high priority to the decrease of spatial differences and development of disadvantaged areas that are often characterized with small-settlement structure, their failure seems to be clear here. All the same, the spatial policy took measures that fundamentally changed the regional (relative) positions of some settlements, e.g. intense development of the motorway network (Fig. 4). Also the urbanization rate of the country increased steadily since 1990. Dealing with it here, among legal conditions, already indicates the contradictions of the process. Urbanization was permanent, while the natural decrease, respectively the

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Fig. 5 Migration and suburbanisation patterns (1990–2008). Source edited by Pirisi

net emigration in majority of the past two decades was more and more typical for towns and cities. The reason of increase was simply that the door for the town nominations was opened with administrative tools, giving a way to 164 cities to formal urbanization, therefore the pool of cities doubled in number between 1990 and 2000! The settlements in question have typically 5–10 thousand inhabitants, rarely somewhat higher, but in the past period they were usually smaller settlements. We consequently call this process formal urbanization (Pirisi and Trócsányi 2009), whereby more than one million people became town or city dwellers without changing their place of living, which is some 15% of the current urban population that is around seven million in total in 2011.

3.2 Processes of the Market Economy In addition to—or even more than—the legal framework, also the real sphere’s events and economic processes formed the settlement network. The guidelines of this are the transformation from command economy to market economy and the concomitant phenomena of that. This went hand in hand with a real shock therapy at the beginning of the 1990s, when the shrinking of the state sector was extremely fast in the heavy industry. Some one million workplaces disappeared permanently from the country, employment stabilized at a very low level, even at moderate unemployment rate (Fig. 5). Role of the state-owned pull sectors was overtaken by FDI-based private companies and some branches boosted by the previous ones, like the literally re-born automotive industry, electronics, or the successfully transforming chemistry branches.

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Des- and reindustrialization did not take place spatially overlapping. The most important effect of the transformation is that it turned into regional differences the hierarchical differences that existed in the network which had earlier been centralized, but well balanced in its levels. That is, while before 1990 the standard of living of people was mainly determined by the size and type of the settlement they were living in, now it is rather the regional position that is decisive. Successfully transforming regions (Budapest and its agglomeration, just as the Northern part of Transdanubia) are catching up, while the remaining regions get on a falling trajectory. Spatial structure of the country is permanently divided in two parts, differences on the micro-regional level can nearly remind us of the deviation between developed and developing countries. The dividing line between success and failure is in many cases the accessibility by transportation, since spatial diffusion of capital investments connects well demonstrably to the motorway network. Market conditions also have brought a new period of the settlements’ competition. At the same time there is still the trace of some inherited post-socialist and Central-European character, since the competition is mainly for the allocation of central sources, its success criteria are the spectacular, but not always sustainable projects, and its main tools are appropriate political connections. Among economic factors, we have to take into consideration that tourism becomes one of the most important factors. The type of image- and resort settlements is very sharply described, it appears mainly in the Balaton region or on the base of some significant attractions (heritage element or spa). All of these processes take place in a country characterized by typical, CentralEuropean (negative) demographical scenario. The population of Hungary has been decreasing since 1981, it crossed the psychological limit of 10 million at the turn of 2010 and 2011. The demographic conditions are spatially well balanced. While Budapest itself is ageing, most of the large cities are in a favourable position. The problem cumulates mainly in small-settlement dominated areas, lots of which can be found in the country. The fall of population in most of the cases seems to be unstoppable here; almost all of the settlements with less than 500 inhabitants are shrinking with a high pace and are losing their remaining limited functions. Practically total emptying of certain areas could be expected in the following decades. At the same time there is a counter effecting process on the Hungarian countryside that is related to the Gipsies who follow a demographic pattern similar to that of West-European emigrants. Emptying settlements in the countryside are often filled with Gipsies of high natural reproduction, and their appearance usually accelerates the emigration of Hungarian population. Their settlements and inhabitants with an under-average education are cumulatively hit by problems typical for the whole country: very low rate of employment, low incomes, stand in need of social care, extreme rate of deviances, catastrophic public health and mortality conditions, which are recently accompanied by more and more frequent conflicts with the majority of the population. Consequently, segregation is typical not or not only within settlements, but it hits whole villages, soon cities, moreover micro-regions.

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One of the most spectacular recent processes that significantly shapes settlement network is suburbanization which got a new going after 1990. The antecedents were partially given also during socialism, since the largest suburban settlement (with village rank at that time) of Budapest (Érd) had nearly 40 thousand inhabitants already in 1978. All the same, the process gained momentum after 1990 and resulted in the rise of a branch of very dynamically growing, usually wealthy settlements (large villages and small towns). The agglomeration around Budapest already gives home to at least 700 thousand people, but suburbanization can be traced in the neighbourhood of Miskolc, Szeged, Pécs and Gy}or, moreover around some smaller cities (usually still county seats). This resulted in the fact that the migration balance of cities and villages favoured the latter ones in the past 20 years, though the counter seems to balancing again recently, not at least because in the meantime the favourite destinations of emigrants got almost without exception town status.

4 Conclusion: Different Levels of the Settlement Network The position of Budapest clearly became stronger in the past two decades, and though the majority expected the decrease of Budapest centrism due to the competition, in fact the economic overweight may be stronger today than ever before. Such a concentration of economic actors, capital and employees is available in Budapest that creates real market conditions in several spheres. In addition, also policy was not eager enough to de-concentrate the possible functions, so Budapest stayed a sort of deadwood (Nemes Nagy 1996). On the other hand, its physical renewal was relatively weak compared to its importance, and by today it is struggling with almost unsolvable transportation and city management conflicts, practically with an infrastructure system inherited from the socialism. Suburbanization caused serious problems, since the city lost a significant portion of its best taxpayers, became a settlement with an expressively ageing age-structure, where phenomena of slumming and ethnicity based segregation appeared. Some corners of the down-town have been revitalized by successful district regenerations in the past years, and signs of re-urbanisation can be traced: emigration could be partially stopped due to this (Fig. 6). There are five regional centres (Debrecen, Miskolc, Szeged, Pécs and Gy}or) on the second level of hierarchy, among which Gy}or is clearly a winner, while Miskolc is a loser of the change, the remaining settlements moved in different directions regarding different indicators. All five settlements, each of which has a population between 130 and 210 thousand, successfully strengthened their regional functions in the field of higher education, public administration, culture and trade, and by 2010 all of them are available by motorway. At the same time, transformation of the economic structure can be seen successful only in Gy}or, and the city became one of the symbols of Hungarian re-urbanization. The other four try to achieve a breakthrough with spectacular developmental projects (Debrecen:

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Fig. 6 The size variation of towns and cities before and after 1990. Source edited by Pirisi

MODEM, sport hall, stadium, Miskolc: rehabilitation of the down-town, tram development, Szeged: tram development, Pécs: ECC), however, the shared characteristic of these is that, though they increase the inhabitants’ standard of living, but they rarely add to the (international) competitiveness of the cities. The third level goes to the seats of the remaining 13 counties, among which there are some with a population slightly above 30 thousand, but also with more than 100 thousand. These settlements mostly belong to the losers; since the disappearance of the county redistributive system tightened their disposable resources considerably (this caused a very striking break in case of Zalaegerszeg and Veszprém). Some of them are severely hit by des-industrialization as well (Salgótarján, Eger, Tatabánya), others suffer from the almost total lack of investments that are usually caused by the co-incidence of disadvantageous location, previous industrial traditions and lack of modern human resources (Békéscsaba, Nyíregyháza, Kaposvár). Nevertheless, disregarding some exceptions, they are the most developed and dynamic cities of their counties, and usually also their developing paths seem to be stable. Some settlements with 30–50 thousand inhabitants belong to the mediumsized cities that have been typically without an important administrative role previously, and they still are. It is a totally heterogeneous group, they can be functionally relatively strong co-centres of a county (Sopron, Nagykanizsa, Baja, Hódmez}ovásárhely), but also industrial cities with marginal regional role, which have seen better days in the past (Ózd, Dunaújváros, Ajka) (Fig. 7). Variegation is even more typical for the group of small towns. At this time there are 287 settlements with their 2.6 million inhabitants in the group of towns with a population not above 30 thousand. These towns and cities can be very strikingly different not only in their current situation, but regarding their genetic and function as well. Suburban settlements are to be found among them from the solely sleeping city, Gyál, to Budaörs that grew to an edge-city. The circle of former industrial and mining centres (Komló, Várpalota, Oroszlány) is a specific group,

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Fig. 7 Variegation of small towns. Source edited by Pirisi

but also the branch of successfully transformed industrial cities (Paks, Tiszaújváros, Százhalombatta) can be found here. Besides the traditional small towns with long traditions (Tata, Balassagyarmat, Szigetvár), the former agricultural centres of the Great Plain belong here (Szentes, Jászberény, Karcag), and an interesting dash of colour is the branch of smaller or bigger resort settlements (Siófok, Hévíz, Hajdúszoboszló). The smallest among the small towns do not even hit the limit of 2,000 inhabitants, so they are justified called dwarf towns } (Igal, Pacsa, Oriszentpéter, Pálháza).

5 Summary The Hungarian settlement network that historically developed in one natural and political framework was influenced in the last century by many significant changes, which left sharp impressions behind. The new state borders drawn in the first third of the twentieth century and finalized after World War II, created new spatial and political frameworks. The era of state socialism created a multiply decentralized, strongly hierarchical system, moreover sharp typological and spatial preferences within. Market processes that appeared already since the 1960s onward as antecedents of system change, started to soften the rigid frameworks of the settlement network, spatial tendencies experienced in the Western part of the continent reached the country. Instead of the position taken in the hierarchy of settlements, the differentiating factor today is rather spatial location, accessibility, appearing tendencies of spatial development, respectively—not last—settlement management. Consequently, the settlement network of the country is free from the former rigid bounds that led to (further) falling behind of many areas and settlement, and to renaissance or rise of others.

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References Aubert A (2003) Tourismus in ungarn: struktur-dynamik-perspektiven. In: Becker, Hofinger, Steinecke (eds) Geographie der freizeit und des tourismus. Oldenbourg Verlag, MünchenWien, pp 582–592 Bajmócy P (2010) Urbanization and inner-migration trends in hungary after 1990. Geographia Timisiensis XIX:22–31 Balogh A (2006) Az aprófalvasodás folyamatának f} obb jellemz}oi Magyarországon. Földrajzi Közlemények 1–2:67–79 Beluszky P (2005) A mez} ovárosok és az alföldi út. Földrajzi Közlemények 1–2. sz. pp 31–46 Berényi I, Dövényi Z (1996) Historische und aktuelle entwicklungen des ungarischen siedlungsnetzes. In: Mayr A, Grimm FD (eds) Städte und städtesysteme in mittel—und südosteuropa. Tschechische Republik, Slowakei, Ungarn, Rumänien. Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig, pp 104–171 Csapó T (2005) A magyar városok településmorfológiája. Savaria University Press, Szombathely, p 204 Csatári B. (2000) Types of transformation of hungarian scattered farm system. In: Minamizuka S (ed) A research of the history the tanya system in hungary. Chiba University, Chiba, pp 27–32 Dövényi Z, Kovács Z (1999) A szuburbanizáció térbeli-társadalmi jellemz}oi Budapest környékén. Földrajzi Értesít} o 1–2. sz. pp 33–57 Enyedi Gy (2000) Globalizáció és a magyar területi fejl} odés. Tér és Társadalom 1 sz. pp 1–10 Erd}osi F (2003) Transport de merchandises et organisation régionale en hongrie. REVUE GEOGRAPHIQUE DE L’EST p 43: (1–2):23–32 Germuska P (2008) Between theory and practice: planning socialist cities in hungary. In: Misa T, Hård M (eds) Urban machineryinside modern european cities, 1850–2000. MIT Press, Cambridge (Ma)–London, pp 233–255 Hajnal K, Bugya T (2006) Vizsgálatok a magyarországi városhálózat 1949-2001 közötti népességváltozásairól. Földrajzi Értesít} o, 1–2. sz. pp 65–86 Kovács Z (2002) Az urbanizáció jellemz} oi Kelet-Közép-Európában a posztszocialista átmenet idején. Földrajzi Közlemények, 1–4. sz. pp 57–78 Mohos M (2002) Kisvárosok a határ mentén. In: Pál Á (ed) Héthatáron–tanulmányok a határ menti települések földrajzából. JGYF Kiadó, Szeged, pp 275–286 Nemes Nagy J (1996) Centrumok és perifériák a piacgazdasági átmenetben. Földrajzi Közlemények, 1. sz. pp 31–48 Pirisi G (2009) Differenciálódó kisvárosaink. Földrajzi Közlemények, 133. évf. 3. sz. pp 313–325 Pirisi G, Trócsányi A (2007) Demographic processes in hungary and their manifestation in small towns. Romanian Rev Reg Stud 3(2):73–82 Pirisi G, Trócsányi A (2009) The transformation of villages into towns–a quantitative way of Hungarian urbanisation. Studia Universitatis Babesß-Bolyai 1:75–82 Rechnitzer J (2002) A városhálózat az átmenetben, a kilencvenes évek változási irányai. Tér és Társadalom, 3. sz. pp 169–188 Tóth J (2004) Kell nekünk régió? In: Hitseker M and Szilágyi Zs (eds) Mindentudás egyeteme III. kötet. Kossuth Kiadó, Budapest, pp 193–212

The National Concept for Settlement Network Development of 1971 and Some Western European Comparisons Zsolt Kocsis and Tibor Lenner

1 Objective and Database of the Research The National Concept for Settlement Network Development (NCSND) of 1971 was accepted forty years ago (Government Decree No. 1007/1971. (III. 16.)), and, although reviewed already in 1978 then abrogated in 1985 (Parliamentary Resolution No. 12/1980–1985.), it can be stated to have had long-lasting impacts on the development of Hungary’s settlements and the network thereof. The Concept was judged quite uniformly; the majority of experts involved in the geography of settlements regarded it as a misconception and its consequences as harmful. At the same time, more and more scientists take the Concept under their protection in the reference literature (Somlyódyné Pfeil 2003; K}oszegfalvy 2009). The authors of this study do not assume to re-open this much debated act; however, it is to be emphasised that • At long last, following attempts of several decades, it created a framework for the development of the settlement network; • The Concept is only partly responsible for the consequences attributed to it; • And finally (not an excuse though), similar legislation processes could be observed in Western Europe as well. The present study aims at clarifying this particular fact. Naturally, no references were made in the Concept to the fact that similar measures to those planned in Zs. Kocsis (&)
T. Lenner Department of Human Geography, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Institute for Geographical and Environmental Sciences, University of West Hungary, Károlyi Gáspár tér 4, 9700 Szombathely, Hungary e-mail: [email protected] T. Lenner e-mail: [email protected]

T. Csapó and A. Balogh (eds.), Development of the Settlement Network in the Central European Countries, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-20314-5_6,  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

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Hungary were taken in Western Europe since giving such reasons for anything in a communist country would have been a political suicide. Nevertheless, a number of similarities can be found between the NCSND and its Western European counterparts, and these similarities demonstrate that the NCSND, at its own time, was a modern concept corresponding to international trends. Without financial resources, the authors had the opportunity to search for analogies and similarities in a few European countries only, using international reference literature. However, within the framework of a contingent subsidised research project, the authors are planning to collect data and information from all European countries (including the ex-communist countries). For the time being, the present study only aims at giving an idea of the scope of problems boding interesting, which could just as well be called convergence, i.e. in countries with different attributes (size, degree of development, social and political system, etc.), similar challenges trigger similar responses.

2 Presentation of the National Concept for Settlement Network Development It is necessary to present NCSND but the authors wish to devote most of the content to present foreign similarities. Thus, many components that are important though less interesting in respect of exploring analogies and similarities will not be presented. Officially, the NCSND was drawn up with the purpose of developing the settlement network, in order that the new, ‘‘modern’’ settlement system aimed at by the Concept facilitates: • A more efficient utilisation of the resources of the national economy through a better allocation in the case of each infrastructural construction projects; • The rationalisation of public administration; • Providing the population with various public services at a higher level. The achievements of its objectives were helped by several laws enacted before or after but, in either case, independently of the NCSND. Thus, it cannot be held solely responsible either for its success or for any negative impacts, still it is the NCSND that is subject to the criticism mentioned earlier.

2.1 Measures of the National Concept for Settlement Network Development To put it simple, we can say that the most important measure of the NCSND was to have classified the country’s settlements in a closed hierarchy. It appointed centres for each individual level proceeding from the top to the bottom of such hierarchy, undoubtedly triggering the development of such centres (and, as it is the case in a

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Fig. 1 High- and medium-level centres in the National concept for settlement network development (after Hajdú 2001)

society with a shortage of resources, rendering settlements not assigned with a central role to stagnate or even decline due to the shortage of funds). The consequence thereof was a high rate of disproportion, or injustice if you like, but the most criticised impact of the NCSND occurred in the case of the lowest four levels, especially the last one, which concerned the vast majority of Hungarian settlements: settlements that had earlier been viable and flourishing were sentenced to decline and a slow death. It is, however, to be pointed out that, although the example was provided by the logics and framework of the NCSND, it did not name these settlements; the formation of the hierarchy of these settlements, as to one another, remained a mediumlevel, i.e. county competence. The fate of the many depopulated small villages, and other settlements divested of their future was in the hands of county councils and county-level committees of the Communist Party (Hajdú 2001) (Fig. 1).

2.2 Consequences of the National Concept for Settlement Network Development: Hierarchy By defining the accessibility of financial resources (since, in most cases, this is what hierarchy was about), the NCSND caused accelerated development and improvements in high- and medium-level centres (of course, on the account of settlements with a lower position in the hierarchy). One of the most severe consequences was violent intervention in the hierarchy of settlements. The labourers’ state enforced its own preferences, which, many times, meant the hindering of certain earlier centres, primarily those with clerical functions, and, more often, the support of

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new, growing industrial cities. Funds from the central budget were granted to individual settlements in a manner of waterfalls: after the capital city, the next in the priority line were the privileged high-level centres, then the high-level centres, and then the settlements of the lower levels of hierarchy in each county. This resulted in a highly concentrated, and often disproportional and unjust allocation of funds, thus settlements of the four lower levels could usually not receive more than a few percent of the central subsidies granted to counties.

2.2.1 Privileged High-Level Centres Although not each of them could become a full-scope provincial equipoise since the gap between Budapest and the biggest cities in the country had hardly become narrower, they had made a great progress compared to earlier themselves and the unprivileged high-level centres. Although Gy} or was the great winner in terms of economy and the control thereof, it had not become a real metropolis as compared to the other four centres (mainly to Budapest), it had not become a university town, and did not receive any university medical clinics, but, as for its population, its backlog as compared to the other four big cities had decreased.

2.2.2 High-Level Centres Not all county capitals had fallen into this category. Due to the fact that it is primarily those county capitals whose population could, in medium term, reach 100,000 or those that were farther away from the capital city and the privileged high-level centres that could become high-level centres, these settlements were given just a supplementary role.

2.2.3 Partial High-Level Centres With the exception of one, all the other county capitals, as well as significant settlements that had either once been county capitals or those that, due to their higher population, were expected to substitute county capitals to a certain extent, became partial high-level centres. Lying adjacent to the capital of its county, Hódmez}ovásárhely is a bit of an exception; in this particular case, the underlying reasons must have been its high population, the rich history and, most probably, lobby interests.

2.2.4 Medium-Level Centres Although some of the 65 settlements placed in this category were ones without a town rank, they soon were usually promoted in order to become real centres of smaller regions without a town. Very many industrial towns are in this category

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mainly due to their higher population and labour supply and only secondarily owing to their spatial structure.

2.2.5 Partial Middle-Level Centres When the Concept was accepted, many of the 41 partial middle-level centres were expectants of a town rank, but there were also towns with several centuries of history, minor industrial towns, and, what is more, settlements that were appointed in conjunction with another, adjacent one (Gyoma and Endr}od, for example, united soon afterwards in order to receive a town rank).

2.3 Consequences of the National Concept for Settlement Network Development: Destruction of Villages As it was mentioned earlier, the scope of settlements falling into lower levels was defined by the county councils. Besides the privileged low-level (142), the lowlevel (530) and the partial low-level (292) centres, nearly two thirds of all settlements, 2,071 were placed into the category of non-improvable settlements without any central functions, which was the cause of a dramatic fall in population, a merger into more fortunate settlements with a central role, and, in a better case, stagnation for many settlements. It is highly probable that the transformation of the country’s economic, regional and social structures would have made all settlements face difficulties anyway, forcing them to compete for short funds. However, the impacts of the NCSND made many settlements totally loose their financial basis! With a few exceptions, the institutional network of settlements with no central role was intentionally reduced; schools and surgeries were closed on the plea of an improvement in the standard of education and health care, merging both their service regions and their assets into those of central settlements. In several cases, village schools were demolished in order for its construction material to be used for the extension of the building of the new, contracted school in the central settlement. Such contractions were called zoning. Quite often, these degraded villages without central functions turned into ‘‘bedroom’’ communities. During such process of zoning, • Schools were closed, thus both pupils and teachers were forced to commute. Since official quarters were only allowed to be built in central settlements, the majority of Hungary soon lost most of its rural intelligentsia; in many cases, the only college graduate was the elementary school teacher (Balogh 2006). • The offices and headquarters of agricultural co-operatives were closed; what is more, co-operatives themselves were closed down or forced to unite with those in other settlements, the co-operative of the central settlements became the

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headquarters of the new, larger unit. This caused loss of employment, and the agricultural intelligentsia to move (official quarters!), and settlements to lose their economic independence. • Local retail trading co-operatives and savings banks were closed or drawn together. The opportunities remaining after the actions described under the preceding two points were taken away from smaller settlements, which, without their economic basis and their population migrating, lagged behind in infrastructural development, thus forcing even more of their inhabitants to migrate. • Finally, in hundreds of cases, they lost their existence as municipalities and, quite often, their names as well, by having been drawn together with other settlements. The NCSND and its county-level versions thus rendered certain settlements to develop, while they caused hundreds of others to go through a slow agony. Even considering this, it might be an exaggeration to use the term ‘‘destruction of villages’’ since there are only a few villages that became unpopulated or ceased to exist after the acceptance of the NCSND, and the majority thereof had been on an irreversible decline for a while, so it is unfair to place the death of these villages to the account of the NCSND.

2.4 The Balance of the National Concept for Settlement Network Development The NCSND was a violent but, in a sense, necessary intervention in the development of Hungary’s settlement network. Out of its declared objectives, it failed to achieve regional syncretism because the privileged high-level centres were unable to develop into the real equipoise of Budapest. They regenerated regional disparity themselves in their own, smaller impact scope. No significant steps were taken to implement regionalism, i.e. to create regions between the county and the state level. By means of supplementary legal provisions, the NCSND made attempts to render regulated the thus far disordered conditions in the field of granting town ranks but unplanned grantings of town rank continued to occur (in a country with planned economy!). The consolidation of the hierarchy in conjunction with a constant shortage of funds resulted, contrary to the original objectives, in the commencement of a zoning process throughout the country (initiated at county level), which meant a fatal threat, as already mentioned, to hundreds of settlements.

3 Western European Analogies of the National Concept for Settlement Network Development Countries in Western Europe did not have to follow the Soviet example so these countries of various sizes, degree of development and historical background made voluntary attempts to implement reforms in public administration and regional

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management, perhaps based on other countries’ experience. But, of course, there is no track of endeavours to uniformise the steps taken. The question arises: if they were not forced to, if they did so to their own discretion, why did they also follow examples the negative experience gained from which had already become known? The most probable reason for this is that the most significant reforms were taking place at roughly the same time so the individual countries could not learn from one another’s mistake. By presenting the examples of some countries selected arbitrarily (and for the sake of convenience), the authors want to demonstrate the atmosphere in Western Europe at the time of drawing up and implementing the NCSND.

3.1 Sweden The Swedish example is an exception since it started already in the 1950s. The primary objective of the 1953 public administration reform was the creation of local governments with at least 2,000 inhabitants by means of contractions and unifications. By the reform, the 2,498 local governments were reduced to 1,037 but the Swedish government regarded the reform itself as a tool to create a system of more efficient and financially viable local governments. The fact that it was not only a number of inhabitants but also a taxable base that were set as threshold values also supports this idea. The achievement of an aggregate personal taxable base of 800,000 Swedish Crowns (over 12 million at present value) at local governmental level was an exemption from the threshold of 2,000 inhabitants (Hanes et al. 2009). Naturally, the process was accompanied by protests (and, though having started in 1952, cannot be regarded as completed until these days). Out of the 2,498 local governments, 2,045 were affected by the reform (towns remained intact), and 795 of them (local governments having lost their individuality or ceasing to exist during the integration of local governments) protested against the unification process, which was not always on a voluntary basis. Out of these local governments, 533 debated the plotted borders only, but accepted the necessity of the reforms. A few years later, the restructuring of public administration continued, as a result of which the number of local governments changed to 282 and 290 in 1972 and these days, respectively. The estimation of the reforms and the consequences thereof is unequivocal. However, a consensus is now shaping up about the fact that the new order of public administration created by a need for financial and economic efficiency is a sort of tool for modernisation, which is made easier to accept by the fact that the new technologies and solutions (primarily the tele-house movement, mobile phone networks, internet, etc.) enable a great deal of administrative procedures to be completed without the need of one’s displacement. Thus, the inhabitants of

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contracted and unified local governments with a larger area are now hardly feeling the impacts of the reform as a burden.

3.2 Denmark Denmark followed the example of Sweden nearby but proceeded slowly, at the same time achieving more spectacular (more drastic if you like) results. In 1950, there were nearly 1,400 municipalities with local governments, the number of which decreased to 1,089 by the year 1970 by means of voluntary unification. Then came the next phase: within the framework of the regional management reform enacted on 1 April 1970, the number of local governments was further reduced to 277, and finally, by 1 January 2007, to 98 (http://www. statistikbanken.dk/statbank5a/SelectVarVal/Define.asp?Maintable=BEF1A07& PLanguage=1). By achieving this, Denmark set up a record; regarding the average number of inhabitants within its local governments, Denmark comes third in Europe, following the United Kingdom and Ireland. There is only one municipality (kommune) with inhabitants fewer than 3,000 and seven with fewer than 20,000 (http://www.strukturforsk.dk/publ/4.pdf)! The new system gives more independence and responsibilities to the local governments but many people think that the distance between settlements makes a better completion of public service tasks just as much more difficult as the more efficient and financially more reasonable, larger size facilitates the same. The critics of the reform are also afraid that the elected representatives are getting farther from their electors, making the local control of politicians more difficult. It is in the case of local governments consisting of isolated islands that these worries are particularly justified since bridges or ferries are required to make official arrangements or to render public services, and such facilities are not available everywhere (http://www.sum.dk/Indenrigs/*/media/Filer-dokumenter-IN/Kommunerregioner/Kommunalreformen/UK-overhead-august-2004.ashx).

3.3 Germany Germany’s case could be especially interesting because in Hungary, following German examples, it had been customary for centuries (e.g. Civic Right of Magdeburg), although by Austrian mediation after a time. Both the Swedish and the Danish reforms aimed at taking geographical characteristics into consideration (e.g. when drawing together local governments situated on islands) but the German arrangements were significantly different in each federal state, although they had begun as a national ‘‘movement’’. The reason for these is not only the great variations in the historical past (e.g. Hansa-towns) and in

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the differences among the size of areas and the population, but, besides the state form (Denmark and Sweden are not federal states but Germany is), also the fact that legislators thought that the reform of public administration (municipalities) (officially referred to as Gebietsreform, Gemeindereform, kommunale Neugliederung but when emphasising its negative aspects, the term Eigemeindung is also used) was easier for citizens to accept (Krapf 2009). This proved to be a right thought because, although the German reform did not bring about such radical changes as its Danish counterpart, there are litigations in progress still today against the declaration of settlement unification. Quite often, however, it is not only the small settlements merged into bigger ones but also the ‘‘winners’’ that protest. The contractions and unifications, as well as the justification of the entire reform was based on the establishment of local governments of viable size, which also meant the unification of municipalities with a budget deficit with those managing their finances properly, thus eliminating deficits. Let it be noted that the unification of municipalities have been a common practice in Germany since the end of the nineteenth century (under a new name in case of partners of similar size—Barnem + Ebersfeld = Wuppertal—and saving the name of the larger partner for municipalities of different sizes), but, as one of our earlier studies shows, the number of municipality unification cases in Hungary in the first 45 years of the twentieth century, in a capitalist system, was the same as in the subsequent 45 years, during the communist regime (Kocsis 2008a). What is more, cases of settlement adherence, contraction, merger or unification have been occurring in almost all European countries since the Middle Ages (Mecking and Oebbecke 2009). The objective of the new system was to create units of larger average size, thus more efficient and better at the performance of public services, by a reduction in the number of local governments (Gemeinde) and districts. During the regional management reform taking place in West Germany between 1967 and 1978, the federal states significantly reduced the number of local and district-level units, which was justified also by the fact that out of the nearly 24,000 municipalities, 10,760 had a population not reaching 500! After the reform, the number of districts, towns with district rights and municipalities decreased from 425 to 237, from 139 to 91, and to 8,505, respectively (Landtag NRW 2005). The guiding principle was voluntary participation in certain federal states, where the neighbouring local governments concerned agreed after negotiations on the details of association; in other regions, rather mergers were the way. However, it happened everywhere that the order of a higher level (from the federal state) was required when parties were unable or unwilling to reach an agreement (Hamann 2005). In the reference literature, there is a sort of consensus about the reform having been necessary and being regarded as successful but many experts think that it was just a response to the trends of the age (we could see that similar processes were taking place at the time in a number of European countries). A technocratic attitude regarding efficiency as being above all conflicts with the notion of the principle of democracy, according to which the independence of municipalities

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(the lower level) does not originate from the state, which should provide reinforcement and protection only (Henkel and Tiggemann 1990; Loschelder 1976; Esterhues 2005). Quite sceptic opinions can be heard about the increase of efficiency, which, in the absence of reliable model calculations and case studies, cannot be regarded as justified. The territory of the former German Democratic Republic was not part of the study because it did not belong to Western Europe at the time of the NCSND.

3.4 Austria The case of Austria resembles that of Germany to the extent that both countries allowed different regulations for each of their provinces, and that it has been in progress for centuries thus not having shocked the settlement network. The impacts were not so radical, either: there was a slight decrease in the number of local governments, and they preferred the form of association to those of contraction or unification (which, in Germany, was accompanied by the loss of the name). As members of municipalities (Gemeinde) thus established had a lower level of independence but the former, smaller units could co-exist (Kinzl and Schütz 1962; Atzmüller 2002). The process has finished by our days, no merger or unification having taken place for a long time. Experts, however, are beginning to emphasise the necessity of continuing the process. As a side effect of suburbanisation, such zones developed around several towns whose municipalities, despite the low number of their inhabitants, have significant incomes because the shopping malls and industrial parks settled down around the city were built in these settlements; at the same time, the operation of public institutions and offices continues to be the responsibility of central towns. With their population decreasing (people moving out to settlements nearby) and reduced tax income (jobs are also becoming subject to suburbanisation); this is becoming more and more difficult. A possible unification of a town and its surroundings, which (as it frequently happened in the case of Vienna) used to mean the contraction of the actual functional urban region (FUR) into one single unit of public administration, seems impossible from a political point of view. This initiative, which primarily aims at the abolishment of financial inequalities, falls on dead ears in terms of both the inhabitants and the politicians.

3.5 Italy In Italy, it is municipalities (comune, comuni) that form the basis of public administration. This is particularly important because the borders of counties and provinces change relatively frequently owing to different political bargains. Thus,

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municipalities are also the warranties of constancy. Municipalities usually consist of a central town or village (capoluogo) and other settlements that are not used to have independence (frazione, frazioni). However, during the reform process, the number of municipalities was decreased by approximately 25 percent, thus one may encounter examples of merged municipalities having formerly lost their independence. The system is highly tolerant: it is not always the settlement with the highest population that becomes the centre. What is more, the municipality office is not always situated in the central settlement but the name of the municipality will, in any case, remain. There are even municipalities without a centre (comune sparso), where the settlement fraction (frazione) in which the office can be found is the sede municipale. Both throughout the country and within each province, there are great differences as to the size and the population of municipalities (the one with the smallest surface area is Fiera di Primiero with 0.15 km2 and the one with the lowest population is Morterone with its 33 inhabitants), which causes problems to small (financial constraints) and big (intransparent and too big to understand) towns alike. Furthermore, the municipality with 33 inhabitants and one with 3 million inhabitants are (legally) equal, which is democratic but not reasonable even if Rome would certainly defeat its smaller rivals in terms of ability to enforce interests (http://www.comuniverso.it/?lingua=eng).

3.6 Where No Reforms were Implemented Although it would be possible to continue presenting countries that started or finished restructuring their public administration, this study cannot cover more. However, for a better comparison, the authors consider it to be justified to present examples that are exceptional hereto. By doing so, it will be easier to realise to what extent regional management reforms followed a ‘‘fashion pattern’’. The exception set forth below are no less instructive than the analogies presented earlier!

3.6.1 France In France, the revolution of 1789 and the reforms executed at the time more or less did their jobs, with a result that no significant changes, except for the restoration of regions, in the system of public administration and regional management have taken place ever since. Perhaps such changes would have been necessary but have not occurred. Then, during the transition to a modern, civil public administration, a system developed in which the base units of public administration were the municipalities (commune), which can either be a town or a village and can have high or low

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population rates. Of course, a size too small can bring about functional disorders but public services can be provided within the framework of local government or municipality associations so there is no need to draw together or abolish any municipality (CGCT). This is the situation in France too, since the idea of easing the problems of primarily financial nature resulting from a network of tiny little municipalities was brought up already in the 1970s, encouraging village associations by initiatives. Thanks to the Marcellin Act of 1971, over 1,000 municipalities decided on uniting, merging or a voluntary session. Despite this, the number of municipalities hardly decreased, from 37,510 only to 36,569 between 1861 and 2008. Out of the 3,659 municipalities, nearly 21,000 have fewer than 500 inhabitants; at the same time, only 7.7 percent of the country’s total population reside in these tiny municipalities. The median of the population is 380, which means that the system continues to be fragmented, which was attempted to be helped by another law, the Chévenement Act. This act discontinues to support unions but supports integration and co-operation, leaving the independence (and thus the number) of municipalities intact (Bonnard 2005). Disregarding the 33,327 municipalities participating in 2,573 associations and considering the number of these associations only, one, of course, gains a totally different picture of the country’s public administration. However, we cannot take associations of local governments as independent governments!

3.6.2 Switzerland Switzerland is a special case because, although it has never implemented a public administration reform, the contraction and merger (in Switzerland called fusion) of settlements and municipalities in the sense as presented for Germany is more or less continuous. When merging into a bigger settlement, the smaller one usually loses its name; in case of two municipalities of a similar size merging, either the two names are united or a new one is chosen. An enormous difference, as compared to Germany and also other European states is that such processes are not forced by the central government but, having taken the mutual benefits into account, parties to the union made the decision. In Switzerland it would be unimaginable for the federation to abolish municipalities which, most of the time, have a longer history than the Bund itself. It is true that some plans and projects were made at the canton-level but not in the 1970s, at the time of NCSNDs, but in the 1990s. In 10 out of the 26 cantons, however, the consent of each party concerned (i.e. each municipality to be merged) is required. There are voluntary unions taking place in almost every canton nearly every year; what is more, some of them are cross-border unions between municipalities in neighbouring cantons (Fetz and Bühler 2005). It has been a slow process—in average, two municipalities have ceased to exist annually in the past 150 years. In the past two decades, however, the number of mergers has greatly increased; in spite of all this, the number of municipalities has

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decreased by no more than 7 percent, whereas in the neighbouring Germany and Austria, they have decreased by 59 and 42 percent.

3.6.3 The Netherlands The Netherlands stand out from the other countries with permanent reforms. In fact, no separate periods can be identified—the borders of municipalities (gemeente, gemeenten) and counties are in a constant change. However, there is a recognisable trend in the decrease in the number of municipalities (http://www.metatopos.org/). Following a great deal of mergers and unifications, 430 municipalities have remained; the process, however, cannot be regarded as complete—further changes in borderlines and municipality mergers are expected. Thanks to mergers, four basic types of municipalities can be identified: • Municipalities consisting of a central town or village and smaller villages belonging to them, under the name of the centre. • Municipalities consisting of several villages, where the municipality’s name does not include the name of any participants. • Municipalities with a double name consisting of the names of the two merged settlements. • Municipalities consisting of a central town and villages belonging to it, which, however do no bear the name of the central settlement. As it might seem obvious, the above types exist on the basis of how the united municipality is named—there is no legal difference between municipalities. Of course, a higher number of inhabitants is an advantage.

4 Experiences and Conclusions In summary, it can be concluded that that a wave of reforms in public administration and regional management swept across Western Europe in the early 1970s. The fact weather such reforms started earlier or later in a particular country would not mean a significant difference; the only reason why the time is important is that Western European examples were examined in comparison with the relevant Hungarian law enacted in 1971. Otherwise, it can be stated about each of the countries having implemented reforms that • besides many others, the primary reasons were efficiency, and access to services of a higher standard provided by local governments with a higher number of inhabitants and better financial stability; • the reform resulted in a significant decrease in the number of local governments/ municipalities; • the process continued over a long period and in multiple waves;

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• the process triggered protests everywhere – municipalities having lost their independence and sometimes their names as well during a contraction or unification all expressed their disapproval, though in different ways; • generally, no references are found as to the fact that similar processes are going on also in other countries and this is why such reforms are required here, too. In addition to this last point, let us mention that, although the processes started earlier in Sweden, Denmark and Austria (in Germany, apart from the antecedents of hundreds of years, the actual commencement was before 1971); the importance of year 1971 can be observed. It cannot have been a coincidence with the members of the European Economic Community, today’s EU, since the Committee of Regions was set up in the same year. In this way, the reform of municipalities can be regarded as a sort of preparation, or a related benefit if you like since, due to the development of the system of regions (NUTS 2), especially that of public administrative regions, lower levels, i.e. the municipalities could not have been left intact anyway. The fact that the Hungarian regulation decreasing the number of municipalities (although not having defined it either as an objective or a tool), whose content, results, and purpose sometimes resemble those of the Western European samples, was enacted in 1971 can really be held as a mere coincidence since it would have been unimaginable in a communist country to justify a reform initiative by saying that Western European countries are trying to implement something similar. At the same time, there are two facts contradicting the assumption of coincidence: on the one hand, the concept had been under consideration for years already, and there had been several ideas, concepts and plans, both official and of private initiation, aiming at restructuring Hungarian public administration. On the other hand, it was exactly at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s when a reformsupporting ‘‘atmosphere’’ was ruling in Hungary; at this time, one could imagine politicians looking out of the country—not necessarily to the direction of Moscow. This latter idea would require further research, which the authors wish to clarify during interviews with the composers of the NCSND still alive, to continue the present research.

4.1 Notes on Terminology What the authors experienced during their research work and what they suffered from while writing this paper is how unclear the terminology is. This was inconvenient for two reasons: first (but of lower importance), because we had to write down the same words ever so many times, which counts as a stylistic problem, a flaw. Second, because, when examining the Hungarian situation, the process, and the Western European analogies thereof, the authors kept facing the problem that the words they used did not correspond to each other. The authors are not precisely aware of the what exactly they are talking about because the

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Table 1 Some terms used frequently in the paper and their meaning in Hungary Terms Europe Hungary Ortschaft, Siedlung, Ort (A, CH, D), localitá (I)

Commune (F), comune (I), kommune (S, DK), Gemeinde (A, CH, D), gemeente (NL), municipality (UK)

Stadt (A, CH, D) cittá (I), ville (F), town, city (UK)

Human dwelling, group of houses, settlement with topographic name without municipality or local authority. Basic, often the most important level in public administration with elected body, head etc. They are towns or villages. In some countries parts of municipalities can have town or village title despite of the legal stand of their municipality. Municipality or community with town or city charter.

Settlement (village or town). Village.

Town, city.

meanings of words, going beyond language difficulties, are different. The word ‘‘municipality’’ (commune, comune, kommune, Gemeinde, gemeente, etc.) means the same in Western Europe: the local government, one of the most important but, in any case, the lowest level of public administration, which has its own, elected convention and leader, which has a number of rights and responsibilities, regardless of population, surface area or legal status (Kocsis 2008b). In Hungary and in Hungarian language, the same word is a synonym for ‘‘village’’. It refers to a settlement having its own public administration, convention and leader but has a legal status of a village. The authors do not think that the present study and the continuation thereof will arise legislators’ interest but we are convinced that Hungarian geographical science should draw the attention of other sciences studying settlements to the unclearness of the terminology. Though ‘‘settlement’’ is a geographical term, a spatial issue, ‘‘village’’ is a legal one and hierarchical, ‘‘municipality’’ is a term in public administration and regional management, we still mix them up and use them wrongly, thus many times improperly. Table 1. The European concept is not about uniformisation but making use of the power that lies in diversity. Thus, the authors do not think that anything that is similar in other European countries should be implemented at any cost in Hungary. However, we cannot abandon the benefit of taking over the experience just because we are unable to think over the terminology.

References Atzmüller K (2002) Die Gemeindeverfassungs-Novelle 1962. In: ÖGZ Österreichische Gemeinde-Zeitung Offizielle Zeitschrift des Österreichischen Städtebundes 2002/11, 17 Balogh A (2006) Az aprófalvasodás folyamatának f} obb jellemz}oi Magyarországon. Földrajzi Közlemények 1–2:67–79

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Bonnard M (2005) Les collectivités territoriales en France. La documentation française, ISBN 2-11-005874-9 CGCT (Code général des collectivités territoriales) (http://www.droit.org/code/index-CGCTERRL. html), http://www.droit.org/code/index-CGCTERRM.html Esterhues J (2005) Die Gemeindegebietsreform im Raum Münster von 1975. Ein Beitrag zur handlungsorientierten politisch-geographischen Konfliktforschung. In: Westfälische geographische Studien; 51. Aschendorff, Münster Fetz U, Bühler D (2005) Leitfaden für Gemeindefusionen. Chur Hajdú Z (2001) Magyarország közigazgatási földrajza. Dialóg Campus, Budapest—Pécs, p 334 Hamann P (2005) Gemeindegebietsreform in Bayern Entwicklungsgeschichte, Bilanz und Perspektiven. Utz, München Hanes N et al (2009) Municipal preferences for state imposed amalgamations: An empirical study based on the 1952 municipal reform in Sweden. http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/umnees/0763.html Henkel G, Tiggemann R (eds) (1990) Kommunale Gebietsreform—Bilanzen und Bewertungen. In: Essener Geographische Arbeiten; Bd. 19, Paderborn Kinzl W, Schütz E (1962) Das neue Gemeinderecht. In: ÖGZ Österreichische Gemeinde-Zeitung Offizielle Zeitschrift des Österreichischen Städtebundes 1962/15-16 Kocsis Zs (2008a) Incorporated small towns. In: Csapó T, Kocsis Zs (eds) Nagyközségek és kisvárosok a térben. Savaria University Press, Szombathely, pp 182–193 Kocsis Zs (2008b) A várossá válás Európában. In: Területi Statisztika 2008/6. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, Budapest, pp 713-723 K}oszegfalvy Gy (2009) Törekvések a magyarországi településrendszer tudatos fejlesztésére. Az Országos településhálózat-fejlesztési koncepció. In: Területi Statisztika 2009/6. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, Budapest, pp 571-584 Krapf M (2009) Eingemeindung. In: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns. http://www.historischeslexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44703 (20.10.2009) Loschelder W (1976) Kommunale Selbstverwaltungsgarantie und gemeindliche Gebietsgestaltung. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin Mecking S, Oebbecke J (eds) (2009) Zwischen Effizienz und Legitimität. Kommunale Gebietsund Funktionalreformen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in historischer und aktueller Perspektive. In: Forschungen zur Regionalgeschichte, Bd. 62). Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn Somlyódyné Pfeil E (2003) Önkormányzati integráció és helyi közigazgatás. Dialóg Campus, Budapest, p 295

A Comparison of Settlement Development in the Social Command Economy Versus the European Union’s Development Policy Mátyás Gulya

1 Socialist Planning Following World War II, Hungary became that part of the European continent which was under Soviet influence. After the war, the primary task of the first threeyear plan was the recovery of the economy and the reconstruction of the country. From 1948, after the elimination of the democratic regime of the country, the Stalin-style Soviet planned economy was inaugurated in Hungary. One of the main characteristics of the party state regime and the dictatorship was the management and the control of the economic life of the country by the state, in the framework of the command economy. The first three-year plan was launched in 1947. By 1950, private property was eliminated in the economy, and total socialisation was achieved. The copying of the Soviet model was marked by irrational investments lacking any conscious planning, such as launching Russian dandelion (Taraxacum kok-saghyz) or cotton production in Hungary. Under the leadership of Ern} o Ger} o, the foundations of Hungarian heavy industry were laid. In these developments, too, the country followed the Soviet model, because Hungary lacked raw materials necessary for heavy industry production, which had to be imported from the Soviet Union. This period is well characterised by the slogan of the Hungarian communist leader, Rákosi: Hungary will be the country of iron and steel or The limit is the starry sky

M. Gulya (&) ÉARFÜ Észak-Alföld Regional Development Agency Non-Profit Limited Liability Company, Simonyi út 14, 4028 Debrecen, Hungary e-mail: [email protected]

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This was also covered in Péter Bacsó’s movie featuring this period, called ‘‘A tanú’’ (The Witness), from which a quote well depicts the typical way of thinking of the time: We proclaimed that let there be a Hungarian orange… and there it was.

The thoughts above reveal that there was no such thing as impossible in the development policy. The comrades in power defined the goals to be achieved, and these goals had do be achieved in any circumstances. There was no counteropinion or refusal. In order to create heavy industry, huge socialist industrial cities were built, such as Sztálinváros (Stalin City), in its present name Dunaújváros, or Leninváros (Lenin City), known as Tiszaújváros today. The implementation of the investments lacked well-established spatial and urban development strategies; they were done by simple commands. The cities erected showed no harmony with their environment, they were oversized and environmentally polluting.

1.1 The Basis of Planning Between 1948 and 1953 the Hungarian Workers’ Party, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament did not approve of any spatial and urban development programme. The first five-year plan only made a reference to some development concepts, but in that period ad hoc plans were rather focusing on the construction of socialist towns. From 1947 to 1949, during the execution of the three-year people’s economic plan hardly any communal developments were shouldered, because the plan basically aimed at post-war reconstruction. It was mainly ad hoc plans for the construction of socialist cities that were made. The upcoming five years proved to be crucial in terms of the shaping of the structure of Hungarian industry and settlements. The town constructions and other large investments commencing at that time also designated the way for lather development policy, because they could not be abandoned unfinished, while their completion posed a huge burden on the national economy. Entrusted to elaborate the regional and settlement developmental sections of the medium-term plan, the Regional Development Workshop framed the plan of three regional co-operative efforts in heavy industry instead of the extension of the existing centres, as they wished to create new towns for the development of weakly urbanised regions. In the summer of 1948, the National Planning Board proposed the development of the industrial centres of Budapest, Miskolc, Ózd, as well as the establishment of a centre of metallurgy by River Danube, including the foundation of yet another new settlement. The first five-year plan enacted in December 1949 defined selective infrastructure development plans and aimed at the catching up of the disadvantaged

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regions in general. Yet, the section of the plan on transportation only contained major developments in the case of existing major cities and the industrial ‘‘centres’’. The people’s economy plan approved by the Hungarian Workers’ Party at the end of April 1950 was not much concerned about the disadvantaged regions, but targeted the improvement of the provision of commercial, cultural and social investments to certain prioritised settlements. Even the preparative phases of planning were dominated by the needs of industrialisation. The five-year factory establishment plan set the main objective to create new industrial nodes, and drive industrialisation in areas with large volumes of unused agricultural manpower. A key element of the concept was the planned industrial region around Mohács, which was designed to serve as a reciprocal pole of the industrial areas in the north. In addition to the projected developments, no plans were drawn up for the establishment of new towns or for the transformation of existing industrial centres into urban areas. In general, private property ceased to exist in economy, but following the Soviet model agricultural co-operatives and state farms were created, and the landholding farmers were forcefully introduced in these new forms of production and ownership. Regional and settlement development programmes were then elaborated in the late 1960 and 1970s. Gyula Belényi was the first to study the regional and settlement development policy of the Rákosi era, and thereafter Anna Ádám examined socialist regional policy from the perspective of the settlement and decentralisation of industry. Gyula Belényi’s research revealed that development plans had been prepared even in the Rákosi era, and forwarded to the Institute of Spatial Planning and National Planning Board, but eventually they were not implemented due to the lack of approval (Belényi 1984). In the socialist system, development policies were ordered into a strict hierarchy according to the communist ideology and the contemporary geopolitical, military situation. The priorities of economic policy determined the pace and structure of industrialisation, i.e. industrial policy in practice, which in turn determined spatial and settlement development policy. The development of settlements was evidently determined by economic policy, there was no independent spatial and urban development at this time. In this period, planning was supposed to be made on professional bases in the departments of the Party Headquarters, the National Planning Board and the departments of the ministries; however, communist ideology adjusted the end results to its own needs. This meant that real development alternatives were only produced by independent planning workshops, such as the Task Force on Spatial Planning of the Institute of Political Sciences, the Urban Department of the Technical University of Budapest, or the Institute of Spatial Planning itself. The concepts worked out by these organisations, however, were ‘‘alien to the system’’, so they were not integrated in any form into the practice of socialist planning (Germuska 2002).

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1.2 Rationalisation of Settlement Development After 1968, economic reforms aiming at increasing of the independence of the companies were launched, and the issues of spatial and settlement development were also given more attention. In 1971, four important documents were prepared on the principles of spatial development; the development of the settlement network; the order of spatial planning; and the division of competencies and tasks. The socio-economic transitions having taken place brought about a broad-scale transformation of spatial planning. In order to structure planning practices that can handle technical-physical, socio-economic criteria in an integrated manner, spatial development associated with the construction industry needed to become disentangled from the industrial bonds, and find contacts with economic planning that had extensive experience, but tended to handle regional aspects as peripheral issues. It was the Government Decree of 1971 on the guidelines of spatial development that first set forth the requirement to enforce social, economic, physical and environmental criteria in a combined manner, alongside the principles of the country’s spatial development policy. This move did give grounds to the theoretical opportunity to make spatial planning a complex discipline. The Government Resolution on the system of regional planning outlined a standardised system for the various types and kinds of plans, described their primary tasks, time horizons, planning domains and interrelations. The Resolution also defined the order of procedure in regional planning activities, and in this context two main types of plans, the spatial development and spatial arrangement plan belonged to the hierarchical system of regional plans in view of spatial scale and time horizon (Bokor 2003). In the 1970s, when the further refinement of the reform came to a halt, economic research started to focus on the operation of the particular system of centralised plan economy that had evolved in Hungary. That was the time when Hungarian economic sociography came to a new life, similarly to the second half of the 1950s. Researchers highlighted those special traits of the new economic mechanism that made a positive distinction from the Soviet-type plan economy, and quite early they pointed out the internal contradictions of the new economic mechanism. However, it was only in the 1980s that the related literature came to be interested in the contradictions arising from the merged existence or inseparability of politics and economy (Tardos 1972; Bauer 1975). Hungary has never tried to put the concept into practice that has seemed to be prevailing since the middle of the 1980s in China to see whether it is possible to head for a market economy gradually, step by step, while the props of the party state regime are kept in place. By the 1980s, it had turned out that the development convergence between regions and countries as suggested by the neo-classic development theories was very slow, market forces alone were incapable of converting the outbalancing and compensatory benefits offered by the European integration into real convergence.

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2 Development Policy in Hungary After the Systemic Change Article 158 of the Treaty establishing the European Community prescribes the moderation of the development differences among the regions as one of the goals of the integration. The accomplishment of the political objectives seems to be a focal point of both scientific and political debates, and these days publications often tend to be critical, and evidence the inefficiency of the European development policy and the failure of regional convergence (Rodríges-Pose and Fratesi 2003). New economic geography assumes that the spatial concentration of economic activities is a concomitant of development. The extent of such spatial concentration is variable in terms of both time and space, and the interactions among actors from regions of different levels of economic development may as well result in the spatial rearrangement of economic resources and incomes. These differences in the developmental level of regional units are often targeted by some of the interventions on the part of public politics, as well as spatial or regional policies. The set of means available to regional policies changes from time to time. Interventions of development policy rarely serve the narrowing of regional differences and the improvement of national efficiency; the short- and long-term effects of interventions may deviate from the initial intentions. The maturing processes of settlement policy, the broadening of the scope for local actions and the challenges posed by grant application schemes have raised demands for the strategic planning of local developments with increasing frequency, on the level of settlements and their associations. Within the framework of strategic planning, apart from spatial aspects, other fields of settlement policy such as economic development, environmental policy, social issues or housing policy have come to focus as well. The interests of both the communal and public sector are promoted in the scene of planning. In the current approach, an important role is attributed to the process of planning, the involvement of the stakeholders, because approval by the communities is also essential for the acceptance of any concept. For this reason, the elaboration of concepts is both a professional and political process right from the first steps (Futó and Szeszler 2003).

2.1 Planning Problems After the Systematic Change Before the systemic change, Hungary witnessed centralised plan economy with the National Planning Board in charge of the compilation of five-year plans. During the transition to the market economy, the Board was dissolved in 1990. As a consequence of the earlier, fairly unrealistic, politically tuned planning process, wide-scaling distrust surrounded strategic planning and evaluation. Evaluation activities were often confused with regularity supervisions, audits, monitoring or

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controlling, and therefore politicians and bureaucracy have largely remained suspicious about evaluations even until now. Another issue frequently raised is whether the benefits of such evaluations exceed costs. After the millennium, with the advent of the accession to the European Union there was an increasing demand for long term professional policies, and for strategic planning including evaluations. This was partly related to the use of the pre-accession funds and the preparation of the first National Development Plan. The permanent demand for summarising earlier experience and forecasting the expected outcomes of development programmes has contributed to the gradual spread of evaluation-type activities in the central administration. The composition of the structural expenses of the state budget saw little change in the period spanning more than a decade before the accession. The largest portions of resources were allocated to education, agriculture and the transport infrastructure; these three sectors used to concentrate some two-thirds of all the development funds. Nevertheless, it was a consequence of the zero-based budgeting approach, rather than the unchanging nature of priorities in development policy. If for the period of 1994–2003 changes in the added values are compared with the volume of supports, it is apparent that services and industrial activities producing dynamic growth were given much smaller resources than agriculture. Therefore, development funds channelled to agriculture can be rather regarded to be hidden social aids to decelerate the impoverishment of those working in the sector. The efficiency of the development policy interventions was influenced to a large extent by the specific socio-economic environment and processes deriving from the systemic change. Development policy objectives were often conflict with the goals of other policies, especially macro-economic policy. The functional allocations in the annual budgets clearly reflect that whenever deficit figures sank well beyond the planned levels, development resources were cut, and investments were deferred. The scenic ‘‘large projects’’ promising a higher return enjoyed priority all the time, often consuming a significant part of the development resources, resulting in a delay of the implementation of minor developments whose realisation was justified on professional grounds. This is especially true for the road network: besides the motorway constructions no resources were left for the maintenance and development of lower rank roads. In addition to external circumstances, the particular characteristics of the given institutional system also had their role in the uneven performance of the objectives set in the various development policies. The budgets of developments initiated by the Government—similarly to the other budgetary expenditures—were re-negotiated from year to year, and thus quite frequently the funding of projects planned for years ahead was reduced or re-allocated, which delayed implementation, hindered completion according to the plans, and caused excessive expenditures. As the utilisation of resources was weak both in planning and evaluation, the information revealed in execution was not properly fed back for the purpose of the preparation of programmes for the following period. When interventions were examined, the primary emphasis fell on the supervision of regularity, whereas the

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review of the efficiency and effectiveness of the programmes were rather neglected, which infringed the democratic control of the development policy.

2.2 Settlement Development in Hungary, a Member State of the European Union Settlement development strategies are made in order to enhance the attraction of settlements, and provide information to both the inhabitants and business organisations. Decisions pertaining to settlement development or economic aspects are frequently motivated by the attraction of the settlements—an idea that is often hard to explain—more strongly than sectoral statements or cost-efficiency calculations. Therefore, not at all surprisingly, settlement attraction is a term that has been used with increasing frequency in the course of the development of regions in Europe. A settlement development concept describes the development actions that are designed to make the given environment more liveable for the inhabitants, and more attractive for the enterprises in the competition of potential business sites in the close or broader surroundings of the settlement. These plans have outlooks for 10–15 years, which supports the settlement in becoming competitive on the long run. The concept may as well function as a self-accomplishing prophecy, as it can be used for banning developments in conflict with the plans, thereby promoting the accomplishment of the given objectives. Any settlement development concept can accomplish its objectives if it has a relevant response to changes in the spatial roles taken by the settlement and the relationships within the context of centre and periphery in the close or broader geographical surroundings of the settlement. It means that the document should be in line with the regional plans outlined for the wider area, such as the microregion, county or region. Towards this end, plans shaped for broader geographic units and settlement plans are to be reconciled with each other. It is particularly important that a concept should also consider the plans of the neighbouring settlements, because it makes disturbing effects crossing the boundaries of the settlements avoidable. Settlement development concepts of strategic nature are to describe the priorities and methods that are also deemed to be the fundamental conditions of grants from the European Unions, and whose application are beneficial for the settlements, as well as the closer or wider environs of the settlements themselves. According to the fundamental assumption of the new economic geography, owing to the rising returns, economic activities show spatial concentration, whereas the product of the immobile sectors and the equalisation of wages and salaries on the labour market counteract agglomeration forces. The balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces depends on the respective shares of sectors featuring rising earnings in consumption, on replacement flexibility shown by the given sectors, and on the transportation costs incurred. Larger

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agglomerations can better exploit the opportunities offered by rising earnings, the associated sectors will attract each other to the same location, while the larger mobility of the production factors encourages the spatial expansion of the economic operations (Szepesi 1999). In the course of the elaboration of the strategy for the first planning period of 2004–2006, Hungary had little historic experience, and therefore such problems surfaced in the process of execution that could have been avoided if planning had been able to rely on the evaluation of domestic programmes from the pre-accession times. During the elaboration of development programmes, the solutions facilitating the use of the resources, typical in the former Hungarian support policy, enjoyed priority. Presently Hungary is entitled to a €22.4 billion support from the European Union in the 2007–2013 planning period. Development strategy was preceded by a long preparatory work, which was approved after broad social discussions. In the planning cycle the use of the support takes place on the basis of the development plan, amended several times. The planning document valid until 2010 was called New Hungary Development Plan. The magnitude and the time span of the support allowed the implementation of not only local projects but also major harmonised development plans concerning a number of settlements. Projects initiated by settlements co-operating with each other, e.g. microregions, may require several years of implementation. The objective of such projects is restructuring in some form, or joint development concerning several settlements. A few examples for common purpose developments in the present planning cycle are as follows: • Construction of regional joint waste deposits, e.g. the Hajdú-Bihar County Waste Management Programme has a budget of €18.7 million; in the framework of this programme the regional waste management and recycling plant of the Bihar area will be built from a total amount of €6.3 million. Another example is the construction of the waste deposit of Szeged, with an investment worth €38 million; • Further tourism developments that address regional issues, such as the construction of a bicycle road network in Jászberény in a value of €1.3 million or the construction of the Zsurk–Záhony–Györöcske bicycle path, whose budget is €0.8 million; • Construction of a waste water treatment plant, with favourable impact on the quality of the waters of the region: e.g. the treatment of the waste water of Budapest aiming at the improvement of the quality of the water of the Danube. The total value of this investment is €20.7 million. Another example is the ‘‘Upper Szabolcs waste water placement and treatment plan’’, with a development worth a total of €10.7 million. The above-mentioned projects are being implemented in specific settlements, yet they will affect their broader environments, regions. Therefore, on the basis of the development strategy of a given region, the goals set forth in the plans can be implemented by means of a series of co-ordinated projects.

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3 A Brief Overview of Spatial Development in Some European Countries After the examples from Hungary we are now taking a look at the documents and concepts determining the development of the settlements in a few countries of the European Union.

3.1 Lower Austria The act on spatial planning in Lower Austria province orders the spatial development programme of a settlement to the competence of the local authority; the plan must include the land use plan and the development concept of the settlement. According to the act, the development concept (Entwicklungskonzept) is at the top of the hierarchy of the documents, because the spatial planning programme (Raumordnungsprogramm) can be modified only if the given alteration serves the objectives set forth in the development concept. If the local government approves the development concept in the form of a decree, case-by-case changes of the spatial development programme will not call for the consent of authority experts. Otherwise, all the proposed modifications of land use should be approved by the competent authority expert. Therefore, the local development concept makes settlement planning transparent and safe on the long run, mitigates the risks associated with household and business investments. The main purpose of the concept is the regulation of land use and those elements of the local strategy that concern the development of the economy, the decrease of the social disparities and the improvement of the provision of social services, but the primary goal is the clarification and theoretical foundation of land use policy.

3.2 France 1954 saw the enactment of the Code of Settlement Development (Code de l’Urbanisme), which standardised the varied rules of settlement development. In 1967, the land occupation plan (Plan d’Occupation du Sol—POS) as the means of regulated settlement development was introduced. In order to break down the centralised exercise of power, in 1982 a decentralisation act was adopted, which then necessitated the establishment of the complex institutional means of decentralised operation and various forms of co-operation among the settlements. Upon the implementation of decentralisation, for the settlements it was the first time that they became responsible for the preparation of their own settlement development plans. Since 1999, co-ordinated regional development concepts (SCOT, Schéma

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de Cohérence Territoriale) have been drawn up for the associations of settlements, as well as for the areas of one or more settlements. In the enforcement of the resolutions of the municipal assemblies, mayors have a key role with respect to the decisions concerning the expansion of built-up areas, and the activities that can be pursued in these areas and other aspects. These decisions and concepts emerge in the plans for spatial development and sustainable development, while the settlements themselves work out their respective strategies and the means needed for the accomplishment of the development objectives in the course of the preparation of these settlement development documents. Spatial planning policy is made with a comprehensive approach and in a horizontal relationship system, so plans do not only handle the organisation of the built-up areas but also assist the solution of the sectoral problems in a consistent way, such as in the field of transport development, the housing development plan of the settlement, as well as the trade development concept. The Act requires the existence of legal compatibility links among these documents and the local development documents, e.g. the spatial development concept or the local settlement development plan. The way to simplify inter-settlement co-operation and rationalise the division of tasks was described in the ‘‘Act on strengthening and simplifying the co-operation of settlements’’, which has created geographically contiguous clusters of settlements and various settlement ‘‘communities’’ (communautés de communes).

3.3 Great Britain Enacted back in 1947 and reinforced in 1990, the Town and Country Planning Act prescribed for each local planning authority to prepare a development plan in relation to the future of their areas. The spatial development organisations of ‘‘counties’’—that are more or less similar to the Hungarian counties—prepare the structure plans presenting the large-scale strategic concepts, whereas the spatial development organisations of the smaller districts elaborate their own local plans stipulating the detailed, local rules. In the case of cities and municipal associations formed by several local governments, these two organisations are merged (unitary authority), and their unitary development plans are framed by joint planning boards. In Great Britain the decrees define considerable planning responsibilities for the central government and also for the medium-level and higher level authorities. Sectoral plans are not independent of local planning; they are usually designed in order to develop and fill the local strategic partnerships with content, and to strengthen the connections among the respective local policy fields. At certain governmental agencies, there are separate divisions set up to handle and mitigate ever-arising conflicts and tensions among the local, regional and governmental programmes.

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Enacted in 2000, the Local Government Act requires the preparation of local strategies on a mandatory basis. The purpose of these strategies is to improve the economic, social and environmental situation of regions, and contribute to sustainable development. Since 2002, the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions has been reconciling the methodology of the settlement development plans prepared by the individual local governments. The local strategy is called the Community Strategy. The settlement development strategy has become more detached from spatial representation, i.e. the physical planning of settlements than in other EU countries, such as in Austria. Nevertheless, the process of physical planning is still closely associated with the creation of settlement strategy. The settlement development strategy integrates broad-scaling activities relating to settlement planning, thereby ensuring coherence and the avoidance of parallelisms. The goal of the Community Strategy is to improve the life quality of local communities, as well as to contribute to sustainable development in the country by bettering the economic, social and environmental life circumstances in any given district (Futó and Szeszler 2003).

4 Measures to Increase the Efficiency of Settlement Planning on the Economy In the period lasting for more than a decade before the Hungary’s accession to the European Union, among Central Eastern European countries it was this country that showed the fastest pace of closing the gap in the per capita gross domestic product. In the past decade we have successfully become parts of the European economic and social networks, but social inequalities having emerged as a consequence of the socio-economic transformation and regional differences inherited from the previous regime could not be moderated at all or just to a small extent. In comparison with our competitors in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic states and the cohesion countries that are generally used for reference purposes, Hungary has expended a lot on communal developments. The threat in such largescale governmental developments is that they draw away funds from private investments regarded to be more efficient, which is also supported by the fact that in Hungary the ratio of private investments to the total value of investments is still under the average of the other EU member states. The less well-to-do member states that acceded the European Union earlier typically boast higher rates of structural expenditures than the countries having joint in 2004, which means that the common cohesion policy considerably contributes to the costs of development projects initiated by the governments. The elaboration of development plans should pay more attention to the identification of the effect mechanisms of interventions not only on the macro level, but also during the establishment of certain priorities. Even in the field of community

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programmes funded solely from domestic resources, there is a need for the development of a programme evaluation system, similarly to the corresponding practices of the European Union. Besides, in order to enhance the efficiency of spatial and settlement development, closer co-operation should be forged between planning and enforcement actions. Planning should be done with the consideration of the results of the experiences achieved during the implementation, however, more attention should be paid to the exploration of the impact mechanisms of interventions, which can increase the efficiency and strengthen the impacts of the developments.

References Bauer T (1975) A vállalatok ellentmondásos helyzete a magyar gazdasági mechanizmusban. Közgazdasági Szemle, 6. sz., pp 725–735 Belényi Gy (1984) Településfejlesztési koncepciók az 1950-es évek elején. Honismeret, 1984/5. sz., pp 37–41 Bokor P (2003) Településfejlesztés, -irányítás. pp 85–99 Futó P, Szeszler Zs (2003) A településfejlesztési koncepció elkészítésének módszerei az EU-ban és Magyarországon. pp 38–46 Germuska P (2002) A szocialista városok létrehozása. pp 1–18 Rodríges-Pose A, Fratesi U (2003) Between development and social policies: the impact of European structural funds in objective 1 regions. EEG Working Papers Series Szepesi B (1999) The mew economic geography and its implications for regional economic policy. MA thesis, Central European University Tardos M (1972) A gazdasági verseny problémái hazánkban. Közgazdasági Szemle, 7–8. sz., 911–927

On the Periphery of the Periphery: Demographic Trends and Development Differences in Hungarian Villages Tibor Kerese

1 Introduction Modernisation, industrialisation and urbanisation brought on growing disparities and polarised centre-periphery relations in the twentieth century. The emerged regional asynchronism characterises the regional development and that is especially visible in the Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European space. These tendencies have continued and deepened during the communist rule and the post-socialist transitional period. The industrialised urban areas got the highly developed winner position in this competition. The rural areas for the most part became underdeveloped and disadvantageous regions and the loser poverty poles of the economic development. In the second part of the twentieth century new geographical trends appeared. Globalisation and localisation, suburbanisation and counter-urbanisation, post-industrialisation and post-modernisation resulted in rapid changes in the periphery, too. These processes lead to different evolutions of settlements in the field of politics, economics and society (Haggett 1983). Today rural areas have a growing significance. Near the Millennium village, renewal and rural development have become a new paradigm. The number of hits on Google search to these notions are 57,300 and 10,100,000. Lots of associations were founded world-wide in the eighties and nineties for rural territories. In last decade of the twentieth century the topic became an official policy of the EU. In 1991 the LEADER programme started, which implemented an integrated development of the rural areas. In 1992 recommendations were formulated to the members for the national development of regions which do not have positive development dynamics. In 1996 the criteria of rurality and the goals of the development of the countryside were declared (Csapó 2001). The Council T. Kerese (&) University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary e-mail: [email protected]

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Regulation in 2004 stipulated for each member state to prepare its own rural development national strategy plan for the period from 2007 to 2013, and established the financial base, the EAFRD (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development). This integrated project seems to be more successful than the previous departmental programme, and helps the cohesion for villages. The role of Hungarian villages in the past was the base of the settlement-system of the Carpathian Basin until the middle of twentieth century. Villages were the base of the essentially agricultural Hungarian economy, too. The increment population of villages was the source of the slowly emerging trend of urbanisation, and the thriving capital and the other commercialised and slowly industrialised towns won their population from the overpopulated villages. After World War II the role of Hungarian villages transformed totally. Secularisation and the total control of production by the government first appeared in the industry and financial sector. In the villages the agrarian reform meant the distribution of the great estates, and half a million penniless could build their own micro-farms. However, agricultural economy slowly got in the background, the policy started a massive attack against villages. Relocation of the significant German ethnic minority and the swap of the minority population between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, tipped over the stable society of many villages. Then in 1949 the legitimate communist era started, with the requisition or surrender of the crop, the persecution and relocation of rich farmers (called ‘‘kulaks’’), and the collectivisation of agriculture. The communist policy destroyed the traditional society in the villages, and the collective farms required less manpower. In 1951 territorial planning appeared. The settlements were classified by ‘‘TERINT’’ (Territory Reforming Institute; a department of the Rebuild and Labour Ministry). The 73 accentuated industrial centres and 84 planned urban development settlements were designated; there were only 43 legal towns in Hungary. Other villages did not fit into the socialist development. 1,254 villages with local economy got no investment, and 1,500 little villages got into the ‘‘must be extinguished’’ category. In 1963 the first National Settlement Network Development Plan was made with a regional and unitary settlement network approach, but 1.5 thousand villages received no investments. These plans stayed only plans, but they induced changes in the thinking. Parallel to these push effects, in the towns, especially in the ‘‘new socialist towns’’ massive industrialisation was going on. That meant a lot of well-paid workplaces in the new socialist heavy industrial factories, and newly constructed blocks of flats. These were the pull effects to the young village people, who started a massive migration towards the towns, and the process of specific socialist urbanisation emerged. Some of the greater villages with increasing population were on the way of becoming a local centre or a town, but most of them were characterised by out-migration and the decrease of population. The most successful plan was the National Settlement Network Development Concept (called OTK in Hungarian) in 1971, which was enacted by the Parliament to the level of official state policy. It classified settlements into rigid centralised hierarchical categories with assigned functions and development sources.

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The financial sources were distributed by the chains of the levels of administration (state—county—district—settlement). The supplier systems in villages were relocated to allotted local centres and schools, doctors, councils, shops and at last the pubs were left off in thousand villages which were nominated ‘‘settlements without function’’. The common councils of the settlements naturally developed their own seat but the annexed partner settlements dropped out of all development investments. The effects of the Concept were completed with the elimination of railway ‘‘feeder lines’’. These caused the escalation of depopulation process in rural areas. (Tóth 1990) Depopulation is a self-inducing process. The young, mobile people capable of work migrated out first then the young families followed with their children. This eliminated the capacity to reproduce the population. Children disappeared from the villages and the population started ageing. The territories of little villages were characterised by the heaviest out-migration tendencies. Some of them depopulated absolutely, and became dead or ghost villages. However, in villages around the greater towns suburbanisation started (Tóth 1994). The realisation of the OTK received harsh criticism as early as in the eighties. It was called the ‘‘Hungarian village destruction’’ program, and the system was reformed in 1985, and totally dissolved in 1990 at the end of the communist era. Two special Hungarian economy phenomena influenced villages, parallel to the Concept. Market gardens were the forms of semi-private economy mainly in animal husbandry. They worked as a complementary of the great co-operative socialist agriculture plants. They added their produces to the significant Hungarian food export and in the seventies they were subsidised again. The other was the unique complementary industrial production of collective farms, de facto the low level industrialisation of villages. These extraordinary possibilities lifted the capacity of villages to produce income, and resulted in a partial village renewal in the eighties with a lot of new family homes. In the post-socialist transition era there was no working comprehensive development policy in Hungary. The self-governments of settlements became totally substantive entities, with their own local policy and own local financial sources. Disparities in the economic and the financial position dispersed the development of settlements (Trócsányi and Wilhelm 1997). The financial sources came directly from the state by a per capita quota, but this was only enough for daily operation. Only the self-governments of disadvantageous settlements got extra subsidies for their operation by a higher quota. They did not have enough money for development, only the marketing of properties meant extra proceeds for the development. Turning away from the Soviet market caused an economic crisis but competition started rapidly on the global market. Privatisation in the whole economy caused a new situation for rural areas. The privatisation of land and farms created the new owners of agricultural economy, but they did not have capital. The privatisation of the food-industrial plants caused lots of close-downs. Foreign investors often bought the plant only to gain their market. The privatisation of the food market and the appearance of international merchandisers have caused high food import to the

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narrowed market. The decreased demand for Hungarian foods has caused a massive decrease in the food production and the Hungarian villages have lost their traditional agricultural functions. If any, the crude plant products can be marketable, but that does not mean enough income. Only a few villages found other functions instead of agriculture. Holiday villages have an attractive environment and built possibilities to receive tourists, or the sold properties are used as weekend-houses (Bajmócy and Balogh 2002). Eco-villages have become the home of the green ecofriendly people and some of the villages have elderly people’s home and are characterised by a high mortality index and high immigration. Unemployment highly increased in Hungary and showed higher proportion mainly in the villages. In the price of the real estates a great disparity appeared between towns and villages. This caused social migration towards the villages in the nineties which meant partly the re-migration to the homelands and partly the massive migration to suburban village-rings round greater towns (Dövényi 2007). However, the depopulation of villages far from towns continued for the most part. The degradation of public transport and the high price of fuel and the increasingly decaying country road network detain village people from getting well-paid workplaces in the towns. Of course those who have chance move to the town or at least near the town to lower-priced properties. The most attractive target is already the agglomeration of Budapest (Dövényi 2004). The new era for Hungarian regional planning started near the Millennium. The National Regional Development Concept and the creation of the NUTS 2 regions in 1998 were the preparatory steps of the accession to the EU (Tóth 2004). This advocates the unitary development of the disadvantaged small regions instead of the discrete village development. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Rural Development established by the Orbán government exercises a nominal rural development. The main target to the greater villages is to become a town for the better image (Pirisi et al. 2008). In 2003 the LEADER Programme started in Hungary, as an experiment to bring up rural territories. The National Rural Development Plan was prepared around the entry to the EU, which worked between 2004 and 2006. It did not deal with villages, only contained afforestation and environmental programme to the development of the countryside. In the current period from 2007 to 2013 the New Hungary Rural Development Program contains in the third axis ‘‘Quality of life in rural areas’’ the subsection ‘‘Village renewal and development’’ and ‘‘Conservation and sustainable development of the rural heritage’’. To realise it in 2008 the Hungarian National Rural Network was established for the co-operation of the characters of rural development, and the Local Rural Development Offices started their work to co-ordinate the local interests and projects. The rural development policy can be based on strong research. The science of villages has been a main topic in the Hungarian geography and sociography for a long time. Notable researchers, to mention only a few, included Becsei, Beluszky, Erdei, Györffy, Lettrich, Sikos T, Tóth. Nowadays regular conferences about villages show the attention paid to rural regions. As regards theory, the case of villages is falling out well. But what about practice in 2010?

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2 Methods There are a lot of ways for categorising settlements and for describing spatial disparities. The whole village network was characterised by Beluszky and Sikos (1982, 2007) through a factor-and cluster analysis of 25 data. Demographic, economic, geographic and infrastructural data generated five factors and the cluster analysis of factors resulted in 25 groups of villages. Finally they emphasised the macro-landscape of village types of Hungary. The triple generalisation washed away the spatial disparities in the micro-space. Another characterisation was to choose the disadvantageous villages through a development score-system of 14 data (Faluvégi 2003). Small villages were characterised trough their new or traditional functions of the settlement (G. Fekete 2005). Our hypothesis based on the present situation of villages was strongly determined in the communist and the transition era. Spatial disparities that characterise regional development emerge in the demographic trends. Villages are simple settlements and changes in the population or migration rapidly indicate the processes in the economy and society. Consequently, villages can be characterised by a few main indicators of the dynamics and the structure of the population. In our paper we outline the main demographic tendencies in the peripheral areas and describe the territorial differences in the processes in the Hungarian rural sphere. Villages were sorted out into dynamic groups through their long-term population change in three periods: 1949–1980, 1980–2001 and 2001–2009. Then they were grouped through a social standardisation by a few representative demographic parameters. In practice that meant sorting them out by the extremity of demography and a few data of the demographic structure in the last decade. We can cross the dynamic and social standardisation to the final diagnosis on the groups of villages, and visualise the village types on a thematic map. The data matrix of the processing was the 2,846 permanently existent villages by the legal status of the settlement in the period between 2001 and 2009. We ignored the new villages and villages that have became a town in the last decade after the Millennium. We used annual demographic data from 2001 to 2009 from the T-STAR database from Central Statistical Office (KSH). The earlier population data for the 3 periods and the data of demographic structure were based on the Census Database in 2001.

3 Results 3.1 Demographic Trends in the Last Decade The population in villages is mostly characterised nowadays by the continuing depopulation trend. The annual average rate of the decrease was -2.1 ppt after the Millennium. From the statistical analysis of the demographic parameters we can

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Fig. 1 Natural decrease and the migration balance in villages and towns between 2000 and 2009 in % (edited by the author based on data from the CSO)

establish that the negative tendency is caused nowadays primarily by the massive natural decrease, and the weak positive immigration balance cannot bring the population of the villages in balance. Their annual average values are -4.4 ppt and +0.8 ppt. The average strong negative natural increase and the average positive migration balance of the villages showed a high deviation (8.7 and 13.1). The maximum rate of the natural increase is already high over the zero, it is +28 ppt. The minimum is very deep, it is -128,5 ppt. The extremes of migration balance are more than ±100 ppt, the same distance from zero in both directions. The average demography of villages is compared to that of towns (Fig. 1). Natural decrease is stagnant in the villages but slowly growing in towns. However, we cannot notice this growth in all town types. Only the diagram of Budapest is growing massively and a little bit in the municipal towns; other towns and villages are characterised by stabilised or a little bit regressive natural decrease. Of course, the climbing trend in Budapest means only the setback of the significant negative demography, and the natural decrease has declined to the half its value measured at the Millennium. The result in the migration is more noticeable. The balance of migration has turned opposite in the last decade. The turning point was in 2006. Migration to towns permanently increased from the negative range, and towns became the main target of immigration again after 15 years. Villages became the main source of migration and moved to the negative range. Types of towns show great difference, too. Budapest and the municipal towns were the trend-makers, but other little towns changed like villages, only the values of their balance was less. Is that re-urbanisation or only the change of the direction of social migration? The answer to this question requires more analyses and the confirmation of data by the census in 2011. The examination of the context of the demography and size of villages result in a massive difference (Fig. 2). Natural decrease and migration balance showed a significant but well proportioned difference between the size categories of villages. Large villages over 2000 inhabitants are all along over the average, the graph of middle villages runs by the average but the small and extremely small or hamlet villages are under the average. Hamlets are at the bottom in both aspects at all times. About the tendencies we can notice that the values of natural decrease show

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15 >5000 2000-5000 1000-2000 500-1000 200-500