Discussion Papers 1999. No. 27. 
The Hungarian Urban Network 
at the End of the Second Millennium
CENTRE FOR REGIONAL STUDIES 
OF HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
DISCUSSION PAPERS 
No. 27 
The Hungarian Urban Network 
at the End of the Second Millennium 
by 
Pal BELUSZKY 
Series editor 
Zoltan GAL 
Pecs 
1999 

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Discussion Papers 1999. No. 27. 
The Hungarian Urban Network 
at the End of the Second Millennium
Publishing of this paper is supported by the 
Research Fund of the Centre for Regional Studies, Hungary 
ISSN 0238-2008 
© 1999 by Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 
Technical editor: Ilona Csapo, Zoltan Gal 
Typeset by Centre for Regional Studies of HAS Printed in Hungary by Sumegi 
Nyomdaipari,  Kereskedelmi  es Szolgaltato Ltd., Pecs 

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Discussion Papers 1999. No. 27. 
The Hungarian Urban Network 
at the End of the Second Millennium
CONTENTS 
I Introduction  / 7 
2 A brief introduction to urban development in Hungary /  9 
2.1 Roman preliminaries / 9 
2.2 Urban development in the medieval Hungary (10 th-15 th  century) / 9 
2.3 "Turning back" to the East /  13 
2.4 The fragile frame of bourgeois development — the Hungarian urban 
network in 1850-1950 /  19 
2.5 
The Hungarian urban network between the two World Wars /  24 
2.6 An ambiguous urban boom — the Hungarian towns in the "Socialist" 
era  /27 
2.7 Conditions for urban development after 1990 /  32 
3 The contemporary urban network of Hungary /  36 
3.1 Towns, urbanisation level, proportion of the urban population /  36 
3.2 The hierarchy of the Hungarian towns / 43 
3.3 Hinterlands of the towns / 53 
3.4 Functional types of the Hungarian towns /  56 
4  Urban types in Hungary /  60 
4.1 Budapest / 60 
4.2 Regional centres /  66 
4.3 County seats /  68 
4.4 Middle towns, with central functions and with industry /  69 
4.5 Small towns with central functions, (mostly) with industry dominant 
in size /  70 
4.6 Industrial towns /  72 
4.7 Holiday resort (bathing) towns /  74 
4.8 Agglomeration settlements, garden cities and suburbs, dwelling 
towns /  75 
4.9 Railway town / 77 
4.10 On the margin of the urban existence — urbanising settlements / 77 
4.11 Towns with urban rank but without urban functions / 78 
5 Conclusion /  78 
Notes / 79 
References / 82 

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Discussion Papers 1999. No. 27. 
The Hungarian Urban Network 
at the End of the Second Millennium
FIGURES 
Figure 1: The main periods of urban development in Hungary from the 
beginning until now /  10 
Figure 2: The hierarchy system of the Hungarian towns in 1900  /25 
Figure 3: Regional differences of urbanisation in Hungary / 37 
Figure 4: Dates of the awards of towns status to the Hungarian towns /  39 
Figure 5: Hierarchy of the Hungarian towns, 1995 / 45 
Figure 6: Breakdown of the Hungarian towns by hierarchy levels /  47 
Figure 7: Hinterlands of the Hungarian towns /  55 
Figure 8: Functional types of the Hungarian towns /  58 
Figure 9: Dynamism of the Hungarian towns /  61 
Figure 10: Change of population in the Hungarian towns, 1949-1990 /  62 
Figure 11: (Complex) types of the Hungarian towns /  63 
Figure 12: A simplified model of the urban structure of Budapest /  66 
Figure 13: Construction plan of the central part of a "socialist town", 
Kazincbarcika / 73 
TABLES 
Table 1: Change of the number and proportion of urban population in 
Hungary, 1857-1910  / 21 
Table 2: The hierarchic division of the towns in the functional sense 
in 1910  / 22 
Table 3: The change of the number of population in Budapest and its 
agglomeration 1910-1949 /  27 
Table 4: The transition of the number of towns in Hungary, 1945-1996 / 37 
Table 5: The level of urbanisation in the counties, 1995 / 41 
Table 6: The distribution of the towns by the number of population, 1996 /  43 
Table 7: Number of towns in the individual hierarchy levels /  46 
Table 8: A few typical data of the towns in the different hierarchy levels /  54 
Table 9: Functional urban types /  57 
Table 10: Development of the number of population in the towns around 
Budapest, 1900-1990 /  76 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
1 Introduction 
The formation and evolution of the Hungarian urban network show characteristics 
which are different from the Western European urbanisation l . These 
characteristics features do not only originate from the "belatedness", but can also 
be attributed to the location of Hungary compared to the historical regions of 
Europe (Hungary is a Central European country, and this definition does not only 
have a geographical relevance), the repeated change of this comparative location 
and the fact that the "organic" urban development had been interrupted by forced 
pauses which lasted for several decades or centuries: the conquest of the Ottoman 
Empire in the 16th and 17th century, in the 20th century our forced position in the 
"eastern block" for more than four decades. In both periods, the features 
characteristic of the Eastern European (in fact, Asian) development path 
strengthened in Hungary. 
The aim of this study is to describe the urban development in Hungary, as well 
as the "condition" of the Hungarian urban network these days, prior to the EU 
accession. 
The above mentioned notions of "West" and "East" are naturally not only 
geographical directions. The special features of the history of the "East" cannot be 
explained only by the decades and centuries of "lagging behind", "belatedness". 
The "West" and the "East" followed different paths of development during history, 
thus "history" is necessarily different in the various regions. The characteristics 
features of the historical regions of Europe have been thoroughly depicted by the 
historians 2 ; here we will only refer to some of these features. 
The  Western type way of development  evolved as a combination of the antique 
(Roman) and the Germanic heritage; its economic base was provided by the 
indisputable private ownership of the land,  the clear separation, guaranteed by 
law, of the lands used by the serves and in the private management of the landlord, 
the serves' ownership of certain pieces of land (vineyards and clearings, and the 
right of the serves, laid down by law, to their unit of land. This was the basis of the 
interest of the individuals  (the serf/peasant families)  in the increase of the 
production,  the modernisation and extension of the production tools (clearing of 
woods, planting of vineyards, increase of draught power etc.), as well as in the 
application of the results of the technical progress. At the same time,  in Eastern 
Europe the serves did not have any right to the land that they tilled;  their landlord 
could sell them or tear them apart from the lands — sending them to work in 
factories, mines, or to tow ships —, even exile them at any time (see the  Dead Souls 
by Gogol). In Western Europe, the unified class of the serves with privately owned 
land properties were part of the divided feudal society, feudal system, a societal 
formula that was regulated by elaborate legal conditions. In order to describe this 
"formula", we are quoting the excellent researcher of this field, Jena Szlics: "But 
7 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
the landlord also had from the beginning his obligations which had been settled 
like regulations, in fact, the  fidelitas  itself was conditional, depending upon 
whether the more powerful party kept its obligations in the contract... Uneven 
conditions in the spirit of the conventional reciprocity, which obliged the parties 
bilaterally: this endogenous basic feature of the Western feudal system could be a 
fiction in certain cases, but a fertile fiction which had the power of a value norm —
in course of time, downwards too", which "... gave a sort of limited and 
conditional state of "liberty" at the level of the peasants, too". 3  It derived from this 
"contractual" character of the Western European feudal society that a  variety of 
"small rights" were guaranteed,  taken out from the arbitrariness of the ruler 
(territorial freedoms — e.g. the freedom of the counties —, autonomy of the guilds, 
universities, towns, the Church, the social classes etc.).  In Central Europe, 
however, the feudal system was only partially built out,  the noblemen were also 
dependent on the state power, the "overpowered" ruler. One of the freedoms of the 
feudal system in Western Europe was urban development, the basic sign on which 
was the creation of the autonomy of the towns — a total of rights and competences 
which are part of the state sovereignty in other high cultures". On the other hand, 
in Eastern Europe the towns were not an autonomous formation, not a 
municipality, but a heterogeneous creation under strong state control. In the Tsarist 
Russia, the secular ruler was also the head of the Church. Hungary was situated on 
the  border zone  of these two regions: the opinions are strongly divided whether 
Hungary in this border zone belonged (belongs) more to the West or the East, or it 
is an independent historical region — Central Europe! —, where  neither the Western 
European nor the Eastern European features are dominant, or maybe the intensity 
of the Western and Eastern influence intensified or weakened in certain periods of 
time. 4  And if we do not consider the regional situation of Hungary (the Carpathian 
Basin) as predestined from the beginning, but see it in the current relationship to 
the "West" and "East" and in the economic, social, political-power and ideological 
similarities and differences, we have to accept that the regions are not territorial 
units existing since the beginning and never changing in area; thus the  situation of 
Hungary is not intact in Europe,  either. The effect of this fact on urban 
development and the urban network is versatile, too. 
8 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
2 A brief introduction to urban development in Hungary 
2.1 Roman preliminaries 
There had been towns in the territory of Hungary before the foundation of the 
state. In the first years after Christ, the "civilised world" (or, if you like, the 
"West") withdrew beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, beyond the so-called 
limes the Barbaric Areas lived their "prehistoric" lives. The Carpathian Basin was 
cut into two by the so-called  limes  following the River Danube, integrating 
Transdanubia into the "civilised world". The engineering skills of the Romans and 
the economic power of the Empire soon built stone towns in Pannonia, and settled 
down a romanised population in them. These towns were probably "more 
developed" than the conditions of Pannonia would have required (the economy 
and population of the countryside was slower in romanisation and "catching up" 
with the provincial level), so as soon as in the Roman times (!) a "following of the 
pattern" took place in the Carpathian Basin. As opposed to former assumptions, 
there was no continuity between the Pannonian towns and the medieval Hungarian 
towns, unless the continuity of the ruins, despite the fact that several present 
Hungarian towns are situated exactly where the Roman towns had been 
(Szombathely—Savaria, Sopron—Scarbancia, Pecs—Sopianae, obuda—Acquincum 
etc.). Also, the difference of the Great Hungarian Plain, i.e. the difference of the 
towns of the Great Plain cannot be explained by the thousand-year delay of the 
"civilisation". 
2.2 Urban development in the medieval Hungary (10th-15th century) 
After the collapse of the (West) Roman Empire, the "civilised world" shrank to a 
narrow space, although, after the lively centuries of the great invasions, from the 
6th-7th century, the romanised peoples (and culture), and the Germanic tribes (and 
traditions) merged, and the Frank Empire attempted to reach the political and 
power heritage of the Romans, pushing the borders of the "West" more and more 
eastwards. At the same time, the second blooming and the expansion of Byzantium 
and the Hellenistic culture in "East" — in the Balkans and South Italy — also created 
an expanding Empire and a special culture. Between these two powers, there was a 
vacuum of power. In this situation, the Hungarian nation necessarily had to choose 
between the West or the East — i.e. Rome or Byzantium. Hungary, by taking up the 
Latin Christianity, by the way of the foundation of the state and the choice of the 
dynastic relationships, joined the West, according to the contemporary views.  (The 
main phases of the urban development in Hungary are shown in  Figure 1.  The rise 
and fall of the lines in the chart do not simply mean a growth—expansion, also not 
9 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
"development" in general, but the approximation of the "ideological" and material 
condition of the urban network to the Western European and the Eastern European 
features. The state of the "ideologies" means the ideological, political, legal and 
cultural conditions of the country, the material side means the development of the 
economy, the settlements, the state management and administration. The 
development, direction of the two "sides" may differ from one another. The 
periods of the evolution of the settlements, including the urban network, are shown 
by the changes of direction of the two curves and the changes in their relative 
positions. The urban development in the medieval Hungary is signed by mark I. in 
the figure.) 
Figure 1 
The main periods of urban development in Hungary 
from the beginning until now 
•
I 
 li
t 
 4 
• 
... 
 
\ 
• 
. 
r 
• 
% 
s 
• 
% 
...# 
/ 
s 
00"  A 
• 
• 
.. 
...# 
 
0 0 
E 
0 0 
0,  0 
1s1 
Legend 
W = West 
E = East 
= ideological line 
 = material line 
This "joining" is signed by the fast approach of the "line of ideals" to the West 
in  Figure  1. At the same time, the material side — the layers of the society, the 
feudal ownership patterns, the methods of the economy — followed this change of 
direction much more slowly. This period — from the foundation of the state until 
10 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
the mid-13th century — is characterised by the large-scale divergence of the two 
"aspects". "The civilisation and the structure ... belonged to different co-ordinates 
for a long time" — emphasised Jeno Szfics  5 . 
In the time of the so-called "early feudalism" — which is considered to have 
lasted in Hungary until the end of the 13th century — several  "Eastern-like" 
features could be seen in the society and the economy.  These naturally defined the 
conditions of urban development to a large extent: 
•
The separation of the society into two basic classes had not stabilised yet.  In 
the 11th-12th century it was common to employ slaves or quasi-slaves in the 
economy, who had no production tools of their own. The Hungarians were 
permanent visitors, sellers and buyers at the slave markets of the 
surrounding countries. The first data showing the acceptance of guest 
peoples is from 1121. 
•
The ownership patterns were not fixed, either:  the community ownership of 
lands was general, and the principle of "no land without a lord" only slowly 
became exclusive. The first time when units of land were held by the serves 
was in the early 13th century. 
•
The leading role in social, political and economic affairs almost exclusively 
belonged to the ruler.  In the beginning of the 13th century, the ruler owned 
three-quarters of the cultivated lands. The first feudal movements started in 
the 13th century. 
The conditions of urban development hardly changed until the mid-13th 
century. During these centuries,  natural economy  was prevalent in the Carpathian 
Basin, consequently the  internal exchange of goods was limited,  commercial 
activities were not separated from production (with the exception of the trade of 
luxury goods in some cities). The agricultural workers and handicraftsmen  were 
often the same persons.  Without a separate commercial and handicraft activity, and 
a population pursuing these activities — i.e. without urban citizens —, a detailed 
division of labour and a larger scale, permanent and continuous exchange of 
goods, no real towns could develop in Hungary in the 10th-13th century. We can 
say that despite the fact that some of the contemporary written sources some 
settlements were labelled with the definitions  civitas, urbs, castellanum;  these 
were mostly administrative centres. There were emerging  "central places": castles 
of the governors, county seats, church centres. (In other words: towns are central 
places, but not all central places are towns.) The governors castles were centres for 
the collection of the crop, sometimes law days were organised in them, markets 
were held in their protection, their churches collected the neighbouring population 
every now and then. The population of these "towns" were "...divided into groups 
according to whether they were dependent of the king, the governor or the Church, 
so their social composition was not very much different from that of the larger 
villages". Only  Esztergom  and  (Szekes)Fehervar,  the church, royal and sacral 
11 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
centres of Hungary were different in this respect: they were home to wealthy 
(Latin) merchants too, they had a certain degree of autonomy, their stone houses 
gave these settlements an urban look as early as on the turn of the 11th-12th 
century and later on in the 12th century.  The period between 10th and 13th century 
in Hungary was thus a period of the central places,  but not the towns. 
The "material conditions" started to resemble more the Western European 
model from the mid-13th century  (see Figure 1); the era from the mid-13th century 
until the beginning of the 16th century is  the period of the "real" medieval towns, 
the period of the catching up with the West.  From the mid-13th century, changes 
took place in Hungary which allowed the birth of "real" towns (the main 
characteristic features of which were urban rights guaranteeing autonomy, the 
concentration of non-agrarian activities and the emergence of the bourgeois class). 
Among these changes we have to mention the  spreading of goods production, the 
progress of the division of labour separating the agrarian workers and the 
handicraftsmen,  the increasing settling down of people (the villages with guest 
right also promoted the principle of local governance). After the Tartar Invasion, 
defence  became the top priority 6 . After the giving away of the royal domains, in 
order to make up for the loss of incomes, it was necessary to take over lands that 
had been more or less uninhabited beforehand, and also to extend the sources of 
income — by duties, fees from the fairs, the so-called regales etc. —, which required 
the promotion of trading and urbanisation. The first town status was donated in 
1231, and until the end of the 13th century, several settlements that became highly 
significant in the later urban network were awarded the title of free royal town 
(Pest, Nagyszombat [Trnava], Selmecbanya [Banska Stiavnica], Kesmark 
[Ke2marok], Zagrab [Zagreb], Zolyom [Zvolen], Buda, Szeged, Nyitra [Nitra], 
Gyor, Sopron, Pozsony [Bratislava], Eperjes [Pregov] etc.). Their spatial location 
suggests that the main objective of the assistance of urban development was the 
booming of the economy of territories less intensively used in advance, and the 
protection against external forces. It is also true, however, that the emergence of 
the settlements that gained the town status can also be explained by the classical 
means of settlement geography (e.g.  Nagyszombat  [Trnava] was a market town at 
the Hungarian end of the road towards Moravia and Prague,  Sopron  was one of the 
most important gateway-towns of Hungary to the West,  Brasso  [Brasov] was a 
junction of the roads from three passes at the interface of the Saxon, Szekely and 
Romanian settlers;  Pozsony  [Bratislava] was a defence point of the Deveny Gate 
along the Danube waterway, situated on a market line etc.). Still, irrespective of 
the royal will and the legal status, the surveys revealing the real urban characters 
(economic weight, number of population, hierarchy level), also showed that the 
centre of the "urbanisation" in the 15th century was in the Upper Northern 
Hungary (approximately in the territory of the present Slovakia). The level of 
12 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
urbanisation was more moderate in Transdanubia, while in the Great Hungarian 
Plain there were hardly any towns at higher hierarchy levels in the Middle Ages. 
The towns in the Carpathian Basin, together with the whole of Hungary, 
approached the West  in this period. From the second half of the 13th century, in 
the socio-economic structure of Hungary, Western elements were dominant (but 
not exclusive). In the case of the towns, the adjustment to the "Western-type 
norms" was marked by the appearance of the  urban rights, the birth and division 
of the bourgeois class, the role of the towns and the development of the cityscape 
(although the density of the population in the core areas of the free royal towns in 
Hungary was 25-80 people per hectare, as opposed to 150-300 in the Western 
European towns). At the same time, the sparseness of the network, the low 
population of the towns (at the end of the 15th century, only Pest and Buda had 
more than 10 000 inhabitants, the number of population exceeded 5 000 people in 
approximately half a dozen towns), but  above all, the more modest material 
possessions of their citizens differentiated the Hungarian towns from the ones in 
Western Europe.  The rate of return of the limited urban capital was only one 
quarter or one third of the return that could be achieved in the trading towns in e.g. 
South Germany, because of the small internal market, the low level of goods 
production, the unfavourable location of Hungary from the aspect of traffic, the 
small volume of passing traffic and the slow circulation of the capital. This 
"structural weakness" resulted in very serious problems from the late 15 th  and early 
16th  century. 
2.3 "Turning back" to the East 
From the late 15th century, the pace of the catching up with the "West" slowed 
down in the material sphere, although it was just that period in the first eight 
hundred years of the Hungarian history when we got the closest to Western 
Europe. The next chance for that came in the second half of the 19 th  century. This 
"turn" is shown by the "stop dead" with the coming of the 16 th  century in our chart. 
In the following centuries — from the early 16 th  century until the middle of the 
19th  century — the  Central European way of development turned out to be a 
permanent structure. Central Europe became stable, at the same time, it started to 
decline compared to the West.  This change originated from the large regional 
rearrangement of the European economy.  The "Atlantic Europe" became more 
dynamic, taking a leading role in the development of the early capitalism. In 
Western Europe, the disintegration of the feudal agrarian conditions accelerated, 
the serves became tenants and free peasants. The disintegration of the feudal 
conditions allowed the spread of the early forms of capitalist industry; the Atlantic 
coats became the centre of world trade; colonisation started — all these creating 
13 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
special opportunities for the "original accumulation". The decline of the "Eastern 
zone" was due, among other things, to geographical reasons — the distance from 
the transatlantic routes —, but the main reasons were socio-economic ones, i.e. the 
much lower proportion and less capital of the bourgeoisie.  Central and Eastern 
Europe more and more became the periphery of the West,  joining the international 
division of labour as agricultural producer and customer of industrial goods. The 
land-owner nobility of Central Europe could use the economic boom by increasing 
their allowances coming in kind, extending the lands in their own management and 
cultivating them by the forced labour of the villains — in one word, by 
strengthening the positions of feudalism. The feudal-type urban development 
stopped before it reached the Western European level. The population of the 
Hungarian towns hardly grew in the 15th century, especially in its second half. To 
cap it all, the Turks occupied Hungary. Even though the decline of the towns 
cannot be attributed to the Turks only, the everyday battles, the uncertainty of 
existence and the repeated decay of the population and of the mobile and immobile 
property struck the Hungarian towns to an extent that makes it reasonable to 
handle the period until 1711 as a separate era 7 . 
Until the middle of the 16th century, the whole Delvidek (The Southern 
Hungary, the richest agricultural region in Hungary), the biggest part of the Great 
Plain, approximately half of Transdanubia, the southern edge of Upper Northern 
Hungary and the former capital city of Hungary, Buda were occupied by the Turks. 
The wealthier citizens of the towns under Turkish occupation fled, were captured 
or died. These towns became Turkish military towns, fortresses and administrative 
centres — in other word,  Eastern type towns, as parts of an empire that was not 
even Eastern Europe, but Asia.  This was the fate of Buda and Pest, Fehervar, 
Esztergom, Pecs, Szeged, Bacs, Eger and most of the Hungarian episcopal centres. 
The Western and North-western part of Hungary, the Royal Hungary  became a 
periphery in several aspects:  not only a periphery of Europe but also of the 
Habsburg Empire. The constant uncertainty of existence, the perishing of the 
population and the decay of the economy set back urbanisation to an extreme 
extent; the role of the former Hungarian towns and country-towns was limited to 
the defence and they also served as local market centres. Their international 
connections were eliminated, they only joined in the long-distance (foreign) trade 
as mediators. Their population stagnated for centuries, and their functions were 
unchanged: the Hungarian towns fought for their "survival" and the reservation of 
their privileges (it is typical that the Hungarian royal towns made their measures 
against the Jews — i.e. against the competition — after the battle of Mohacs). 
Urban development in the Great Plain, occupied the Turks, had a very specific 
direction. The main reason for that is the fact that social development in the Great 
Plain was different than in the other large regions of Hungary. (We have to accept 
then, of course, that the individual countries and states can be divided into several 
14 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
simultaneously existing regions with different paths of development, they can 
involve several "socio-economic structures".) Natural environment of the Great 
Plain was also important in this aspect: in the vast flood plains, temporarily 
flooded areas and less fertile sandy lands, usually only nomadic stock-raising was 
possible 8 . Thus the density of population was low here (3-5 people per km 2 ), 
settlements were scarce, and the system of feudal domains, the feudal "micro-
structure" could only be built out partially; the large pastures did not belong to the 
lands of the serves, they were used commonly by the inhabitants of the settlements. 
While Hungary turned towards the West in the Central European region, the 
Great Plain went on being a region "lagging behind in feudalism", "a pre-feudal 
region", with an extensive economy. However, the Great Plain cannot be 
considered without reservations as having an Eastern European character, either, 
since e.g. the majority of the population was not the Eastern European type serves, 
but a partially feudalised servants, keeping the traces of clannish society. The 
"development" and the "catching up" was also more orientated to the West than to 
the East. The Great Plain at this time was a pre-feudal periphery embedded in a 
Central European environment. 
From the 15th century, we can presume a process that gave a dominant 
character to the Great Plain way of development. The essence of this process is 
that the Great Plain, in a very short time, moved from a "pre-feudal" to a "post-
feudal" state without the mature, typical form of feudalism developing and 
becoming dominant here. The single class of the serves did not become general 
and prevalent here, either; thus the "free peasant" way of development could 
become dominant. It was mainly the  country towns  that offered this possibility. 
-
The status of country-town was originally a legal category: those settlements with 
moderate urban functions could obtain this privilege that were unable to achieve 
the privileges of the free royal towns. They were owned by the landlord or the 
Church, but they were given certain urban privileges: they had the right to hold 
markets or fairs, they could elect a judge or/and a priest, they could pay their taxes 
in one sum etc. 
Of course country-towns also emerged in the other parts of Hungary. No 
systematic difference seemed to appear in their legal status, but in their economy 
there was some: the country-towns of the Great Plain had a definite agrarian 
character as early as in the 14th and 15th centuries, their population mostly earned 
their living from animal husbandry and trading. If we consider the fact that the 
export of animals from the total of the Hungarian export grew from 60% to 80-85-
90%, the role of the country-towns of the Great Plain seems to be especially 
important. Although the profit from the trade of animals was shared with other 
regions, the most important place of animal husbandry was still the Great Plain. 
The former looser settlement pattern, the progress of the desolation of the 
countryside (i.e. the total depopulation of some villages), the tenure of the "puszta" 
15 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
(waste lands), the vast areas belonging to the towns all provided the place for 
animal husbandry, already before the Turkish rule. It is also worth noting that the 
pastures did not belong to the private lands of the serf-holder feudal landlords, 
irrespective of whether they were the property or the tenure of their owner or the 
(country-town) community. This way they were not subject to be tilled by force 
labour and villeinage. 
The Turkish conquest — paradoxically — also promoted the evolution of the 
characteristics of the country-towns. The Hungarian lords of the country-towns 
fled, there was no feudal power (landlord, county etc.) any longer. Those towns 
that could become so-called "khasz towns" (i.e. towns that paid their taxes directly 
to the Sultan and in return enjoyed the protection of the ruler), had to pay taxes to 
two places (the fled county and the lord often collected the taxes, too), but they 
had a relatively high degree of autonomy. This autonomy was strengthened by the 
fact that the population of these towns joined the Calvinist direction of the 
Reformation, and this Church — at least in the 16th and 17th centuries — had a 
strong community, people's character. Acquiring the areas belonging to the 
villages that had depopulated or been destroyed by the Turks, these towns had vast 
territories of land around them (in the early 20th century, Debrecen had 957 km 2, 
Kecskemet 873 km2 , Szeged 815 km 2  and HOdmezovasarhely 761 km 2  of land), 
and the towns kept tens of thousands of cattle, in "nomadic circumstances": the 
cattle spent the whole year on the meadows, their masters lived in the towns and 
the herds were only followed by their herdsmen. This is what shaped the 
settlement network of the  Great Plain in a very special way, and these specialities 
survived until the 20th century, in fact, until now in some respects. 
•
The huge town territories gathered agglomerations of population as large as 
the population in the towns; agricultural production could be organised 
within the urban frameworks, and the agricultural activity also played a role 
in urban development. In order to supply the population living from 
agriculture, urban functions settled down in the country-towns, too (trade, 
handicraftsmen, schools, physicians, pharmacies etc.). Until the turn of the 
19th and 20th century, hardly any "regular" villages could be found in the 
core of the Great Plain, a definitely agricultural area. On the other hand, 
most of the towns were inhabited by agricultural population (even in the 
20th century, the proportion of agricultural earners reached 50-70% in most 
country-towns of the Great Plain), so they had hardly any statistical or 
economic urban character. 
• The intensification of agricultural production — the spread of field growing 
of crops, the appearance of stabling animal husbandry — challenged the 
population of the country-towns in the 17th and even more the 18th century: 
the more distant parts of the lands (some lands of Debrecen were located 70 
kilometres from the inner areas) naturally could not be cultivated from the 
16 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
inner areas of the towns. The "outmigration", the revitalisation of the former 
village structure, however, would have meant the giving up of the privileges 
of the country-towns (in Hungary, the feudal legal system, ownerships and 
the institution of the serves survived as long as until 1848). The response to 
this challenge was the creation of a specific form of "sporadic agricultural 
settlements": the creation of the system of scattered farms. Although, 
scattered farms with agricultural functions are known outside the borders of 
Hungary too, the  principle  behind the system of scattered farms in Europe 
was to create temporary establishments, and  was not organised into a 
settlement and economic system.  The content of the "scattered farm 
principle", and the settlement and economic function of the scattered farms 
changed several times, also, scattered farms of different functions existed 
simultaneously. The "real scattered farm" was  one, non-independent unit  of 
the divided settlement system, forming a single residential and economic 
unit, a single family farmstead together with the house in the inner areas of 
the towns. To put it into a simpler form: the house of the citizen of the 
country-town was situated in the inner area of the town, while the farmstead 
was in the are surrounding the town, in the estate of the citizen. The family 
and the farm were divided between the downtown house and the scattered 
farm: the family lived both in the scattered farm and the permanent 
residence, according to different rhythms in the different development 
phases of the scattered farms. This phenomenon resulted in a certain spatial 
division of the family and the whole country-town. The relationship between 
the two "partial units" of the settlements changed in course of time, from 
"temporary character" to "permanence", the "independence" of the scattered 
farms, to such an extent that by the 20th century, a large number of "real" 
sporadic settlements were created. 
•
Thus the country-towns did not have or hardly had hinterlands, or that was 
limited to their own scattered farms, to the area that was part of the country-
town in social and economic sense, "anyway". 
•
In this specific settlement system, "towns" and "villages" were not sharply 
distinct, the dwellers of the scattered farms were not village, rural residents, 
but constituents of the urban society. What we do have to emphasise is the 
fact that the blurring of the borders was not only typical of the settlement 
system but also of the society of the Great Plain. 
The consequence of this peasant-like society is that a class of "real 
bourgeoisie" only emerged in the largest country-towns, relatively late and in 
small numbers. This is the reason for the village-like forms, technical 
infrastructure, ground-plan, and not the "underdevelopment" or the natural 
endowments (e.g. the lack of building stones). The cityscape and infrastructure of 
the towns in the Great Plain was quite different from what was typical in Europe: 
17 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
these towns were — and mostly still are —"ground floor" settlements, although the 
houses. the axes of which were parallel to the line of the streets, amounted to a 
development in unbroken rows. 
The "eligibility" of the country-towns was unquestionable only until the end of 
the feudal era (1848), their specific features weakened too, especially in the 
decades of the so-called socialist era with its unifying efforts, but these features 
still have not disappeared without a trace. 
The 18th century is the century of the reconstruction, after the Turks had been 
expelled. The results of that were spectacular — re-population of Hungary, re-
conquest of the arable lands, reorganisation of the institutional system in the 
formerly occupied areas —, but without too much success from the aspect of the 
approach towards "the West". Hungary became part, what is more, a periphery, of 
a typical Central European state, the Habsburg Empire. The "development" of the 
urban network was in effect nothing more than the reconstruction of the "Pre-
Turkish" conditions. The Hungarian towns were revitalised as local market 
centres, handicraft centres of their narrow regions; the properties of their citizens 
were modest — in most of the cases only a small house, a workshop, maybe a 
vineyard. Their connection hardly reached beyond the Hungarian borders, the 
"perspective" of the wholesale merchants only reached Vienna, Becsujhely (the 
now Wiener Neustadt), Briinn (the now Brno) or Fiume (the now Rijeka). Buda in 
the 15th century was a centre of power, culture and foreign trade with a European 
— or at least Central European — sphere of action, while in the 18th century only a 
modest centre of guilds and industry, with some distributing trade. All the 
phenomena that had taken place in the Western European urban development, 
remained completely unknown in Hungary (besides the handicrafts industry of the 
guilds, the formation of industrial mass production; the growing importance of 
finance institutes and the trade of mass products, the settling down of cultural 
"mass production" in towns etc.). 
No sooner than in the late 18th and early 19th century started the situation to 
change; the capitalising Europe "broke into" Hungary by the means of trade. The 
purchase, collection, storage and processing of agricultural products became an 
urban development function in more and more towns of the Small Hungarian 
Plain, Transdanubia (which were close to the Western markets) and along the 
Danube waterway (Gyor, Komarom, Moson, Pest etc.). The trade of wool, cereals 
and live animals became the fastest means of capital accumulation, and the corn 
merchants increased the number of bourgeoisie free from the bondages of the 
guilds. The rearrangement of the urban network started, too, and several towns 
without a free royal town past (Papa, Nagykanizsa, Vac, Baja, Moson) rose to the 
elite of the trading towns. The "modern" civil institutions also appeared in the 
Hungarian towns (savings banks, newspapers, stock exchange, joint-stock 
companies, railways, scientific and cultural institutions, e.g. academy of sciences, 
18 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
theatres, publishing houses etc.). All this took place, however, in the frameworks 
of the feudal legal system and ownership patterns, with a limited national 
sovereignty. 
2.4 The fragile frame of bourgeois development — the Hungarian urban 
network  in 1850-1950 
Hungary, "caught" in the Central European version of feudalism, only had a 
chance to approach the West in the mid-19th century. The elimination of the 
feudal legal system took place in 1848, and after the succeeding War of 
Independence (against the Habsburg rulers), the national sovereignty — although to 
a limited scale — was re-gained in 1867 (with the so-called "Compromise"). The 
civil "arrangement" was built out soon. The historical situation was similar to the 
one right after the foundation of the Hungarian state: the legal and political 
conditions of the "catching up" with the West were given. These conditions were 
"tailor made", into which the economy and society of Hungary had to be fitted (see 
in  Figure 1).  This was true, first of all, of the towns: they did not lead the 
bourgeois development, but had to catch up with the bourgeois transformation, fill 
up the gained (given) frameworks with content, just like in the early Middle Ages. 
Urban development in the dualist Hungary took place in an  agricultural 
country.  The proportion of the agricultural earners may have been around 80% in 
1870, and even on the turn of the century it exceeded 70%. The formula of the 
territorial division of labour was rather simple around 1900: from the countryside 
with its pure agrarian character — where even the proportion of the merchants, 
handicraftsmen, public servants, clerical persons etc., involved in the direct supply 
of the agricultural population, was strikingly low —, the towns stood out. The focal 
point of the economic development was the  capitalist transformation, the technical 
and agro-technological modernisation of agricultural production:  purchasing, 
trade and transportation of the agricultural products (the primary motivation of the 
railway constructions was agriculture, the influence of the agrarian interest groups 
was dominant in the development of the Hungarian railway network), their 
processing (milling and sugar industry) and export, the building out of the credit 
and insurance institutions serving agricultural production, in fact, the high level 
institutional network of agricultural researches and training. 
The other source or urbanisation in the dualist era was the "demand for centre" 
of the building civil public administration, and the settling down of the 
institutional network which became necessary because of the achieved 
administrative functions. The selection of the administrative centres and the 
settling down of the institutional network (among other things, the location of the 
military troops in the territory of Hungary is part of this!) integrated a large 
19 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
number of "external" factors into the development of the urban network. The 
urban development function of manufacturing industry only became significant in 
the last years of the 19th century. (While the increase in the number of industrial 
earners was 31.2% between 1870 and 1880, in 1890-1910 the growth was 64.5%.) 
On the turn of the county, only the manufacturing industry of  Budapest  was 
significant in an international comparison (companies with more than 20 
employees gave work to about 68 500 people in 1900); in the plants of  Pozsony, 
[Bratislava] which was second in the order, 5 800 people worked, while the 
industrial plants of  Fiume  [Rijeka],  Temesvar  [Timisoara],  Pecs  and  Arad 
employed 3 000-4 000 workers. 
The railway constructions played an important role in the development of the 
urban network, too, especially because the birth of the "civil" urban network and 
the railway construction coincided, so their correlation could be strong. 
The first  railway line  of Hungary was opened in 1846. Until the end of 1848, 
only 178 km of railway had been built in the then territory of Hungary, half a 
century later Hungary was endowed with a total of 22 000 km railway lines. The 
most dynamically developing sector of the period from 1848 until the breaking out 
of World War I was infrastructure, especially the railway constructions. There 
were times when the  annual increase of the network exceeded 500 km; in 1867-
1874, an average of 585 km was installed every year, in 1886-1899, 583 km. Even 
after 1980 — until World War I — 11 000 km of railway lines were constructed. 
Railway constructions "absorbed" most of the investments (between the 
Compromise and 1900, the railway investments were eleven times as much as the 
investments in large-scale industry (by joint-stock companies), and six times as 
much as the capital spent on the constructions in Budapest); just before World War 
I, 70% of the total capital assets of Hungary were in infrastructure, within that, 
26% of the capital assets in the railway. The railway, besides the credit 
institutions, was the fastest growing sector of the economy, increasing its output 
by an annual 10.5% in the first half of the period — until 1890 —, then by 5.5% 
annually until 1914. 
Until the Compromise, Hungary could not have independent railway policy 
concepts. The Austrian political and the Austrian-Hungarian economic interests 
urged the connection between  Vienna  and  Pest-Buda,  the Great Plain, which 
provided for the majority of the agricultural export, and the Austrian markets, and 
the creation of the possibility of the export of the agricultural products to the world 
markets. The railway connection between  Vienna  and Pest was established as early 
as in 1850, and in the 1850s, the major towns of the Great Plain were also linked to 
the railway network. In 1860, a direct connection between the Great Plain, 
Pestbuda and the sea was established, by the construction of the  Buda-
Szekesfehervar—Nagykanizsa—Trieszt  [Trieste] line. 
20 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
The independent Hungarian railway policy after the Compromise (1867) made 
Budapest the centre of the Hungarian railway network, contributing to its booming 
development. On the turn of the century, 131 settlements had town status in 
Hungary (without Croatia-Slavonia): their total population grew from 1.6 million 
in 1857 to 3 million in 1900 (a growth of 86%), however, their share from the total 
population of Hungary only increased by 18.1%  (Table 1). 
Table 1. 
Change of the number and proportion of urban population in Hungary, 
1857-1910* 
Place of 
Number I  Share  I Number I  Share  I Number 1  Share  1 Number I  Share  1 Number I  Share 
residence 
of the population 
1000 
% 
1000 
% 
1000 
% 
1000 
% 
1000 
persons 
persons 
persons 
persons 
persons 
1857 
1870 
1890 
1900 
1910 
Budapest 
187 
1.5 
271 
2.0 
492 
3.2 
716 
4.3 
880 
4.8 
Towns 
1 439 
11.9 
1 736 
12.8 
2 083 
13.7 
2 307 
13.8 
2 846 
15.6 
Villages 
1 0489 
86.6 
11 572 
85.2 
12 588 
83.1 
13 698 
81.9 
14 538 
79.6 
Total 
12 124 
100.0 
13 579 
100.0 
15 163 
100.0 
16 721 
100.0 
18 264 
100.0 
* Without Croatia—Slavonia 
Naturally the settlements with town status and those with urban functions did 
not always coincide on the turn of the century, either. According to our surveys on 
the urban hierarchy of the 1910s, there were only approximately 325-330 towns in 
Hungary (in the functional sense)  (Table 2);  of these, 130 were at least middle 
towns, while the number of small towns almost reached 200  9. 
The number of the population living in settlements with urban functions but 
with village status exceeded 1 million in 1910; thus the proportion of the urban 
population was over 25%. The level of urbanisation was quite different in the 
various parts of the country: in Croatia-Slavonia, Transylvania and in the 
mountains surrounding Hungary it did not even reach the figures of the Medieval 
Europe — in several counties only 4—% of the population lived in settlements that 
could be considered as towns in the functional sense —, at the same time, as a 
consequence of the country-town character settlement network (see above), in 
some counties of the Great Hungarian Plain half or three quarters of the population 
(!) lived in towns. 
21 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Table 2. 
The hierarchic division of the towns in the functional sense in 1910 
(without Croatia-Slavonia) 
Hierarchy level 
Number of settlements 
I. 
Capital city 
I 
II. 
Regional centres 
12 
III. 
County seat towns 
50 
IV. 
Middle  towns 
65 
V. 
Small towns 
198 
Total 
326 
In the beginning of the civil urban development, according to the general rules 
of regional development, modernisation started in some "bridgeheads", above all 
in the capital city. 
The three towns constituting the later Budapest —  Pest, Buda  and  Obuda 
—became more and more clearly the centre, the most important and largest urban 
agglomeration of Hungary after the late 18th century. The capitalist development 
connected to the agricultural boom, bourgeois development and the efforts for 
independence — demand for "own" national institutions, university, museum, 
theatre, library, academy, and their settling down in  Buda  and  Pest —  made these 
towns the most significant economic, trading and intellectual centre of Hungary by 
the middle of the 19th century. The number of their population grew from 50 000 
in the late 18th century to over 100 000 by 1831 and 173 000 by 1851. From the 
late 18th and early 19th century on, the ground floor and one-storey baroque Pest 
was gradually reconstructed by two and three-storey classicist public buildings and 
tenement houses, mostly within the former city walls. 
The defeated War of Independence (1848-1849) temporarily decreased its 
political-administrative role, but its economic positions went on strengthening. 
Due to its  splendid traffic location,  it became the main beneficiary of the 
increasing agricultural boom. Pest, in the middle of the Carpathian Basin, on the 
interface of the Great Plain which produced the most agricultural surplus and the 
main direction of the export, in the centre of the rapidly developing railway 
network, became the most important centre of the collection and processing of 
goods. Pest had a railway connection to  Vienna  already in 1851 (via Pozsony), to 
Szeged  in 1854,  Debrecen, Nagyvarad  [Oradea] and  Arad  in 1857,  Temesvar 
[Timisoara] in 1858 — i.e. with the most important trading centres of agricultural 
products in the Great Plain. By 1870, all the major regions of Hungary had a direct 
22 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
ailway connection with Pest. The leading role in the trade of agricultural goods 
uaranteed a dominant role of the capital city in finance activities, on the credit 
arket and in the foundation of industrial companies. After 1867, the 
ompromise,  Budapest became the capital city of a state with almost 20 million 
habitants, the centre of the building civil administration; it was home to a large 
number of institution and offices. This created a large number of new jobs and 
nitiated a large scale construction of public buildings. A conscious effort of the 
ungarian state management was the increase of the economic, political etc. 
eight and role of Hungary within the Monarchy;  a part of these efforts was the 
`catching up" of Budapest with Vienna, the rivalry between the two cities.  In the 
pirit of these efforts, Pest, Buda and Obuda were united in 1873. 
Later, with a significant state support, large scale town-planning works started 
n the city, and by the turn of the century, the present structure and cityscape of 
udapest was completed; Budapest became not only one of the largest cities in 
urope (in 1870 it was the 16th, in 1900 the 8th in the number of population), but 
Iso one of the best planned and most modern ones (underground working from 
896, telephone centre from 1881, electric public lighting from 1878, the first tram 
as launched in 1887 etc.). 
This was how  Budapest  became the main target of foreign capital, technical 
ivilisation, innovations, new social ideals and arts schools. Its population grew at 
n extremely rapid pace (by 22 500 people annually on the average between 1890 
nd 1900); it multiplied by five between 1848 and World War I. While only 1.5% 
f the Hungarian population lived in the capital city in the beginning of the 19th 
entury, it was 5% by the early 20th century. The formation of the suburban-
: arden city ring around the capital city accelerated at around 1870. 
The  regional centres, taking shape around the turn of the century, were much 
ore modest towns. Not one of the six towns offering all regional functions — 
agrab [Zagreb], Pozsony [Bratislava], Kolozsvar [Cluj-Napoca], Kassa [Kosice], 
D ebrecen, Temesvar [Timisoara] — reached 100 000 population, and five of them 
re outside the present territory of Hungary. Even before the drawing of the 
`Trianon" borders, not more than 1-1.2 million people lived in their hinterlands, 
hich is a too narrow background for the formation of a real large city, large 
egional centre. Only the situation of  Zagrab [Zagreb] was different: as the capital 
ity of Croatia-Slavonia, enjoying a partial state sovereignty, it had a potential 
interland of 2-2.5 million people. Six more towns — Szeged, Nagyvarad [Oradea], 
ecs, Gyor, Arad and Brass() [Brasov] — functioned as incomplete regional centres. 
he origins and functions of the  county seat towns  were miscellaneous, most of 
hem were raised to a high hierarchy level by their administrative functions. Some 
• f them had only some 10 000 inhabitants in 1910. The Hungarian  small towns  on 
he turn of the century were usually settlements with a few thousand inhabitants, 
heir urban functions were due to their role as administrative centres  10 . Otherwise 
23 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
they had rather "traditional" urban functions (retail trade, handicraftsmen, weekly 
markets and fairs), and they had quite a significant agricultural production (see 
also  Figure 2).  Their cityscape — with a few exceptions — could seem definitely 
rural in a Western European comparison. 
2.5  The Hungarian urban network between the two World  Wars 
Before World War I, Hungary, as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, was 
one of the European super powers. The Hungarian state was  the  sixth in Europe in 
territory and the seventh in the number of population. 
After the central powers had lost the war, the multi-ethnic Monarchy 
disintegrated, and new states were founded in its place, or the countries on the side 
of the Entente (Italy, Rumania, Poland) increased their territories by the territories 
acquired from the falling apart Monarchy. The peace treaty made in Trianon next 
to Paris drastically changed the political situation and the geo-political relations of 
Hungary, also its economic potential. More than two-thirds  (67.2%) of the territory 
of Hungary  in the narrower sense (71.5% including Croatia), and  58.3% of the 
population  (63.6% with Croatia) were  annexed to other states.  Hungary became 
one of the small states of Europe, and her natural and geographical unity ceased to 
exist.  The borders drawn at Trianon differed from the linguistic borders too, to the 
detriment of Hungary. Three and a half million inhabitants with Hungarian mother 
language became minorities in the territories of the successor states (some one-
third of all those who spoke Hungarian as mother tongue). The losses that the 
Hungarian economy faced were similar: Hungary lost almost nine-tenth of her 
forested areas, 83% of iron ore production and almost half of the production of 
manufacturing industry. 
The consequences of the peace treaty were serious and influenced the whole 
period between the two world wars. In spite of the necessary reforms, the 
territorial revision (the so-called irredenta) became the focal point of politics. As a 
result of the trauma of Trianon and the revolutions of 1918 and 1919 (a civil 
democratic—republican revolution in 1918 and a communist one in 1919), the right 
wing gained power in Hungary, and the anti-liberal—conservative direction did not 
favour the bourgeois efforts. 
The changed situation and state borders of the country had a considerable 
impact on the development of the urban network: 
• The new state borders entangled the economy, the transport network of 
Hungary and the system of hinterlands, the existing geographical division of 
labour. The state borders were artificial, only taking the strategic, economic 
and transportation interests of the successor states into consideration. The 
towns in the newly created border zone — despite the fact that the majority of 
24 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
 
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25 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
their population were Hungarian —, were given to the successor states 
(Szabadka [Subotica], Nagyvarad [Oredea], Nagykaroly [Carei], 
Szatmarnemeti [Satu Mare], Beregszasz [Beregovo], Kassa [Kosice], 
Komarom [Komarno]). Many micro-regions in the border zone lost their 
centres, market places and railway connections, and became peripheral, 
backward areas. On the other hand, the towns left on the "Hungarian side" 
were deprived of their hinterlands, which set back or slowed down their 
urban development (Sopron, Koszeg, Szombathely, Nagykanizsa, Szeged, 
Mako, Balassagyarmat, Satoraljaiijhely, Esztergom etc.). 
• The drawing of the new state borders resulted in itself in a  structural change 
in the settlement network of Hungary. The weight of Budapest further 
increased.  In 1930, 11.6% of the total population of Hungary lived in the 
capital city, for the territory of Greater Budapest, this figure reached 16.4%. 
The population growth in Budapest slowed down  (Table 3),  but its 
agglomeration (the areas annexed to the capital city in 1950) became the 
fastest growing settlement group in Hungary. The agglomeration of the 
capital city showed features typical of the  first phase of the urbanisation 
cycle:  the majority of the rapidly growing population arrived from the 
countryside regions of Hungary, mostly attracted by industrialisation. If 
there were any "outmigration" from Budapest, those who moved out were 
usually the poor who had been unable to take root in Budapest (tenants, 
night-lodgers etc.). Only in a few "colonies" of the agglomeration appeared 
public servants and employees working in the capital city (railwaymen, 
postmen). Besides a few  industrial suburbs  (most typical for this was 
Ujpest, to a limited extent Kispest, Pesterzsebet and Csepel), most 
settlements of the agglomeration were dominated by  one family houses with 
gardens (residential type); they cannot be called garden city areas, because 
most of them were colonies on very small sites, without public utilities, they 
were areas with a village milieu inhabited by the proletariat. The villa-areas 
settled down in the pleasant environment of the Buda hillside were 
exceptions. The situation of Budapest was ambivalent in between the two 
wars: its international prestige decreased, it played a more modest role 
among the centres of socio-economic innovation. The shrinking of its 
markets and raw material producing areas, the areas of competence of its 
state and economic institutions (e.g. banks, insurance companies, wholesale 
trade companies etc.) slowed down its development to a large extent: some 
industries (especially the food processing plants) had unused capacities; the 
construction of public buildings was almost completely stopped, at the same 
time, as an after-effect of the former "innovation wave", several modern 
branches of industry (pharmaceutical industry, telecommunication industry, 
manufacturing of light bulbs etc.) further developed, and as an effect of the 
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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
independent customs area, several sectors — e.g. the textile industry —
increased their production. Budapest was still the sole representative of the 
"modern" Hungary. 
Table 3. 
The change of the number of population in Budapest and its agglomeration 
1910-1949* 
Year 
Number of population 
Growth in Greater 
Budapest; 
In Budapest 
In the agglomeration  In Greater Budapest 
1910 = 100% 
1910 
880 880 
217 360 
1 098 240 
— 
1920 
929 690 
287 928 
1 217 618 
110.9 
1930 
1 006 184 
415 215 
1 421 397 
129.4 
1941 
1 164 963 
547 828 
1 712 791 
156.0 
1949 
1 057 912 
532 404 
1 590 316 
144.8 
* Within the contemporary administrative borders. 
•
The — relative — weight of Budapest was increased by the fact that 7  out of 
the 10  developing  regional centres were taken away from Hungary, and the 
less developed  Debrecen, Szeged  and  Pecs  remained within the new 
borders, with a mutilated hinterland. The "catching up" of these towns was 
supported by the state, too: the University of Kolozsvar [Cluj] was "settled 
down" in Szeged, the young university of Pozsony [Bratislava] in Pecs, 
large-scale constructions were carried out for the placement of the 
University of Debrecen (the organisation of which had already started 
before World War  I),  they developed their tourism, but could not become 
real "counter-poles" of the capital city. Hungary still lacks real countryside 
middle towns or large towns in the European sense of the word. 
•
The level of urbanisation, the proportion of the urban population increased 
from 35.2% to 38.1% between the two world wars; the increase in this 
proportion was only due to the settlements in the Budapest agglomeration. 
2.6 An ambiguous urban boom — the Hungarian towns in the "Socialist" era 
A brand new situation occurred after World War II, when Hungary was forced into 
the Soviet block ("Yalta"). While the political and ideological, legal etc. 
conditions of Hungary ("the intellectual level") turned towards "the East" in a 
sharp — and declared! — way, the "material level" could even produce some 
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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
modernisation, growth, "development". The changed conditions  amounted to a 
rather ambiguous urban boom. On one side of this asymmetric boom we find well 
known data and processes: rapid urbanisation which was most striking from the 
1960s until the early 1980s, the rapid growth of the  number and proportion of the 
urban population (1949: the number of the urban population is three and a half 
million, making 36.8% of the total population of Hungary; by 1970: 5.8 million 
urban inhabitants, which was 56.3% of the population; 1994: 6 and a half million 
urban citizens, 63.2% of the total Hungarian population), the quadruplicating of 
the number of settlements with town status (1945: 56 towns, 6 of which united 
with Budapest in 1950; 1995: 202 towns), the  construction of new towns 
(Tiszaajvaros, Szazhalombatta, Dunalijvaros, Kazincbarcika, Oroszlany, Kom16 
etc.), the striking expansion of the urban functions of some settlements 
(Tatabanya, Salgotarjan, Zalaegerszeg, Siofok, Godo116, Szentendre etc.). The 
Hungarian towns had passed the first urbanisation cycle, although only a few of 
them entered the second cycle; most of them, after the exhaustion of the "Socialist 
urban development energies", are in a process where they have to find new ways 
(stagnation). The  volume of urban functions multiplied  (e.g. secondary and higher 
education, medical specialist service, retail trade etc.), also, they spread 
horizontally, too. The  correlation between the towns and their environs  is 
incomparably tighter than it was between the two world wars. There are clear 
evidences for the increase of the urban infrastructure, the results of the housing 
constructions, the increase of the school education of the urban population and the 
improvement in their living conditions. From an agricultural, single-town country, 
Hungary became a (medium) urbanised county. 
This rapid urbanisation mostly relied on the  industrialisation of Hungary. The 
main objective of the I. Five-Year Plan, starting on 1 January 1950, was "...the 
socialist industrialisation of the country and socialist reorganisation of a part of the 
agriculture". The objective that had been originally set was to increase the 
industrial output by 90% within five years (within that, heavy industry by 105%), 
but these "obligations" were raised already in 1951 to 200 and 280%, respectively. 
Although the rudest means of pressure were occasionally used, the originally 
defined objectives could not be met, but the 130% increase of the industrial output 
(until 1955) and the start of several gigantic large-scale investments re-shaped the 
economic and employment structure in Hungary. The industrialisation in the 
beginning of the "socialist era" followed  patterns from the 19th century,  basically 
focusing on the production of raw materials, energy production and classical heavy 
industry. The scarcity of the investment goods forced the economic management to 
concentrate the investments into the  existing industrial areas,  industrial centres 
and Budapest, making use of the already given infrastructure. Most of the large-
scale investments were made along the energy and heavy industrial "axis" between 
Veszprem and Borsod-Abalij-Zemplen county, the considerable state-financed 
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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
housing constructions took place here, this region was the destination of migration, 
and this was also the area where the "lasting" settlement development actions, the 
so-called "socialist towns" were built: these are  Ajka, Varpalota, Komla, 
Oroszlany, Sztalinvaros  (the present Dunanjvaros),  Tatabanya and  Kazincbarcika. 
In the beginning they were nothing more than hastily constructed housing estates 
for the huge new industrial establishments — iron smelters and steel manufacturing 
in Sztalinvaros, power station and aluminium smelter in VarpaIota, chemical plant 
in Kazincbarcika, a power station and coal mining feeding that in Oroszlany etc.". 
In the 1950s, the number of industrial employees increased by three-quarters of 
a million, a rapid employment shift took place in Hungary (between 1949 and 
1960, the proportion of industrial earners grew from 21.6% to 34.0%). The shift of 
the proportions of employees in the different sectors of the economy was a "one-
way street" then: workers leaving agriculture and becoming industrial employees. 
The shift of jobs took place  within the same generation —  those who had been 
working in agriculture for some time, were taken over by the industry; meanwhile 
they also changed their "social status", becoming employees from independent 
small producers — and  not between generations.  This fact and the excessive speed 
of this process (the formation of the "industrial society" lasted for some 20 years, 
while it had been 80 to 100 years in Western Europe) had considerable impacts on 
society and the development of the settlements. Besides the industrial regions, the 
major administrative centres, the county seats were developed from significant 
state resources. Smaller towns, however, were neglected by the centralised 
economic development. The number of towns acknowledged in public 
administration rose slowly (in 1960, there were 63 towns in Hungary; the 
proportion of the urban population approached 40%). 
After the first "long decade" of the Socialism (1948-1960), both the political 
and economic conditions of urban development — in general, settlement 
development — changed. After the revolt against the dictatorship (1956) and the 
following years of retaliation, by the mid-1960s the so-called "soft dictatorship" or 
"Kadarian consolidation" was created. The character of the management of the 
society did not change in the years of the "soft dictatorship", either. Society and 
the local communities were not independent — they were controlled from above. 
The individuals had not real influence on the personnel, objectives and methods of 
the power. The relationship between the power and society did not change. The 
power, learning from the lessons of 1956, considered, for "self-defence" reasons, 
the "disarmament", demobilisation of the society as one of its major tasks. These 
efforts included the exclusion of the society from decisionmaking, the serious 
restriction of the latitude of the civil sphere; on the other hand, the road to 
individual achievements  was opened, the state started to withdraw from the private 
sector and ideology was pushed to the background when solving economic tasks. 
This policy lead, among other things, to securing the operation of the homesteads, 
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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
the spread of the second economy, finally to those societal and economic changes 
that made the "socialist model" of the practice of power impossible during the 
1980s  12 . 
The fundamental objectives of the  economic policy  did not change after 1956, 
either: the fastest possible (extensive) economic growth was forced, and all other 
"developments" — e.g. regional and settlement development — were subordinate to 
this purpose. Industry continued to be the centre of economic development. The 
expansion of the industrial production was the ultimate objective of economic 
policy, also, the most important tool for the solution of the major socio-economic 
tasks (e.g. total employment, development of the settlement network etc.). Industry 
was still a value "in itself' in the contemporary thinking. The development of 
infrastructure was still restricted to supplementing the most urgent shortages. At 
the same time, the objective of economic policy was changed in several partial 
issues: "industrialisation" now had to serve regional and settlement development 
purposes, too (decrease of the deepening regional disparities, urban development), 
also, industry was meant to guarantee total employment. The changing policy on 
living standards required the development of consumer goods and light industry. 
Finally, the exhaustion of the resources of the former industrial regions — labour 
force, infrastructure — promoted the deconcentration of industry. Industrialisation 
in the 1960s and 1970s was more balanced spatially and sectorally. However, 
industrialisation (together with the total of the economic development) was still 
extensive by nature: in the early 1960s, the number of industrial earners increased 
by 5-6% per year. In some counties, the number of industrial employees trebled or 
quadrupled in the period between 1960 and 1970. After the "success" of 
collectivisation — following 1960-1961, only 4% of the agricultural lands of 
Hungary remained privately owned —, a large number of labour force was released 
from agriculture (there were many who left agriculture because of their aversions 
to the co-operatives); this also forced the power to continue the extensive 
industrialisation and to concentrate housing constructions and infrastructural 
developments in the towns giving home to industry. As a consequence of this,  in 
the 1970s, 90% of all communal investments were implemented in towns  (which of 
course also meant a discriminative treatment against the villages). 
Consequently, the two decades following the mid-1960s was the age of rapid 
industrialisation and extensive urban development. (The proportion of the 
agricultural earners of Hungary dropped to 24.4% by 1970, 15.4% by 1990). 
Despite the rapid population growth in the county seats, the so-called "socialist 
towns" and the few middle towns, the demand of the towns for industrial workers 
could only be met with a large-scale commuting. Every fifth industrial earner, 
approximately 1 million people commuted in Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s. 
(The population growth in Budapest was minimal, at the same time, because the 
in-migration was restricted by administrative means. However, the agglomeration 
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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
nd residential areas of the capital city grew rapidly.) From at least 60% of the 
illages, the active earners commuted in 1980. 
The industrialisation standardised the towns; most of them became settlements 
ith industrial functions (the other component of stardardisation was the state-
manced housing constructions, which almost exclusively meant the building of 
lousing estates and panel flats). 
The creation of the conditions of industrialisation and the rapid urban growth 
made it necessary to work out a national settlement network development concept; 
t was accepted in 1970' s . 
Finally, at the end of the so-called socialist era, 166 settlements had town status 
n Hungary; they gave home to just 60% of the population. Despite these 
mquestionable achievements, urban development was rather ambiguous — we 
tated earlier. The other side of the coin is not so much the  issue of "under-
rbanisation"  (the fact that the growth of the urban population, especially in the 
1960s, was not followed by an adequate growth in the number of jobs in the 
owns), the consequent  mass commuting,  the outdated, low quality level of the 
• locks of flats, the still missing public utilities, the  one-sided character of 
settlement development —  it is much more the fact that the  Hungarian towns —  in 
pite of all "developments" — got closer to the Eastern European type of the towns 
han they had between the two world wars or in the dualist period. 
The elimination of the bourgeoisie as a social class changed at once the social 
ontent and character, the original essence of the towns. At the level of the 
ideology and in the everyday practice, the towns were the precious dwellings of 
he working class. The  ideological turn  did not only mean that — at least in the 
eclarations — Marxism and Leninism were made the theoretical basis of the 
• rganisation of the society, but it also meant the ideology and even more so 
ractice of power which were  deeply affected by the Eastern European features 
urviving in the Soviet Union (totalitarian practice of power, lack of autonomy, 
ack of pluralism, lack of guarantees and stimuli provided by the private property 
tc.). It also meant that the ideology and its prophets were aliens, that continuity 
ere denied, "locality" was neglected, traditional values did not receive any 
ttention. All these features could be frequently seen in urban planning and 
evelopment, as well. The "actions" served the ideology: during the constructions 
• f the early blocks of flats, the establishment of the frameworks of the "socialist 
vay of life" was attempted; urban constructions were meant to promote the 
xpansion of the "leading force" of society, the working class etc. The prevalent 
deology naturally resulted in a number of principles which affected the 
evelopment of the settlement network. The  egalitarian ideas  are worth 
mentioning, as well as the promise for the elimination of the social, class and 
ncome differences, which had a direct effect on the basic objective of regional 
• evelopment: regional equalisation, the strive for the moderation of the regional 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
differences; the subordination of individual purposes to the communal purposes; 
the evaluation of the community life (several "norms" of the urban constructions 
served this purpose); the belief in the omnipotence of planning. Economic 
development also followed ideological objectives, struggling all the way with the 
harsh contradiction, which came from the fact that the political system stating its 
social-ideological-economic superiority  developed in the underdeveloped region of 
Europe,  thus the declared principles were daily confronted with the humiliating 
facts. This "incompatibility" deprived the socialist system from its primary, almost 
only reason for legitimacy, and drove it into a forced, excessive economic 
development programme, perpetuating the situation of the  "war economy",  which 
only allowed a wasteful, necessarily selective development, within self-inducing 
and dictatorial conditions. It is true that the  selective nature  of the war economy 
favoured the towns, as the "robbed" resources were primarily from the villages, the 
agriculture — temporarily! —, infrastructure and the human resources. A necessary 
condition for the "war economy" was the concentration of the power, its 
monopolistic and dictatorial character, the tight correlation and the concentration 
of politics, power and economy, the control from the society "from above", and the 
elimination of any kind of autonomy, including the autonomy of the 
municipalities. 
Urban development and improvement became subject to  external factors within 
such conditions; the position in the system of redistribution, the central regulation 
of the development of the individual sectors, the provisions of the also centrally 
made and accepted regional and settlement network development plans, the 
"dealings about the plans" defined the development possibilities of the individual 
regions and towns. This system neglected the effect of the local resources, the 
local income generating capacity, innovative capacities, the efforts of the local 
society, the "free competition" for the development resources etc. Autonomy, the 
most important characteristics of the western type urban development was also 
missing. This was the main purpose for the one-sided urban development in 
Hungary during the decades after 1945. 
2.7 Conditions for urban development after 1990 
In  the decades of the so-called soft dictatorship, Hungary was generally seen as 
being in the best position within the "socialist camp". In the 1980s, however, the 
signs of crisis  became more and more apparent (the increase of the debts, decline 
of real wages, decline in the relative development level etc.). These were only 
partially compensated by the measures taken in the frameworks of the new 
economic reform attempts after 1985 (price and import liberalisation, two-tier 
banking system, transformation of the system of taxation, spreading of the private 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
property, guarantees of  the economic laws for the investors and the private 
economy etc.). These  internal processes,  the  shaping intentions of the different 
groups of society —  including the more and more influential so-called reform 
Communists in the top management of the "state party" —, and the favourable 
conditions of foreign politics led to the "constitutional take-over" in Hungary in 
1989-1990. In 1989, the negotiations between the powers of the opposition and the 
state party created the possibilities for the constitutional, multi-party parliamentary 
democracy. The parliamentary elections held in the spring of 1990 resulted in the 
victory of the opposition.  This did not only mean a political turn, but the 
fundamental transformation of the social and economic structure also started: the 
monolitical state socialist social and political arrangement was replaced by a 
pluralist "market economy" based on private property, and by the society of this 
market economy. We have to add that the post-socialist era started with a  deep 
recession —  partly as a result and necessary consequence of these transitions —, 
which turned out to be  lasting  by now. Naturally it thoroughly affects each 
segment of the transitions. (Between 1988 and 1993, the number of industrial 
earners dropped by approximately 540,000 people, i.e. by 38%, the total number of 
employees by 1.1 million people.) Still, amidst the signs of crisis, the building out 
of the market economy accelerated after 1989: 
•
most of the legal and economic institutional system of the market economy 
has been built out; 
•
because of the privatisation of the state property, the influx of the foreign 
working capital and the mass foundation of businesses,  ownership patterns 
have changed, as have the  organisational forms of the economy.  The number 
of economic organisations has grown by leaps; 
•
a change in the foreign trade has occurred (which changes the location 
values of the different parts of the country). 
The direct effects of the "re-capitalisation" on the development of the urban 
network are as follows: 
• the location of the economy takes place in accordance with the rules of the 
market competition, with only indirect state (counties, regional development 
organs) intervention. The "movements" of the economy are defined by the 
endowments of the settlements (geographical location, labour supply, 
purchasing power, the quality of the labour force, the state of the 
environment, infrastructural provision etc.); 
•
economic investments used to be escorted by infrastructure developments, 
housing constructions by the state etc. This connection has ceased to exist 
by now. Naturally it also limits the tools of regional development. The tight 
correlation between industrial development and settlement development 
does not exist any longer; 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
•
the "movements" and location of the economy considering market 
conditions have led to the birth of new disparities. Economic developments 
do not have "social political" motives now. The regional rearrangement of 
the economy has already started (see below). The regions with favourable 
endowments — Budapest, the environment of the capital city, Northwest 
Transdanubia and the Balaton region — are home to the majority of the 
economic companies. The regional structure of the country is changing. 
The new Act on Local Governments (1990) increased the independence and 
autonomy of the municipalities and decreased the disproportion in their 
"financing". The municipalities are given a normative central provision. They are 
entitled to levy local taxes, but because of the high rates of the central taxes, the 
possibilities of local taxation are limited. Thus two-thirds of the total income of 
the municipalities come from the central budget. This fundamental change in the 
practice of local government financing, and the self-governance that was provided 
(again) for each municipality moderated the handicaps of settlements, the 
hierarchy among the villages blurred, and the advantages and disadvantages 
coming from the legal status decreased. 
The Act on Local Governments  does not differentiate between towns and 
villages,  and neither has the practice of the financing of the municipalities. This 
fact "liberalised" the practice of the awards of town status (see below). 
•
The spatial structure of Hungary is changing.  The Hungarian spatial 
structure before 1990 was characterised by the  regional (county level) 
equalisation,  which included both the economy (e.g. level of 
industrialisation, volume of production investments, provision of "producer" 
infrastructure etc.) and the living conditions, economic activity, incomes etc. 
of the population. At the same time, a strong differentiation emerged  along 
the hierarchy of the settlements,  both in the composition and demographic 
features of the society (at the lower levels of the hierarchy, the proportion of 
the ageing, less educated, unskilled, low income population was higher) and 
in the local labour markets, with respect to living conditions, basic supply 
etc. Thus the spatial structure had a mosaic-like character. Today the  inverse 
of this situation is typical: the favourable or unfavourable phenomena 
appear at  territorial, regional level  (changing geographical location, 
formation of crisis regions etc.), the differences among the regions become 
dominant, whereas  the differences among the individual settlements have 
decreased.  The regional belonging more and more strictly determines the 
possibilities of the development of the settlements. 
•
The  priority of the factors making the differences  among the regions and 
settlements is changing, too. While formerly the position in the settlement 
hierarchy, the closely related infrastructural and institutional provision were 
the primary factors of differentiation, and the effects of the labour market 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
conditions — need to commute, circumstances of commuting, slight 
differences among the potential incomes — were weaker within the 
frameworks of full employment, today it is more and more the  income 
possibilities  that determine the situation of a given region (chances of the 
businesses, labour market conditions, assessment of the investors etc.). 
•
The Hungarian  macro-regions  that give the background of urban 
development are as follows: 
— Northwest Hungary and the Budapest agglomeration  (Gyor-Moson-
Sopron, Vas, Veszprem, Zala, Komarom-Esztergom counties, the 
northern part of Fejer county). Its skeleton is made up by three  dynamic 
zones:  Budapest and its agglomeration (Budapest is the "headquarters" 
of several activities again, with a 40 to 100% share from the total 
national products of some activities), the  Balaton region  and the 
settlements along the  Vienna-Budapest axis,  above all Sopron, GO,-  and 
Mosonmagyarovar. 
— Northeast Hungary:  the region from Nograd county through Szolnok to 
Bekes is the largest crisis-stricken, disadvantageous macro-region in 
Hungary. Part of it is the eastern wing of the former "energy axis", today 
known and the "rust belt", and the northern part of the "traditionally" 
lagging behind region east of the Tisza river. 
South Hungary  is only homogeneous to some extent because of its 
development level, otherwise it contains regions rather different in 
natural endowments, economic structure and the characteristics of the 
settlement network. 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
3 
The contemporary urban network of Hungary 
3.1 Towns, urbanisation level, proportion of the urban population 
A concomitant of the birth of the "industrial towns" is the accelerating 
urbanisation, the influx of the population into the towns, in some cases the urban 
booms, agglomeration, the creation of extended residential areas. While in an 
agricultural country the towns stand out like islands from the continuous rural 
(agricultural, village-dominated) spaces — like in Hungary until the 1940 —, with 
the progress of urbanisation, the urbanised zones (both in quantitative and 
qualitative sense) reach into the rural areas, they extend and finally split the rural 
regions; finally it is the "rural" zones that are torn apart and become small islands. 
However, as "urbanisation" is a rather complex notion — which means the spread 
of the urban functions, urban technical civilisation and lifestyle, the tight 
connections to the urban core areas (agglomeration), the transformation of the 
cityscape, the penetration of the urban occupations etc. —, the assessment and 
mapping of its spatial extent depends on the attitude of the researchers, i.e. to 
which constituents of the urbanisation the researcher attributes a dominant 
significance. As an exposition of the issue, see the intuitive picture of  TOth, Jozsef 
and  Berenyi, Istvan  of the spatial extent of the urbanisation process in Hungary 
(Figure  3). Obviously the authors accepted the traditional view of urbanisation, 
demonstrating North Transdanubia and the broader environment of Budapest as an 
almost completely urbanised zone, while only considering a few deficient 
"urbanisation axes" in the Great Hungarian Plain. This concept definitely 
evaluates certain qualitative features (cityscape, development of the infrastructure, 
traditions of urban life etc.), at the same time treats the urbanisation of the Great 
Plain with reservations: 14  We do not comment on this view in this place, we note 
that the measurement of the quantitative aspect of urbanisation is more 
unequivocal — either we think in legal or functional (settlement geographical) 
categories —, although the quantification does not reflect all aspects of the 
urbanisation. 
Hungary had 52 (legally accepted) towns in 1945, presently (1998) their 
number is 218; 6.8% of the municipalities have towns status  (Table 4.). 
In the decades of the "planned economy", town status had a large number of 
privileges, above all a favourable position in the system of state redistribution, 
advantage in the location of urban institutions, administration with bigger number 
of personnel, power and income (council, party organs etc.). The award of town 
status was restricted, connected to strict criteria. As for the relationship between 
settlements with town  rank and settlements with urban functions,  those  with town 
status were less than the ones  with urban functions.  A large number of villages  had 
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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Figure 3 
Regional differences of urbanisation in Hungary 
(Eds.: Toth..167.sef and Berenyi, Istvan) 
Key: I —  higher order centres; 2 — rapidly growing towns; 3 — county seats and other middle towns; 
4 — urbanised areas and the urban region of Budapest; 5 — main directions of the spatial 
connections: 6 — directions of the interregional connections; 7 — borders of the strongly 
urbanised zone; 8 — urbanised extensions 
Table 4. 
The transition of the number of towns in Hungary, 1945-1996 
Year 
Number of towns 
1945 
52 
1960 
63 
1970 
76 
1982 
96 
1984 
109 
1988 
125 
1990. (I. January) 
166 
1993 
184 
1995. (1. January) 
194 
1996. (1. July) 
206 
1998. (I. July) 
218 
37 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
definitely urban functions, they even had meso-level (central) functions in the 
system of public administration, as district centres. Right after World War II, 
approximately one-third of the settlements that were towns functionally had town 
rank, in the early 1970s half of them. In the mid-1980s, the value of the town status 
started to decline (because of the decrease in the volume of the infrastructure 
distributed by the state — e.g. housing —, more proportionate distribution of the 
financial tools of the councils etc.), simultaneously, the number of settlements that 
were awarded town status grew rapidly (in 1989, 41 new towns!). Around 1990, 
the  settlements with town status and urban functions  mostly  coincided  (with 166 
towns in January 1990); the continuation of the awards of town status resulted in a 
situation where a large number of settlements with town status do not have or have 
hardly any urban functions (Neel, Elek, Mariapocs, Ibrany, Nagyhalasz, Teglas, 
Ujfeherto, Hajd(rhadhaz, Jaszfenyszaru, Balatonfoldvar etc.). The Act on Local 
Governments in 1990 (in an attempt to avoid the abuses around the awards of town 
status, such as the artificial increase of the population number, the violent 
annexation of some villages to towns, campaign-like developments carried out to 
the detriment of the "rural areas" etc.), made it possible for a large number of 
villages to receive the town status  (Figure 4.).  In 1995, the competent ministry of 
the municipalities (the Ministry of Interior) detailed in a communiqué the criteria 
of winning the town status, but in the practice these principles are neglected. 
Besides the quadruplicating of the settlements with town rank, the birth of real 
towns, the development of certain settlements into towns was rather exceptional in 
the recent half a century. During the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called socialist towns 
and the intensively developed infrastructural villages acquired new urban functions 
and became the centres of their environment (Kazincbarcika, Tiszalijvaros, 
Dundijvaros, Ajka, Varpalota, Dorog, Ozd etc.). Urban institutions settled down 
later in a few holiday resorts, too, but among them only  Siofok  and  Balatonflired 
became versatile small towns with a significant attraction for the surrounding 
villages. In the recent years a few settlements in the  Budapest agglomeration,  with 
a large number of population, have received enough urban functions to reach the 
level of the small towns (Budaors, Erd, Szigetszentmiklos, Dunakeszi), but they 
have a special position in the settlement network (lack of hinterland, limited 
volume of urban functions compared to the size of the population, agglomeration-
like connections with their environment etc.). The position in the settlement 
network in itself and the demand for central functions hardly evoked the 
development of new towns; maybe  Encs,  in the Cserehat area, which was 
developed into the centre of the small village dominated area of the Hernad Valley, 
and  Lenti,  that grew (was developed) in the region of Zala, in an area lacking 
towns, can be mentioned here. On the other hand, the urban functions of several 
small towns was endangered in the 1960s and 1970s, when they were deprived of 
38 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
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39 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
the main source of their urban development, the district seat functions, and were 
not given any other "urban development" function. The list of such small towns is 
rather long, from  Vasvar to Csenger, Csurgo to Abatijszanto, Battonya to Csepreg, 
there were dozens of declining "central places", former district seats in Hungary. 
From the second half of the 1980s on, some of them have improved their positions 
and managed to increase their urban functions. This list is long too, just to mention 
a few examples:  Vasvar, Szentgotthard, Zalaszentgrot, Tab, Bacsalmas, Szecseny, 
Putnok. Tokaj.  Naturally there were more changes in the hierarchic order (see 
below), but the total of the towns in functional sense have not changed much 
during the recent fifty years. 
There are no extended regions in Hungary without towns, especially when 
considering the legal status of the settlements. In Hungary, on the average one 
urban settlement falls for each 480 km 2 . The picture is slightly different if we 
examine the extent of the urban hierarchy levels defined by the real urban 
functions (see below). 
The population of the settlements with  town rank  was 6 430 000 in 1995, i.e. 
62.8% of the total Hungarian population. Hungary is a  medium urbanised country 
in a European comparison (the exact comparison is made difficult by the different 
statistical criteria of the definition of towns). The above figure can be corrected 
from several aspects (e.g. neglecting the population of the settlements with town 
status but no urban functions, or those living on the outskirts of the towns), but 
these corrections hardly change the proportions: approximately 60% of the 
Hungarian population are urban citizens. The  change of the proportion  of urban 
citizens can be surveyed from many aspects: with the consideration of the  present 
towns  (with respect to the  legal status)  since 1920 (the formation of the present 
state borders), the proportion of the urban population grew from 49% to 63%, i.e. 
the share of the urban dwellers has moderately grown. (Their number grew by just 
64%). Considering the  contemporary towns, the share of urban citizens was 35.2% 
in 1920 (2 808 000 people), i.e. the number of urban dwellers has more than 
doubled (to 229% of the figures in 1920), and their proportion has doubled, too. 
However, if we consider the data of the  settlements with urban functions,  the 
proportion of the urban population grew from 45-46% to approximately 60%, 
their  number  from 3 640 000-3 650 000 to 6 200 000-6 220 000 (to 170% of the 
figures in 1920). Although it is a spectacular urban growth, the figures  do not 
reveal a general urban boom (see below). 
The figures of the  regional (county level)  differences of urbanisation (Table 5.) 
still show, as opposed to the public belief and the general view of urbanisation, the 
higher urbanisation level of the Great Plain. This is the consequence of the special 
settlement system of the Great Plain. 
40 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Table 5. 
The level of urbanisation in the counties, 1995 
Counties 
Share of urban 
County are per 
County population per 
population in per cent 
town, in km 2  
town, persons 
1. Budapest 
100.0 
525 
1 930 014 
2. Csongrad 
74.0 
533 
53 595 
3. 1-1406-Bihar 
72.9 
414 
36 657 
4..lasz-Nagykun-Szolnok 
64.7 
374 
28 189 
5. Komarom-Esztergom 
62.4 
281 
39 104 
6. Bekes 
61.7 
433 
31 147 
7. Bacs-Kiskun 
58.4 
597 
38 669 
8. Baranya 
57.7 
748 
68 668 
9. Veszprem 
56.1 
515 
42 098 
10. .Vas 
54.9 
477 
38 939 
11. Gyor-Moson-Sopron 
54.6 
812 
85 105 
12. Zala 
53.9 
541 
43 206 
13. Borsod-Aba*Zemplen 
52.8 
483 
49 971 
14. Fejer 
52.0 
625 
60 794 
I5. "folna 
48.6 
529 
35 719 
16. Somogy 
47.7 
503 
28 208 
17. NOgrad 
44.9 
424 
37 328 
18. 1-leves 
44.5 
520 
47 146 
19. Szaholcs-Szatmar-Bereg 
44.2 
371 
35 797 
20. Pest 
• 
36.3 
400 
60 830 
Total: ' 
62.8 
480 
52 813 
The number of population per one town is varied (in Jasz-Nagykun-Szolnok 
and Somogy counties it is only 28 000 people, in Gyar-Moson-Sopron 85 000, in 
Baranya almost 70 000 people), offering rather limited possibilities for the 
concentration of urban functions and the birth of bigger towns in several counties. 
The features of the settlement network do not allow a significant raise in the 
urbanisation level in the larger part of Hungary. In Veszprem, Vas, Zala, Gyar-
Moson-Sopron, Somogy and Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg counties, although their 
urbanisation level is not better than average, simply there are no more settlements 
suitable for urban functions. The population of the towns and their hinterlands 
together (the 3rd column of  Table 5.)  would only allow the proliferation of the real 
towns if either the purchasing power of the population grew significantly or the 
judgemen of the urban functions changed. In areas with extremely fragmented, 
sporadic settlements (e.g. in Scandinavia, some regions of North America), mots of 
the institutions, the post office, bank office, physician, chemist's shop etc. are 
41 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
considered as "urban" institutions. More exactly: "central functions", which are 
not necessarily urban. 
After the large-scale declaration of new towns in the recent half a decade, the 
majority of the towns are small towns — considering the number of their population 
—, almost two-thirds of them do not have 10 000 inhabitants, and every tenth town 
is home to less than 5 000 people. Another 31% of the towns are home to 10 000 
to 20 000 people, i.e. 70.4% of the Hungarian towns are small towns by the 
Hungarian standards. On the other hand, the number of bigger towns (medium and 
large towns) has grown in the recent decades: in 1960, there were only three towns 
in Hungary (apart from Budapest) with a population over 100,000 people, with 
Miskolc  having the largest number of population, a bit less than 150 000 
inhabitants. Today there are 8 towns with more than 100 000 people, in fact, 
Debrecen has more than 200 000 — but there are no towns in the "vacancy" 
between  Debrecen  with its 210 000 inhabitants and Budapest. In the international 
practice, towns with more than 250 000, or even 500 000 people are considered as 
large towns; if we accept these figures, there is only one large town in Hungary, 
Budapest. 
In the Great Plain, the  threshold of urbanisation  is high,  at approximately 
10 000 inhabitants. There are a few settlements with a population of 7 000-10 000 
people in the Great Plain too, where the urban functions appeared, but these 
functions are rather obscure. On the other hand, even those settlements that have 
more than 10 000 inhabitants and have town rank are at the very bottom of the 
urban hierarchy (Balmazikjvaros: 17 971 people, Abony: 14 858; Tiszavasvari: 
14 234; Hajdaadhaz: 13 287; Ujfeherto: 13 007 people etc.). In  Balmaziijvaros, 
e.g.. where 18 000 people live, there is no court, hospital, travel agency, tourism 
office, land office, no hotel, real estate agent, there is only one savings bank office, 
there are 13.7 secondary school students per 1 000 inhabitants, as opposed to the 
average of 49.6 etc. The large number of settlements with large population allows 
the  modification of the urban functions,  on the other hand, the large number of 
settlements with more or less urban functions results in the fragmentation of the 
urban functions. This is especially typical in the middle part of the region east of 
the Tisza River, where not one middle town has been able to emerge from the 
dozens of small towns. The higher threshold values of urbanisation also mean that 
the same "amount" of urban functions gives a much more expressed urban profile 
to a Transdanubian small town than one in the Great Plain. 
42 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Table 6. 
The distribution of the towns by the number of population. 1996 
Population number categories 
Number of towns 
In per cent of the total of towns 
> 
4  999 
20 
9.7 
5  000  — 
9 999 
60 
29.1 
10  000  — 
14  999 
41 
19.9 
15  000  — 
19  999 
24 
11.6 
20  000  — 
29  999 
23 
11.2 
30  000  — 
49  999 
17 
8.3 
50  000  — 
99  999 
I2 
5.8 
100  000  — 199  999 
7 
3.4 
200  000  — 299  999 
I 
0.5 
Budapest 
I 
0.5 
Total 
206 
100.0 
3.2 The hierarchy of the Hungarian towns 
The  role of the individual towns in the  settlement network  is most directly shown 
by the  position in the  (urban)  hierarchy.  The hierarchic division among the 
settlements, the  hierarchy "level"  (centralisation level)  of the towns depends on 
the quantity and the qualitative combination of the basic urban functions.  The 
basic urban functions contain institutions and activities of the service branches in 
the broader sense which satisfy non-everyday needs. The hierarchy level (level of 
centralisation) can be comprehended by the absolute values of the basic urban 
functions, but also by the quantity of the urban services provided for the "rural 
areas". This latter definition of the hierarchy levels, which is based upon the so-
called "value added", spread after the classic of the hierarchy researches,  Walter 
Christaller, and similar surveys have been carried out in Hungary, too. Looking at 
areas with homogeneous settlement network, the findings of the two approaches 
are similar, but if we examine together the settlements networks organised by 
different principles — Transdanubia and the Great Plain —, the disparities are 
significant. The hierarchy surveys are also different with respect to whether they 
try to enumerate the wide range of urban functions (making an inventory of them) 
or they define the hierarchy level by the data of some element of the centralisation 
level and its consequences''. The author of these lines has tried several times and 
for several periods to reconstruct or define the hierarchic order of the towns. (See 
43 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
above the survey concerning the turn of the century.) In all surveys, the inventory 
method was applied. 
At the survey of the present urban hierarchy, the presence or absence of 174 
indices was registered town by town. As the situation of Budapest is evident on the 
top of the Hungarian settlement hierarchy, the institutions and functions of 
national scale were not listed. These indices were divided into hierarchic 
categories according to their frequency. The number of categories was defined by 
our previous studies, in an empirical way. Aside from Budapest, the following 
levels were defined: 
1. Regional centres;  their characteristic institutions in Hungary are the 
universities, offices of airlines, post office directorates, dialysis centres, at least 25 
finance institutions etc. 
II. County seats;  their defining institutions are county courts, colleges, 
ontological and orthopaedic departments of hospitals, episcopates, chambers of 
commerce etc. 
III. Middle towns;  their institutions are as follows: urological, ophthalmologic 
departments of hospitals, archives, at least 9 finance institutions, secondary 
schools of different profiles etc. 
IV. Small towns;  town courts, notaries, tourism offices, real estate agencies, 
travel agencies, car dealers etc. 
V. Urbanising settlements  (elementary centres); their institutions are: attorneys, 
ambulance station, bookshop, secondary school, finance institution, branch of 
insurance company etc. 
Having done this, we found out to what extent the indices of the individual 
hierarchy levels were typical of the towns; the individual towns were put into the 
highest category where they had the majority of the indices (above 80% they were 
considered as complete, from 66 to 80% as deficient and from 50 to 65% as partial 
centres). 
As a result of this enumeration,  we found that approximately 190 Hungarian 
settlements  are towns in the functional  (geographical)  sense.  Their distribution at 
the different levels of the hierarchy can be seen in  Table' 7.  and Figure 5. 
Our findings were as follows: 
• There is a good correlation between the  settlements with urban functions 
and with town status,  despite the fact that, as we have mentioned earlier, the 
donation of the town status has already reached beyond the settlements with 
urban functions. The number of settlements belonging to the two categories 
are similar: 218 of them have town status and — according to the author —
190 have urban functions. All of those 128 settlements that are indisputably 
towns (with the small towns at the end) are endowed with town status. The 
44 

---

• 
• 
Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
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45 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Table 7. 
Number of towns in the individual hierarchy levels 
Hierarchy level 
Number of 
Of which 
towns 
complete 
I 
deficient 
I 
partial 
centre 
I. 
Capital city 
I 
1 
II.  Regional centres 
5 
3 
2 
III. County seats 
14 
8 
2 
4 
IV. Middle towns 
25 
9 
7 
9 
V.  Small towns 
83 
26 
29 
28 
VI. Urbanising settlements 
62 
without details 
(elementary centres) 
Total 
190 
47* 
40* 
41 * 
Without the details of the elemen ary centres 
differences can be seen at the lowermost level. This hierarchy level contains 
6 settlements which do not have town status at the moment. 
At the same, approximately 25 settlement with legal town status are not 
towns in the functional sense yet, although we have. to remark that the 
definition of the lower limit of the settlements with urban functions is 
inevitably slightly arbitrary. The  scatter  of the institutions of urban 
functions in Hungary  is moderate.  There are not so many settlements which 
have few urban functions but their broad supply and the quality of the 
elementary institutions raise them above the level of the other villages. The 
reason for this little scatter is the fact that the majority of the urban 
institutions were located "centrally". The spreading of the private businesses 
is expected to amount to changes at this settlement level, and by the 
businesses involved in trading, services and tourism, several settlements can 
grow up to the level of these "town embryos". 
• In the case of the "regularly" developing settlement hierarchy, the number of 
the lower order centres — in accordance with some "law", fixed index 
number — is bigger and bigger, thus a hierarchy pyramid is created. In 
Hungary, one level "below" Budapest is actually missing, there are no real 
"countryside" towns (with a population of 300 000-500 000-1 000 000). 
The number of regional centres and county seats is "regular", but the 
number of middle towns and even more the "town embryos" is lower than 
could be expected. In spite of a hierarchy pyramid, a  "hierarchy pear" 
appeared in Hungary; the reasons are analysed below  (Figure 6). 
46 

---

 
 
 
 
 
Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Figure 6 
Breakdown of the Hungarian towns by hierarchy levels 
Hierarchy level 
II. 
IV. 
V. 
• •  •  ••••••••••  •  •  • •  • •  •  • •  •  • •  • 
•  •  • •  •••••••••  •  • •  •  ••  • •  •  ••  •  •• 
VI. 
.•••••••••••••••••••••••••• •  .•  • . • ••••  •  • ••••• • .• 
40 
30 
2 0 
10 
10 
20 
30 
40 
Pc 
•
Based on a similar approach, the author defined the hierarchic order of the 
Hungarian towns in the 1960s. During the 30 years that have passed since 
then, the position  of just one-third of the towns  has significantly changed: 
—the  towns in the agglomeration of Budapest  have considerably improved 
their positions:  Szentendre  was around the 100th position in the order in 
the 1960s, it was a small town with deficient functions, while it is among 
the middle towns today (with the 33rd position in the order), having a 
large number of county level institutions; also,  Erd, Budaors, Szazhalom-
batta, Szigetszentmiklos  and  Dunakeszi  have grown to settlements with 
small towns central functions from almost "nothing". The quantity of 
their urban functions is also considerable in some cases. In spite of their 
favourable positions, their urban functions are one-sided — e.g. there is 
not a single hospital in any of the above-mentioned small towns —, their 
advancement is due to the rapid growth of the private sector (trading, 
tourism and financial services). 
A number of  holiday and bathing resorts  have been awarded the town 
status in the recent years, some of them expanded their urban functions, 
too:  Balatonboglar, FonyOd  and  Balatonalmadi  have become small 
towns, but  Siofok, Balatonfured  and  Balatonlelle  have improved their 
positions, too. The central functions of these towns are also special: on 
the one hand, they are one-sided (with the exception of Siofok and partly 
47 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Balatonftired), with outstanding positions of the sectors connected to 
tourism, on the other hand, they are characterised by a  large-scale 
seasonality; their urban functions cease their operation almost completely 
in the winter months. 
— The so-called  socialist towns  have improved their positions, too, but this 
advancement was mostly due to the 1960s and 1970s. In the recent years, 
however, they have faced serious structural crises and have not proved to 
be successful in the acquisition of "new" functions. On the other hand, 
most of the industrial towns have integrated into the settlement network 
and reached high positions in the hierarchy  (Dunaajvciros  and  Ozd  are 
middle towns,  while  Kazincbarcika, Ajka, Komlo  and  Vorpaiota  are 
developed small towns). 
— As a result of the transition of the  regional situation,  the  positions of 
GyOr and Sopron, in the western part of Hungary,  have improved too; 
Gyor has almost caught up with Miskolc — although still being the 5th in 
the order —, it is equal with the other regional centres — e.g. Gyor is the 
most significant finance institute centre in the countryside —, but its 
disadvantages in the field of the functions located by the state have 
continued to exist (e.g. in university and college training).  Sopron  has not 
moved much upwards in the hierarchy order, either, but  it is the only non-
county seat town that is considered as  a county centre,  because of the 
functions dominated by the private sector, too (tourism, trade, private 
practitioners, business services, financial services etc.). 
— Several traditional middle towns that had not acquired new functions in 
the previous decades have got into a  less favourable position,  and their 
traditional market centres—small-scale industry—service functions have 
fallen back to the level of the small towns, as well. 
— Also, the former  district seats, that used to have small town functions but 
lost their administrative roles in the 1960s and 1970s, and have not been 
able to substitute them with other activities — e.g. industry, tourism —, 
have fallen back in the hierarchic order. The majority of them have been 
"compensated" by the award of the town status in the recent years, but 
their chances to get back their former importance is limited. 
Despite the changes in the positions of these towns, the  Hungarian settlement 
hierarchy has proved to be stable in the recent decades,  both in structure, the 
number of the towns and the positions of most of the towns. 
The  regional centres have not changed. There are still three towns which are 
completely up to this function:  Szeged, Debrecen  and  Pecs.  The position of Gyor 
has slightly changed. Gy8r did not have regional roles on the turn of the century, 
and there was no regional centres in the north-western part of Transdanubia: some 
functions were supplied by  Gy5r, Sopron  and  Szombathely,  but  Pozsony  (the now 
48 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Bratislava),  Budapest,  and even  Vienna  contributed to the regional supply of West 
Transdanubia.  Gyor  started to create its regional role after the Treaty of Trianon, 
but without much state support, just like after 1945. It has a low position among 
the higher education centres of the countryside and it has not become a regional 
health care centre, either. In the recent years, however, Gyor has become the most 
important financial, business and trading centre of the countryside, its tourism and 
business service sectors have increased etc. By these functions,  Gyor  has caught 
up with the other regional centres, while  its positions in the market sphere 
hierarchy and in the hierarchy of the public—local governmental institutions are 
diverging.  This is a sign of the rearrangement of the urban hierarchy, where it is 
possible in some cases for the trade—service—business—tourism centres and the 
administrative centres to split.  Miskolc,  despite of its privileged position for 
several decades, has not strengthened its position in the highest hierarchy class, 
even the  quantity  of its urban functions lags behind the three leading regional 
centres. 
We have already mentioned the gap between the weight of the urban functions 
of Budapest  and the regional centres. The tenfold difference, which can be seen in 
the number of population, is just as big, in some cases bigger with respect to the 
higher level urban functions (e.g. the capital city manages 85-93% of all banking 
transactions on its own, the number of qualified researchers is almost twenty times 
higher than in the regional centres etc.).  Frank-Dieter Grimm,  in his essay on the 
urban system of Central and Eastern Europe, put the major towns into five 
hierarchy categories;  Budapest was in the first grade, while the Hungarian regional 
centres only in the third or fourth category. The second category did not contain 
any Hungarian towns, and only two towns from the Carpathian Basin, Pozsony 
(the now Bratislava) and Kolozsvar (the now Cluj-Napoca)' 6. The number of 
population in the regional centres was rather low (178 000 people on the average), 
their "potential hinterlands" were quite small, too (with 1-1.2 million inhabitants), 
so they could not be developed "up" to become real counter-poles for the capital 
city. 
The  county centres  make a homogeneous and very stable group in the urban 
hierarchy. Each county seat — which does not belong to higher hierarchy levels — is 
in this category, but only one town besides them:  Sopron.  The role of the countries 
decreased with the Act on Local Governments enacted in 1990, but that of the 
county seats not so much. Most branches of the public administration still operate 
their regional institutions within the frameworks of the counties (e.g. land offices, 
statistical offices, medical officer's service, tax offices, central police stations, 
county general assemblies etc.), an so does jurisdiction. With only a few 
exceptions, the seats of these institutions are the county seats. The institutional 
system of the formerly "nationalised" socio-economic tasks was also organised 
within county frameworks, many times without sound reasons (museum 
49 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
directorates, county libraries, archives, finance institutions, chambers of 
commerce, tourism boards, telegram offices, publishing of countryside 
newspapers, social security offices etc.). This  system has hardly changed to date, 
providing a large number of offices and institutions, public servants and 
professionals. Especially before the systemic change, their sphere of action and 
competence was significant too, and they also enjoyed further advantages 
(relatively high level of budgetary supports, public housing constructions, prestige 
investments, institutions not strictly linked to county seats, e.g. higher education 
institutions etc.). Their role is increased by the fact that the meso-level of public 
administration was eliminated, and the competence of the state organs only "reach 
down" to the county seats. They can preserve their advantages for a long period of 
time. Until now only one non-county seta town,  Sopron  has reached the level of 
the county centres. Making use of its now very favourable traffic situation, Sopron, 
just like Gyor, has accumulated functions and institutions to an extent above the 
average of the county seats in the trade—service—tourism—business sphere. The 
county seats are divided from the next category (the middle towns) by a rather 
deep "hierarchy gap". 
The 25  middle towns  are thus well separated from the county seats, but the 
transition towards the small towns is gradual, and if we consider the settlement 
hierarchy as a system in which the number of settlements is multiplied at the lower 
levels of the hierarchy, the number of middle towns seems to be rather small. 
Presently this hierarchy level does not unequivocally mean an "organic" and 
necessary element of the hierarchy system, and is weakening both in number and 
importance. The reasons for that are as follows: 
•
The "official" intermediary hierarchy level  between  the county seats and the 
small towns (the former county seats) was and still is missing. The former 
settlement network development concept did not acknowledge this level, 
either; the grade following the higher level centres, which mostly coincided 
with the county seats, was the medium level centres, including both the 
middle and the small towns. Even if there were towns standing out from the 
level of the small towns, these were not administrative—religious—cultural 
centres, but either trade—small-scale industry—domanial centres — such as 
Mohacs., Nagykanizsa, Baja,  partly  Papa and  Vac  etc. — or country-towns in 
the Great Plain, with a large number of population. As these functions did 
not guarantee the necessary resources for urban development in the previous 
decades, several of these centres fell back in the hierarchy order. 
•
The competition of the county seats blocked the improvement in the 
positions of the small towns and the increase of their number. This 
"competition" was spontaneous in some cases (the county seat has a 
considerable weight within the county and no other town can emerge from 
among the small towns; Szombathely in Vas county, Pecs in Baranya, 
50 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Kaposvar in Somogy, Nyiregyhaza in Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg etc.), in other 
cases, the county seats, as long as they had the power, deliberately held back 
the development of their rivals (Zalaegerszeg versus Nagykanizsa, 
Tatabanya versus Esztergom, Bekescsaba versus Gyula, Salgotarjan versus 
Balassagyarmat etc.). 
• Also, there are few  typically middle town functions in Hungary.  It is more 
typical that the small town institutions are concentrated in larger numbers in 
the middle towns with more population and larger hinterland; e.g. as there 
were two secondary schools in the small towns on the average, in the middle 
towns five secondary schools operated etc. Naturally the larger number of 
institutions also means a larger variety of supply, so the larger number of 
institutions can be seen as higher level of hierarchy. 
Most of the 83  small towns are "traditional" small towns,  which had already 
usually been market centres, minor handicrafts and trading towns in "regular" rural 
areas (agricultural region, small and middle sized villages, lack of scattered 
settlements) before the establishment of the civil public administration, with 
"regular" hinterlands (Kormend, Serval -, Bonyhad, Mar, Siklos, Tapolca, 
Szigetvar, Csorna, Zirc, Kisvarda etc.). After civil public administration had been 
built out, all of these settlements became district seats, and they acquired a 
significant industry between 1960 and 1980. The number of their population, 
however, did not follow the pace of their industrialisation, no major settlement 
development by the centre was carried out in them. Most of them are home to 
10 000-15 000 people now. A similar role is played by the former district seats, 
market centres that were promoted by the civil public administration and the 
railway constructions, e.g.  Vascirosnameny, Fehergyarmat, Tiszafured, Celldd-
molk, Encs, Puspokladany  etc. The other characteristic group of this hierarchy 
level used to he typical  country-towns  (Bekes, Mezotur, Csongrad, Hajdubo-
szOrmeny, Szarvas, Nagykoros etc.), but their functions were complemented by 
administrative—cultural—service roles, and later industry. 
Small towns are a  "necessary" element in the Hungarian settlement hierarchy. 
As a matter of fact, the town embryos and miniature towns below this level offer 
small town services, too, but their supply is smaller, deficient, and more one-sided 
than that of the small towns. Most of the towns  below  the small town level have 
fallen from the small town level  to their present positions. At the same time, the 
majority of the present  middle towns  have few real middle towns functions (they 
mostly have small town functions, in larger variety and volume), they are not 
between the small towns and the county seat towns (there are hardly any small 
towns in the hinterlands of the middle towns). For  urban goods,  "consumers" 
primarily travel to the small towns (naturally with the exception of those who live 
in the  direct  hinterland of the county centres and regional centres), it is the 
catchment areas of the small towns that cover the larger part of the territory of 
51 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Hungary (while the existence of the middle town catchment areas is occasional; 
even if they exist, they are organically integrated into the hinterlands of the small 
towns). Still, the role of the small towns in  supplying urban goods  is rather 
limited; while 20.4% of the Hungarian population live in small towns, only 15.4% 
of the secondary school students learn in them and they accommodate only 13.1% 
of the hospital beds. The reasons for that are the intensive development of the 
county and regional centres, the above-average growth of their urban institutions 
and the cheap public transport until the recent times. 
The average number of population in the  present Hungarian small towns  is 
close to 16 000 people  (Erd,  in the agglomeration of Budapest, is home to 46 000 
inhabitants, the "socialist industrial town" Kazincbarcika has 35 000 dwellers, 
while the former country-town, Kiskunfelegyhaza 33 000). 
After the elimination of the districts and urban environs, they do not have 
regional administrative functions, although there are still urban institutions serving 
the hinterland too, in jurisdiction (court, the Prosecution, public notary, central 
police station etc.) and in public administration and official affairs (land office, 
medical officer's services, fire brigade, labour affairs etc.). Small towns still 
accommodate most of these institutions. Their most powerful influence on their 
areas have been their trade and service functions and institutions until recently. 
Because of the general recession, it was just clothing and manufactured goods the 
sales of which decreased the most, also, the turnover of the "traditional" shops fell 
back. Economic services (business services, investment and tax consultancy, 
financial services, marketing activities, real estate trade) in the small towns are still 
rather scarce. The majority of the small towns are facing the problems of the 
"shift" now. Their connections to the neighbouring settlements, and their 
hinterlands have loosened, the "official" integration ceased to exist; the towns 
diverged from their areas, they do not know their problems and are not "officially" 
responsible for them. The establishment of the institutional system which meets 
the demand of the market economy, the increase in the purchasing power of the 
population and the still ongoing elimination of the infrastructural bottlenecks may 
bring the small towns into a favourable situation, even create new functions in 
them (business centres, entertainment and leisure time centres, local centres of the 
agri-business etc.). 
Only 62 settlements can be considered as urbanising settlements (elementary 
centres), so there is no "regular" hierarchy pyramid in Hungary. Approximately 30 
settlements with town status do not belong even to this hierarchy level. The 
"liberalisation" of the criteria could expand the range of these settlements to a 
limited extent. Even among the settlements with town rank there are a few that do 
not have any urban functions. In Hungary, where the urban institutions were 
settled  down for decades — not they found their own locations —, the above-
mentioned I 90-(200) settlements have more or less urban functions, and there is 
52 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
not a broad transitory level between the villages and the settlements with urban 
functions.  (Table 8 contains the data of the individual hierarchy levels.) 
3.3 Hinterlands of the towns 
The area from which an individual town is regularly visited by the "rural" 
population in order to acquire urban goods is called the catchment area 
(hinterland) of the towns. 
After the transitions of 1989-1990, the network of hinterlands in Hungary has 
probably changed, too (we do not have results of detailed empirical surveys on this 
issue). The changes were triggered by the facts that 
•
the meso-level administrative units (districts and later the urban areas) were 
eliminated, so the  number and significance of the administratively drawn 
borders decreased. 
The number of businesses and institutions operating within administrative 
borders decreased (from the county level bakery businesses to the burial 
institutions of the counties), weakening the role of the borders of public 
administration in the creation of the hinterlands. While the "new" economic 
organisations, private businesses, firms involved in business and personal 
services (from the tax consultans through the car dealers to the lawyers who 
are experienced in the process of the Court of Registration) on the one hand 
are located irrespective of the "old" hierarchy, on the other hand, their 
hinterlands, catchment areas are shaped by the rules of the "competition", 
without any traditional bond. 
•
In the recent years, the incomes of a significant part of the population have 
decreased, even more the solvent demand for the urban goods. The costs of 
public transport increased, and the number of commuters dropped by 
approximately 40%. All these factors have probably  weakened the intensity 
of the contacts between the towns and the villages. 
•
The closeness of the former catchment areas has probably been loosened by 
the increasing proportion of the individual means of transport, as well as the 
decreasing uniformity of the institutional networks of the centres. Because 
of the growing differences of the incomes, the character, direction and 
intensity of the town-village contacts is probably more and more different in 
the case of the "well-to-do" and the poor. 
The map  (Figure 7.)  shows the common hinterlands of the middle and small 
town functions. 
53 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
 
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54 

---

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
 
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55 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
3.4 Functional types of the Hungarian towns 
In the works of urban geography it is mostly the functional types of the towns  that 
are described. The definition of the functional types may take place by the 
(economic) functions of the towns,  the  inner proportions of their central functions 
(the weight of these functions within the town) and by certain  characteristics of 
the settlement network  (spatial separation of the residential place and the 
workplace). At the same time, features like the size of the towns, their rank in the 
hierarchy, the characteristics of their urban history, their dynamism, cityscape—
architectural features etc. are neglected. 
In our below attempt for the definition of the functional types of the towns, the 
assessment of the weight of the functions within the given town was primarily 
based on the  employment structure  and the commuting in and out. The following 
functional groups  have been defined: 
•
Central function  (urban function in the narrower sense: "urbao" services of 
the administrative, financial, business services, trading, cultural, health care, 
church etc. functions) 
— Industrial function 
—Agricultural function 
—Traffic function (railway junction, border crossing) 
— Holiday—tourism function 
— Residential function 
The share of an individual function within the towns can be  hegemonous  or 
dominant,  or they can be one element of a double function (e.g. towns with 
industrial—residential functions). The possible combinations give us 34 types (the 
category of "town with mixed functions" was also created because of the strong 
scatter of the functions); 27 of the possible functional types can be found in 
Hungary. The seven "most numerous" urban types contain 71% of all towns  (Table 
9.).  We are only referring to a few general features of the picture of the  functional 
types of the towns. 
•
As regards the functions of the towns, a  large-scale homogenisation  has 
taken place in the recent decades. As a result of the already described 
processes — industrialisation, "tertiarisation" of the towns, uniform location 
principles of the state owned and directed institutions —, the dominant role 
of the towns was the  "central function"  (urban functions in the narrower 
sense) and  industrial activity.  Industry is present in the functional formula 
of 139 towns (70.6% of the classified towns), central function in 110 of 
them, keeping in mind that these two types of function are usually present 
among the "mixed" functions, too. Thus the most frequent type of the towns 
is the town with central—industrial functions (just one — third of the towns, 
64 towns altogether). 
56 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Table 9. 
Functional urban types 
Functional types 
Number of towns 
From which with 
hegemonous 
dominant function 
function 
I.
•Tt 
Towns with a single function 
c" 
Central functions 
 
("
Industrial 
4 
Agricultural and traffic functions 
— 
Holiday resort towns 
Residential towns 
II. Towns with double function 
Central—industrial 
,1
Central—agricultural 
1
Central—holiday 
,1 
Central—residential 
Central—mixed 
Industrial—agricultural 
Industrial—agricultural 
Industrial—residential 
Industrial—mixed 
Agricultural—residential 
Agricultural—mixed 
Transportation—mixed 
Residential—holiday 
Holiday—mixed 
Residential—mixed 
III. Towns with mixed functions 
•
This "homogenisation" has taken place among the regions of Hungary, as 
well. There are no characteristic disparities e.g. between the Great 
Hungarian Plain and the rest of the country. The agricultural function is only 
dominant in the smaller part of the small towns and the settlements with 
urban character in the Great Plain, mostly as part of a "double" function 
(Figure 8). 
•
The functional urban types are also  "insensitive to the hierarchy".  The same 
category might involve regional centres and urbanising settlements with a 
few thousand population. 
•
Agricultural activity, which used to play a dominant role in the Hungarian 
urbanisation, at least in the Great Hungarian Plain, only appears of the 
functional "formula" of a few less populated settlements, at least this is what 
57 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
 
wns 
 to
ian 
ar
 Hung
he 
f t
 o
es 
l typ
t
iona
Func
58 

---

Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
the statistical numbers reveal. The industrialisation of the Great Plain towns 
was so intensive that "classical" country — towns (such as  Hodmez5vcisar-
hely, faszbereny, Oroshaza, Torokszentmiklos)  are now among the towns 
with industrial character, others have central—industrial functions now (such 
as Kecskeinet, Bekescsaba, Karcag, Maka, Kiskunhalas, MezotUr  etc.). We 
have to remark, however, that the picture would be slightly different if we 
looked at the whole range of the agricultural activity (e.g. processing of 
agricultural products, agricultural training etc.), or considered the proportion 
of those participating in the agricultural production etc. 
• It is a consequence of the standardisation that there are only a few towns 
which can be classified by a unique, special, characteristic function (e.g. 
school town, university town, mining towns etc.). Even the settlements that 
were born as mono — cultural industrial sites and grew to towns cannot be 
called unequivocally mining towns or chemical industrial towns now, 
although e.g. the "socialist industrial town" is a still well definable "urban 
formula". Besides them only some  holiday resort — bathing towns  (e.g. 
Balatonftired, Balatonalmadi, Balatonfoldvar, Balatonlelle, Heviz etc.) can 
be classified as "single — function" towns, and  Zahony,  the border crossing 
and rail loading centre. Naturally several Hungarian towns have specific 
past and functions;  Methhegyes  e.g. developed from a state — owned horse —
breeding farm to a settlement with town status, but is still divided into a 
number of settlement parts, the former domains, which are located 
kilometres from each other;  Lenti  shows the features of a  garrison — town; 
Martfii was built around a single large light industrial plant, a shoe factory; 
Mciriapics,  a settlement with town status, is a place of pilgrimage; 
MOrahalom  became a settlement with town rank from a scattered farm 
centre of Szeged etc. 
59 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
4 Urban types in Hungary 
When defining the  complex urban types,  besides the functional  features it was 
primarily the place of the towns in the  urban hierarchy that was considered, 
connected to this, in some cases also the  number of population  of the towns; in 
case of marked  urban historical characteristics, these were taken into view (e.g. 
the so — called "socialist towns", country — towns of the Great Hungarian Plain 
etc.), together with their  "dynamism ". (See Figures 9 and 10). The measure of the 
consideration of these individual aspects was different for the individual urban 
types. There are types where the  order in the hierarchy is a dominant feature (e.g. 
in the case of regional centres), irrespective of their urban history or their place 
within the functional types (e.g. in the case of the county seats). In other cases, the 
similar circumstances of the creation,  the almost  same 'functional formula",  and 
other elements connected to these features (cityscape, dynamics, demographic 
features etc.) create characteristic urban types, irrespective of the position in the 
urban hierarchy (e.g. in the case of the "socialist towns" or the holiday resort —
bathing towns).  (Figure 9-10) 
The urbantypes of Hungary are as follows: 
1. Metropolis—capital city (Budapest) 
2. Regional centres (5) 
3. County centres (14) 
4. Middle towns with central functions, with industry dominant in size (23) 
5. Small towns with central functions, (mostly) with industry dominant in 
size (63) 
6. Industrial towns (21) 
7. Holiday resort (bathing) towns (9) 
8. Agglomeration settlements — garden cities (14) 
9. Railway town (1) 
10. Urbanising settlements (37) 
11. Settlements with town rank, with very limited urban functions (29) (see 
Figure 11). 
A brief introduction to the urban types 
4.1 Budapest 
Pest and Buda was almost equal with the large European cities by the end of the 
Middle Ages ( 15th century) by their development level, significance, and 
especially their power and political weight. The large economic and regional 
rearrangement, that took place in the beginning of the modern times, pushed 
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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
 
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61 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
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62 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Figure 11 
(Complex) types of the Hungarian towns 
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Key:  Urban types:  I - capital city: 2.I - regional centres; 2.2 - regional centres with deficient 
functions: 3 - county centres; 4 - middle towns with central (administrative, educational, trade, 
service etc.) functions: 4.1 - industrialised traditional middle towns; 4.2 - industrialised former 
country towns; . - small towns with central functions; 5.1 - industrialised traditional small 
towns; 5.2 - industrialised former small towns; 5.3 - small towns with special functions: 
6 - industrial towns; 6.1 -  - socialist" towns; 6.2 - industrial towns; 6.3 - industrial towns with 
residential functions (in agglomeration); 7 - towns with holiday--tourism functions: 
8 - settlements, suburbs, garden cities in agglomeration; 8.1 - industrial towns; 8.2 -
residential settlements; 8.3 - settlements with special functions in agglomeration; 9 - railway 
town: 10 - urbanising settlements: 10.1 - former small market centres. ex district centres. 
middle towns: 10.2 - small country towns, agricultural settlements; 10.3 - agricultural 
settlements (small country towns) with residential functions: I 1 - settlements with town status. 
without considerable urban functions 
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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Hungary and Pest — Buda to the periphery of Europe, and then the occupation by 
the Turks (in 1541) took it out from the "European" towns. A new chance for 
catching up only came in the middle of the 19th century. Budapest, that was made 
from Buda. Obuda and Pest in 1872, used the opportunity: on the eve of World 
War I, it was the 8th largest town in Europe, the co — centre of the Austro —
Hungarian Monarchy, the rival of Vienna, a modern large city with a population of 
1 million, the centre of the Carpathian Basin with a population of approximately 
20 million people. After World War I, its geo — political' situation fundamentally 
changed (the Monarchy disintegrated, Hungary only had 8 million inhabitants 
within the new borders drawn in Trianon), its development possibilities shrank, 
and the former population boom turned into stagnation. At the same time, its 
industry (which employed approximately 60% of the industrial earners of 
Hungaiy) was modernised. A number of modern large industrial plants worked in 
the capital city (pharmaceutical and telecommunication industry, light bulb 
manufacturing, precision engineering etc.). Outside the administrative borders, in 
the territory of the agglomeration, the concentration of the population continued. 
After World War II, as part of the Soviet block, the situation of -Budapest 
changed fundamentally again: it became the (capital) city of the periphery, a 
dependant state of an empire which followed an ideology and political — economic 
practice totally different from the European societal development model. The 
conditions for the development of the society and the social structure changed 
basically, too. 
While the international role of Budapest was moderate,  its weight within 
Hungary  was continuously high. In 1950, partly because of political 
considerations.  Greater Budapest  was created by annexing 23 settlements to the 
capital city. This way the territory of Budapest increased to 525 km - , its population 
to 1.6 million people. The majority of the industry that had grown in the proximity 
of the capital city became within the administrative borders of Budapest (the 
industrial plants of Ujpest, Kispest, Pesterzsebet, Csepel, Budafok etc.). The major 
part of the settlements annexed to the capital city, however, were dominantly 
residential areas with one — family houses and gardens, and with workers and the 
"small fry' living in them. These settlements were tightly bound to Budapest and 
each other (workplace—residence connections, regular use of the institutions of the 
capital city, market contacts etc.): the unification actually meant that the capital 
city devoured its agglomeration. Following World War H, its population went on 
increasing, by approximately 220 000 people between 1949 and 1960. However, 
even this population growth and the mass employment of women did not meet the 
rapidly growing labour demand of the capital city; the process of agglomeration 
accelerated outside the "new" borders of Budapest, too. 
The agglomeration process in the 1950s and 1960s — in accordance with the 
start of the urbanisation cycle — meant the change of occupation for the local 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
agricultural earners and their becoming commuters, the inmigration of those 
heading for Budapest, consequently the rapid population growth and finally the 
becoming of residential areas. The extremely fast population growth, which was 
mostly fed by the rural areas of Hungary and not by the (outmigration from the) 
capital city, resulted in an extensive development in the agglomeration zone. 
In the 1950s, by the further exploitation of the existing industrial capacities, 
Budapest went on increasing its industrial output, although its share gradually 
decreased within the country. Budapest in this time was basically  a state 
administrative — industrial  centre. Parallel to the decease of the weight in the 
industrial production and the number of industrial employees, Budapest built out 
leading positions in the  management of the industry  (research and development, 
trading activity, organisation of export and import, advertising etc.), but it also 
received and outstanding role in almost all fields of the economic and social life: 
all the banks, the foreign trade companies and the publishing houses operated in 
Budapest, the only international airport of Hungary was (and still is) Ferihegy, in 
Budapest. In the 1960s and 1970s, Budapest was the centre of the  economic 
management — innovative industrial — state administrative — intellectual centre. 
These tendencies still exist. Even if the weight of Budapest decreases in an area or 
two (e.g. in higher education and the number of those involved in R + D activity), 
the capital city has strengthened its role in other fields in the recent decades: 
Budapest produces more than half of the Hungarian GDP now, 58% of all foreign 
inward investments arrive at Budapest, Budapest produces 53.5% of the exported 
goods etc. In the 1980s Budapest was an  intellectual — economic management —
state administrative centre, with a knowledge — intensive industry. 
Hungary was relatively "open" even as a country of the Soviet block, with 
relatively versatile Western connections. 
These endowments allowed Budapest to become a leader in the transitions of 
Central Europe, especially in the early years, in 1989 and the early 1990s. This is 
true for both the political events and the economy. Between 1988 and 1991, 
Budapest was the primary destination of the western capital arriving at Central and 
Eastern Europe; 30% of that reached Budapest. The "opening" of the borders 
allowed the system of the European big cities to spread towards - the East and the 
Southeast. Today Budapest is the Hungarian and (one of the) Central European 
bridgeheads of the western institutions and modernisation. Its endowments coming 
from the special Hungarian way of development, and its geographical location 
offer a good possibility for playing a dominant role in the Central European region. 
Budapest is still the only big city and traffic centre in the Carpathian Basin, and a 
"hallway" to the Balkans.  (Figure 12) 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Figure 12 
A simplified model of the urban structure of Budapest 
Key:  I. Parts of the inner city: 1.1. city core: 1.2. castle area; 1.3. inner residential zone (tenements); 
II. Industrial—transportation zone. zone of the institutions with large demand for space; 
III. Housing estates; IV. Zone of the outer districts; IV.I. garden city—one-family house zone; 
IV.2. inner areas of former suburbs and villages; V. Elite villa area, semi-detached house zone 
(the Hill): VI. Areas not built up (agricultural areas. forests); D = Danube River 
4.2 Regional centres 
The group of the regional centres, with only 5 towns (Debrecen, Szeged, Pecs, 
Miskolc. GOO, makes a group definitely different from the other urban types in 
Hungary. Several size categories — half a million — one million inhabitants, 1-2 
million inhabitants — separate these towns from  Budapest.  In the supply of some 
big city functions, Budapest has reached a monopolistic position (see above), or it 
has more of certain "urban" functions than the rest of the towns together. This 
dominant weight of Budapest does not only exist in the international—metropolitan 
and the national functions but also in the case of regional functions. (An important 
factor in this is the central situation of the capital city.) This dominant and "over — 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
weighted" role of Budapest in the urban hierarchy only leaves limited possibilities 
for the development of these five towns  as regional centres. 
Before World War I,  Debrecen, Szeged  and  Pecs already had regional tasks, but 
it was mainly  Zogrob  (the now Zagreb),  Pozsony  (the now Bratislava),  Kolozsvar 
(the now Cluj-Napoca) and  Kassa  (the now Kogice) that started their way to 
develop into the centres of large regions. 
Between the two world wars, after the loss of the shaping big cities, the 
development of their regional roles accelerated; in  Debrecen,  the university was 
organised right after World War I, while  Szeged  accommodated the 50 — year — old 
Kolozsvar and  Pecs the newly organised Pozsony university from the territories of 
the successor states. They also acquired regional roles in health care (clinics); the 
expansion of their cultural, tourism and administrative roles was supported by the 
state. In the socialist era, although these regional centres often appeared in the 
settlement development concepts as the counter poles of Budapest, specially 
selected for development (as "selected" higher order centres in the Settlement 
Development Concept of Hungary), they did not have a privileged status. Their 
growth rates did not reach that of the majority of the county seats. (Miskolc is an 
exception in this matter, but this town was developed as an industrial centre, a 
workers' town in the first place, and not as a regional centre.) Although the 
number of their population increased by 92% on the average between 1949 and 
1980, it still does not reach 200 000 people, the pace of growth was faster in the 
other county seats. The expansion of their regional roles was also blocked by the 
fact that the counties were the territorial frameworks for the organisations of the 
public administration and the economy, the majority of the institutions formerly 
operating with regional authorities were re — organised within county frameworks, 
thus only a few administrative regional institutions worked in Hungary (e.g. post 
office directorates, regional railway managements). After the recent changes, there 
is no significant change — at this hierarchy level — in the regional distribution of 
the public institutions, budgetary and local governmental organisations. On the 
other hand, their  situation is favourable  in accommodating  institutions  organised 
by the market;  presently the distribution of such institutions (banks, insurance 
companies, investment companies, business services, trade of luxury goods etc.) 
partly follows the hierarchic model (partly in a diffuse way, spreading from the 
western border region eastwards; where both expansion models operate, the result 
is striking [Gyor]). 
The average population of the regional centres is just 180 000 people now 
(Debrecen: 211 000; Gyor: 127 000 inhabitants), their total population has been 
decreasing since 1990! Their  international functions  are insignificant (naturally 
they have international connections). By Hungarian standards,  Debrecen, Szeged 
and  Pecs  plays the regional role completely; in all three cities, the institutions of 
higher education offer a certain variety (universities, medical schools, technical 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
colleges, higher level agricultural training etc.), they are regional health care 
centres, with several scientific institutions, they have literature journals, the range 
of business services is wide. The proportion of tertiary earners exceeds 50%. Their 
role in the "dynamisation" of their environment is still moderate. 
4.3 County seats 
The county seat towns are  identical with the towns of the hierarchy level with the 
same name.  The  origin and history of these 14 towns are  varied;  some of them are 
"regular" Western European type towns with medieval origins and ancient history, 
like  Szekesfehervar, Sopron, Veszprem  and  Eger; there are county seats "breaking 
up" as traffic centres in the period of bourgeois development, like  Szombathely, 
Kaposvar. Zaiaegerszeg and Szolnok;  some of them were former country — towns, 
such  as Kecskemet. Bekescsaba  and  Nyiregyhaza,  also  Szekszard  in Transdanubia; 
others grew from  mining villages'  into county seats, like  Salgotarjan  and 
Tatabanya.  Their  number of population  is varied (Kecskemet, Nyiregyhaza and 
Szekesfehervar is home to more than 100 000 people, while Szekszard only has 
36 000 inhabitants; their average population is approximately 73 000 people), as 
are their  cityscape  and  dynamism;  however, the fact that they had  county seat  roles 
after 1950 resulted in a similar position for all of them in the settlement policy and 
settlement development, and the spatial system of the "power". The extremely 
etatist organisation of the economy and the power  standardised their tertiary 
functions, institutional systems, employment structure and the social division of 
the population by locating and organising a vast amount of institutions with the 
same tasks and profiles in the towns. The uniform institutional system did not only 
involve the state administration in the narrower sense, but also the economic, 
service, cultural etc. sphere; in  all  county seats one could find the centre of the 
burial companies organised within county frameworks, just like the museum 
centre, the publishing house of the county newspaper, the county institution of 
public education, the county travel agency, library, "cultural centre" etc. The 
objectives of the "county leaders", who had strong positions in the power 
hierarchy, were also similar: they urged industrialisation (industry did not only 
eliminate employment problems, but also improved the chance to have access to 
"supplementary investments" — housing, infrastructure), they fought for prestigious 
institutions (e.g. higher education institutions), also for prestige reasons, they were 
interested in a rapid urban growth. These similar efforts and the application of the 
standard models made the county seats so similar to each other that it is justified to 
put them into the same category. This is also supported by their very similar 
employment structure. Thus this urban type is to some extent the product of the 
socialist period of urban development. 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Because of the factors mentioned above, the county seats — especially between 
1965 and 1985 — showed a very rapid growth.  Zalaegerszeg  in 1949 was a rather 
remote small town in the Zala Hill Ridge, with only 16 000 inhabitants — in 1980 it 
was home to 56 000 people (i.e. grew three and a half— fold within three decades); 
Veszpre.m  tripled its population in three decades, growing from a town of 18 000 to 
a settlement with 57 000 people. The  average growth  from 1960 to 1980 was 
67.1%. (On the other hand, the population growth in Sopron was only 32.9%, 
demonstrating the general disadvantages of not having county seat status.) The 
population growth was fed partly by the annexation of the neighbouring villages to 
the towns, to a larger extent by the inmigration. The large — scale housing 
constructions took place in the housing estates built from pre — fabricated panels in 
the county seats too, so similar features were created in the structure and cityscape 
of the towns, as well. The "traditional elements" of the dynamism of the towns —
e.g. change of the number of population, change of the number of jobs, housing 
constructions —, are typically stagnating in the county seats presently; the number 
of jobs in them has decreased, their industry has contracted (the number of 
industrial earners dropped to a half in Kaposvar, Kecskernet and Salgotarjan, only 
one — third in Tatabanya), and practically there are no public and local 
governmental housing constructions any more. 
If the schematic model of the state institutions — one county, one institution (in 
the county seat) — slackens, some competition may start among the county seats, 
and within the towns of the individual counties, which might modify the hierarchic 
system (this process has hardly started yet). The further spreading of the urban 
institutions organised by market demands will have a similar effect. 
4.4 Middle towns, with central functions and with industry 
The formation of this urban type was  not the consequence of the rank in the 
hierarchy, although the majority of these towns have middle town  hierarchy rank. 
However, this type can be linked to the hierarchy levels inasmuch as a  wide range 
and large volume  of urban functions lower than the county level was concentrated 
in them, and their urban functions have a long history (Esztergom, in this category, 
was the first town in Hungary, an archiepiscopal centre, just like Kalocsa; Vac was 
an episcopal seat; also, several former county seats are in this group, such as 
Satoraljanjhely, Baja, Balassagyarmat, Mosonmagyarovar, Szentes, Mako, Gyula 
etc.), they have had town rank for a long time (the last one to become town was 
Keszthely, in 1954). Their urban history is so versatile that they can be put into 
two sub — categories, the (industrialised)  "traditional" middle towns  and the 
former country — towns with middle town functions. 
The  traditional middle towns  have a "regular" urban past, their central 
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Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
functions made them towns, and during their lives they had higher level urban 
functions for shorter or longer periods; they were county seats, religious centres, 
centres of large estates (Papa, Tata, Keszthely, Mosonmagyarovar), famous trading 
towns (Baja, Nagykanizsa, Papa, Moson). Because of this, their population was 
bigger than that of the small towns: their average population is just 30 000 people, 
Nagykanizsa  is home to more than 50 000 inhabitants. They have not so many 
"typical" middle town functions (e.g. higher education is not one of these 
functions); the urban functions of the middle towns mostly appear in  roles and 
institutions belonging to higher hierarchy levels  (Keszthely, Mosonmagyarovar, 
Baja and Esztergom are important centres of higher education, Vac, Kalocsa and 
Esztergom are the most important centres of the Roman Catholic Church, Gyula, 
Esztergom, Baja, Nagykanizsa and Tata are seats for several county level 
institutions, Keszthely is a tourism centre etc.), and even more in the larger number 
and consequently wider range of institutions also found in the small towns (e.g. 
secondary schools, but it is also true for trade, travel agencies, services etc.). The 
Hungarian middle towns are  large — grown small towns.  It is also typical of this 
type that the towns do not develop and rise from a lower hierarchy level, but have 
descended from more prestigious positions. 
Several of them faced discrimination as potential rivals of the county seats in 
the "socialist era" (Gyula, Nagykanizsa, Esztergom, Baja, Mosonmagyarovar, 
Papa, Balassagyarmat etc.). After the events of the recent years, 
Baja, 
Nagykanizsa, Keszthely  and  Tata  are in a relatively favourable situation, but the 
position of S'atoraljatijhely has quickly worsened; if we look at the development 
level of the urban functions in the narrower sense, Satoraljailjhely does not belong 
to the middle towns any longer.  Central roles are still the dominant functions of 
these towns, despite the fact that all of them have acquired significant industrial 
functions, as well. Their cityscape is also typically urban, in some places (by 
Hungarian standards) with big city elements; it is more typical, however, that the 
traditional small town morphology uses large areas in the cores of the towns. 
4.5 Small towns with central functions, (mostly) with industry dominant in 
size 
Taking their birth, functions, and their role in the settlement network into 
consideration, these towns are versions of the former urban type, at a lower 
hierarchy level, with smaller population and less urban traditions. This group is the 
largest in number, just one — third of all Hungarian towns, 63 settlements belong to 
this group. 
The majority of the (industrialised) small towns with central functions are thus 
traditional small towns,  created by the demand for the urban goods and services, 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
mostly already before the bourgeois urban development; they involve local market 
centres, handicraft settlements, but also intellectual centres (Sarospatak, Sarvar, 
Rackeve). There are some towns in this group that used to be centres for larger 
areas but sank from that higher level;  Mohacs  e.g. is an important trading centre 
and a Danube port of Baranya county,  Sarospatak is  a political and intellectual 
centre. After the building out of the bourgeois administration, they became 
administrative—management centres of the lower level of the regional 
administration, i.e. the districts. Many of them — especially in the regions with 
autarky — were elevated by this role to the major centres (Mateszalka, 
Fehergyarmat, Vasarosnameny, Tab, Letenye, Encs etc.);  Dombovar, Bares  and 
Szerencs  have a lot to thank for the railway construction. 
After World War II, these small towns were affected by a double influence; 
their administrative role — after a temporary extension — gradually decreased (see 
above), finally the districts were eliminated (1984), and then the urban environs 
replacing them were also found unnecessary (in 1990). Since then in the 
Hungarian public administration there has been no (meso — level) administrative 
unit between the counties and the municipalities. At the same time, some of them 
were industrialised, their cultural and health care functions expanded, and after the 
1960s and 1970s, due to the well established — and cheap — public transportation 
and the increasing purchasing power, their attraction in trade also strengthened. 
Tight and versatile connections were created between these small towns and their 
hinterlands. 
In these days (after 1990), these small towns are in a — probably temporary 
—low. 
Their industry — which mostly consisted of the subsidiaries and branch plants 
of the large companies — decreased at a rate even faster than in the average of the 
towns (e.g. in Nyirbator from 3 279 people (in 1984) to 1 022 people, in 
Fehergyarmat from 2 227 to 1 101 people, in Dombovar from 3 560 to 1 580 
employees etc.), in the new financing system of the municipalities, they lost their 
advantages that they had formerly had against the villages, the solvent demand for 
the small town goods decreased. Most of them are centres of areas handicapped 
from some aspect. This is not compensated by the spreading of the private 
businesses and economic organisations yet. 
The other group of the small towns are former (Great Plain)  country — towns;  a 
large number of characteristic towns of this settlement type were enumerated in 
this group. Their industrialisation, the expansion of their urban functions and the 
"cutting" of their scatted farms pushed agriculture to the third — fourth position in 
their functional structure, although several of them are still important agrarian 
centres (Szarvas is the centre of agricultural training and research, Nagykoros, 
Bacsalmas, Kiskoros, Bekes etc. are productive centres etc.). The agricultural past 
can be seen primarily in the cityscape, the (now rather scarce) scattered farms, the 
narrow or almost completely missing hinterlands — e.g. Kisi:Ijszallas, Hajdimands, 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Hajduboszormeny etc.), and the large number of homesteads worked in part —
time. 
The cityscape  of the small towns was mostly created in the late 19 th  century and 
on the turn of the century. Their centres are usually dominated by one — storey, 
sometimes two — storey public buildings and bourgeois homes, the majority of the 
(petty) bourgeoisie live in closely — built not detached, ground floor houses with a 
single flat. After the turn of the century, garden city — like districts, with gardens 
and one — family houses were built in them. The former country — towns are more 
loosely built up, an extended village — like inner zone surrounded their urban 
centres. At the late 1960s and in the 1970s, the towns, reaching the urban 
development "boom", were actively destroying and eliminating their small town — 
like centres and trying to build "modern", big city — like — thus alien from the local 
character, scales and lifestyle — city centres. This effort has usually remained a 
"torso" (Celldomolk, Kormend, Szentgotthard, Mateszalka, Csorna, Fehergyarmat 
etc.). 
4.6 Industrial towns 
The common feature of these 21 towns is the  dominant weight  of industrial 
production and the  high proportion of industrial earners in them (62% on the 
average, but it reaches 75.7%in Nyergestljfalu), the  lack or insignificance  of urban 
traditions and their societal character (they are the towns of the young and middle 
— aged technical intellectuals and the skilled workers), in the case of some 
settlements, the  identical circumstances of their birth and the similarities of their 
career (the so — called "socialist towns"). Their present situation shows many a 
similarity, too: most of them are in the depressed industrial zone (the "rustbelt"), 
stuck by mine and factory closures, high unemployment and loss of prestige, and a 
large — scale outmigration has started from them. Besides these similarities (which 
justified the creation of this category), both their size (Dunailjvaros has almost 
60 000 inhabitants, Kazincbarcika is a town of 35 000, while Nyergesiljfalu is only 
home to 8  000  people), the development level of their urban functions (Duna-
ajvaros is among the middle towns in the hierarchy order, while Teglas and 
Lorinci have town status but hardly any urban functions) and their origin — thus 
their city structure and cityscape — are very much different from each other. 
The construction of the so — called  socialist towns  was started as early as in the 
first years of the socialist era (1949-1950), closely connected to large industrial 
investments (e.g.  -Dunaajvaros  [Dunapentele, later Stalin Town] was the town of 
the iron plant, built to increase the output of metallurgy, based on the Soviet iron 
ore shipped on the waterway of the Danube river; it was built without any 
industrial or urban preliminaries, as an experiment of the "socialist urban 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
architecture" — provided that there was such a thing as socialist urban architecture 
at all). The constructed towns — large block of flats — were meant to satisfy the 
demand for labour of the industrial plants. The residential areas themselves were 
planned  on  the drawing desk and built farther from the core areas of the towns (on 
the "corn — fields"), not influenced by any preliminary history. Separate blocks 
were built in their city centres, too  (Figure  13), with closed streets, no real urban 
cityscape was created, so that no "forum", promenade, the space of the urban life 
could be created. The origin, size, present functions and cityscape of the other 
industrial towns are rather varied, what "brings" these settlements into the same 
category is the industry that dominates their lives. 
Szazhalombatta  and 
Batonyterenye  could be listed among the "socialist" industrial towns by their 
origin and a large number of their characteristics, but one — third or half of their 
earners are commuters. 
Figure 13 
Construction plan of the central part of a "socialist town", Kazincbarcika 
(Planners: Valentiny, Karoly and colleagues) 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Ozd  developed into a town from a conglomerate of mining villages and 
industrial — dwelling villages in the 20th century, with the iron factory in its centre, 
"pressing itself' on the "town". During the decades of "socialism", the city centre 
was re — built, the town was expanding in the narrow valleys, growing to a town of 
almost 50 000 inhabitants by the annexation of further villages. The crisis of its 
metallurgy and coal mining started already in the 1980s. Between 1980 and 1990, 
the number of jobs dropped by more than 20%, that of the inhabitants by 10%. 
Because of the total failure of the metallurgy industry in Ozd, every fifth 
inhabitant in their active years is unemployed, the number of population dropped 
to 40 000, the amount of investments per capita is only one — fifth of the average 
of the towns. The surroundings of Ozd are also struck by serious depression. 
Bonyhad, Mor, Tolna, Simontornya  and Paks are "over — industrialised" traditional 
small towns, while  Dorog, Sajoszentpeter  and  Lorinci  have grown from mining 
villages of industrial regions to towns, and acquired moderate urban functions. 
4.7 Holiday resort (bathing) towns 
In 9 Hungarian towns (i.e. 4.5% of all towns), the leading and almost exclusive 
function is tourism. They are all situated along the shore of the  Lake Balaton  and 
the Lake Velence.  The conditions and infrastructure of bathing life were created in 
the beginning of the 20th century, the stripes along the shores were divided into 
parcels, and the extended, long holiday resorts were built on the lake shore, farther 
from the inner areas of the existing villages and independent of them in settlement 
structure, society and functional sense. In these settlements, the summer holiday in 
the family villas became general; in the beginning, these settlements had hardly 
any permanent residents, in wintertime they were almost non — functioning 
technical establishments. After World War  II,  public (company and trade union) 
holiday homes were built (or the nationalised boarding houses, hotels and larger 
private holiday homes were re — built this way), and from the 1970s, hotels and 
camping sites were also established. 
The characteristic features of the Hungarian bathing towns are as follows: 
•  An almost continuous settlement zone — with a total length of approximately 
110-115 kilometres — is situated along the Lake Balaton, all along the south 
shore and up to  Tihany  on the north shore; within this stripe, the 
administrative division does not make much sense. In some points of this 
settlement zone, besides the omnipresent tourism services, some urban 
functions (serving mostly the permanent residents and the "rural 
hinterland") are concentrated. The most important of these is Siofok, which 
has grown up to be a middle town in the hierarchy by now and the urban 
centre for a large area (the north — eastern part of Somogy county and the 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
south shore of the lake), also, the biggest tourist centre of the Lake Balaton. 
(The number of hotel beds is 3 353, that of the so — called "public 
accommodations" is almost 15 000, where more than half a million guest 
nights are spent every year.) 
•
On the north shore of the lake,  Balatonfured  is a health and bathing resort, 
also providing small town functions for its surroundings. The other holiday 
resort towns on the lake shore reach the town level in the functional sense, 
although their urban functions mostly serve tourism (trade, tourism services 
etc.). 
•
A special feature of the holiday settlements along the Lake Balaton is that 
their functions change by the changing of the seasons; the bathing season is 
short, from October to May the "operation" of the holiday settlements 
almost completely stops. Meanwhile, even the function of the individual 
households and buildings changes. The smaller holiday towns (Lelle, 
Foldvar) are unlikely to provide inner city functions in the winter season. 
•
In the whole holiday zone along the Lake Balaton, the number of the private 
holiday homes for family recreation purposes is high. The major part of the 
holiday zone thus has a garden city character, they are made up by ground 
floor, one — flat holiday homes with gardens. The public tourism 
establishments are located within the narrow cores of the settlements. The 
centres of the bathing life and the urban life are separated from each other in 
some cases (Fonyod, Fiired). The bathing centre of Ftired was constructed in 
the Reform Era, and thus has the aura of a mellow old bathing resort. 
•
The guest nights are realised in 48 000 "beds in public accommodations" in 
these 9 towns — 5 400 beds per town on the average —, their average annual 
turnover (1994) is 2 and a half million guest nights (283 000 guest nights on 
the average). The real turnover is much larger than this; more people show 
up in the holiday homes of the companies and institutions and in the private 
holiday homes. In peak season, the number of holidaymakers exceeds that of 
the permanent residents. 
•
The holiday resort towns are dynamic elements in the urban network, with a 
relatively high number of entrepreneurs compared to the number of the 
population. They gain new functions and increase the number of their 
population. 
4.8 Agglomeration settlements, garden cities and suburbs, dwelling towns 
Most of these 14 towns are around Budapest, although the most typical suburbs 
(Ujpest, Kispest, Pesterzsebet, Csepel etc.) were devoured by the capital city 
during the creation of Greater Budapest. In the 1950s and 1960s, the rapidly 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
growing demand of Budapest for labour force created a rapidly growing 
agglomeration zone even outside the new administrative borders. (On the one 
hand, because the housing constructions in the capital city could not satisfy the 
demand for labour force, on the other hand, because the moving to Budapest was 
made difficult by administrative tools, as well.) In the 1970s, approximately 
165 000 people commuted daily from the neighbouring areas to the capital city, 
and some settlements of the agglomeration also sent commuters by train to the 
capital city. The influence of the capital city was striking especially in commuting, 
in the fact that the employment structure became urban, and in the rapid growth of 
population in the agglomerating settlements. As a result of this population 
increase, a few settlements grow to the size of towns  (Table 10).  Some of them 
were awarded the town status after 1980, and in some cases they acquired a 
significant amount of functions, but these were unbalanced in composition and 
only reached the small town level; even so it happens frequently that they are 
unable to satisfy even the needs of their own inhabitants for certain functions. 
They have no or hardly any hinterland. The  extensive growth of the agglomeration 
has stopped by now, and the better — off inhabitants of the capital city have started 
to move to the settlements with more pleasant residential environment. 
Table 10. 
Development of the number of population in the towns around Budapest, 
1900-1990 
Town 
Number of population 
1900 
1930 
1949 
1970 
1980 
1990 
I. Budaors 
6  104 
9  006 
7  639 
14  373 
17  224 
19  820 
2. SzigetszentmiklOs 
3  196 
4  660 
5  865 
13  778 
17  698 
19  372 
3. Erd 
3  480 
5  632 
16  444 
31  205 
41  330 
43  327 
4. Dunakeszi 
2  837 
8  415 
11  029 
19  895 
25  137 
26 III 
5. Monor 
8  808 
13  469 
13  606 
16  939 
18  629 
18  483 
6. GOd011o 
5  893 
11  056 
12  216 
21  929 
28  096 
28  195 
7. Szazhalombatta 
1  392 
1  717 
1  717 
9  852 
14  292 
16  573 
8. Szentendre 
4  822 
7  210 
9  283 
13  008 
16  901 
19  351 
Source:  Referendum of 1990. — Data of Pest county — Budapest. 1992. 
The capital city  as a consumer market  is a great stimulus for the businesses in 
the agglomeration. Some of the agglomeration towns are spontaneously born large 
garden cities (like Erd, and partly Budaors and Godo116), without major urban 
centres, with high rates of commuters. The former district centres, a little farther 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
(20-25 km) from Budapest also belong to this category (Aszod, Monor and 
Dabas). A few towns of the agglomeration accommodated significant (state) 
industry (Dunakeszi, Szigetszentmarton, and Szazhalombatta, which fits into this 
type too); even housing estates were built in them from pre — fabricated panels. 
Szentendre  has a special role; this traditional small town, rich in monuments and 
having a picturesque cityscape (the centre of the Hungarian Serbs) has become by 
now an art and cultural centre, a museum city, a tourism destination with a 
considerable turnover, one of the  elite residences of the agglomeration. 
I 
I 4.9 Railway town 
Only one single settlement belongs to this category: Zahony. It is a reloading 
station built at the junction of railway lines with different gauge (the Hungarian 
and the Ukrainian railways), with a port activity. Two — thirds of its employees are 
involved in transportation. The freight traffic of the border station has decreased in 
the recent years, which can be counterbalanced by the effects of the large — scale 
shopping tourism and the recently established duty — free zone. 
4.10 On the margin of the urban existence — urbanising settlements 
At the definition of this type of the towns, it is the position in the urban hierarchy 
again that is prevalent. Those settlements, below the hierarchy level of the small 
towns, were put into this category which have certain urban functions, but these 
functions are deficient and small in volume, and which were not categorised into 
other types (industrial towns, holiday resort towns, agglomeration towns etc.). As 
we have mentioned earlier, there is limited number of institutions and functions 
typical of the "miniature towns". It is more often the case that the towns on the 
edge of the urban existence were "created" by their former central functions and 
district centre rank becoming "redundant", and so they were "deprived" of them 
(in 1923, there were 161 district centres in Hungary, in 1949 150,128 in 1960, and 
their number decreased to 107 by 1970), but they kept some of their institutional 
system and functions, in some cases event their small hinterlands (although these 
hinterlands are overlapped and loosened by the attraction of the larger centres). 
Their positions deteriorated especially in the 1960s and 1970s when they lost, one 
after the other, their role played in regional administration, they were not listed 
among the meso — level centres in the Settlement Development Concept of 
Hungary, i.e. the settlements to be developed into towns, and so their 
"development" was insignificant. During the 1980s, they were compensated for 
their losses to some extent by gaining town status (but their institutions — court, 
land registration office, police department, medical officer's service etc.— are not 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
given back). However, they do not have any role in the regional administration, 
and it is unusual they are able to acquire new functions (Tokaj is successful in 
tourism, Mezocsat has gained residential function). This category also contains a 
number of small country — towns, which have been unable so far to gain any new 
function, have always had moderate urban functions, and the ability of their 
agriculture to support the population has decreased. The number of population is 
decreasing in each of the towns in this category, they are among the declining 
settlements now. 
4.11 Towns with urban rank but without urban functions 
The awards of the town status, that has continued recently (in 1997, for example, 
12 settlements were awarded town status), have elevated such settlements into 
towns that might have a few formal elements of the urban life (e.g. high number of 
population), but cannot be considered as towns from functional and geographical 
aspects. It is also true, however, that some of the "new" towns, especially in the 
territory of the Budapest agglomeration, have acquired "urban" institutions 
operating within the frameworks of rapidly spreading and changing "new — style" 
private businesses (specialised shops, boarding houses, services, savings banks 
etc.). The number of these settlements is almost 30 now. 
5 Conclusion 
Urban development in Hungary is in the same historical situation, "cycle" again as 
it was in the Middle Ages after the foundation of the state, or in the beginning of 
the bourgeois era after the so — called "Compromise" (1867). The possibilities and 
the legal frameworks, and more or less the political circumstances are given for a 
"western type" urban development; the  "line of the ideals"  shows towards "the 
West" again. The  "material aspect" is naturally lagging behind; the restructuring, 
the decline of the importance of the industry, the consequent unemployment, the 
stagnation of the purchasing power of the population (with the exception of a 
rather narrow layer) etc. are blocking the rapid "catching up". However, the initial 
signs of that catching up can already be seen both in the development of the urban 
functions ("tertiarisation") and in the transition of the urban network, the widening 
of municipal autonomy and the change of the cityscape. 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Notes 
1 For each historical era, we considered the Hungarian urban development within the 
contemporary state borders. Until 1920, the peace treaty concluding World War I, we looked at 
the "Hungarian Empire" that covered the whole of the Carpathian Basin with its territory of 325 
000 km- . This state formation consisted of two legal units in the dualist era (1867-1918): 
Hungary in the narrower sense and Croatia — Slavonia (these were the so called "countries of 
the Hungarian Holy Crown"). We only made and exception in the period of the Turkish 
occupation (approximately 1541-1686), when the former (and later) territory of Hungary was 
divided between three state formations: the territories occupied by the Turks and belonging to 
the Osman Empire, the Royal Hungary that gave the Habsburg rulers the royal throne, and the 
independent Transylvania (which was under Turkish influence and paid tax to the Turks). After 
World War I. following the so — called "Trianon" peace treaty, the territory of Hungary shrank 
to approximately 92 000 km 2  (see also in the text). 
2 Hungarian historians also paid a lot of attention to the issue of the historical regions; the works 
of Szilcs, Jena and Hanak, Peter are well known abroad, as well. 
3 Szrics. ,lend: VazIat Europa harom tOrteneti regiOjarel (Drafts of three historical regions of 
Europe). — Tortenelmi Szemle, 1981/3. 
4 Undoubtedly, the majority of those who expressed their opinion in this issue, assume an 
independent. "hybrid" region between Western and Eastern Europe. In Handl( Peter's opinion: 
"It is proved by the examination of the characteristics of the economic and social history, state 
organisation, politics and culture, that the Eastern European region, that is a single region by 
definition, is divided into two regions that are different genetically, structurally and in their 
development tendencies: these are the Central European and the Eastern European region. This 
problem is not solved by the allowance which raises Central — Eastern Europe to the rank of a 
sub — region within the large Eastern region." (Hank, Peter: Kozel) — Europa mint tOrteneti 
regiO az tljkorban. (Central Europe as a historical region in the Modern Times). — Budapest, 
1986). Szrics Jen() thought too that "... there is a double — faced, hybrid — like, independent 
Central — Eastern European region, including Hungary, Bohemia and Poland." (Sztics, J. ibid.). 
5 
Silks, .1. ibid 
6 The Tartar (Mongol) troops broke into Hungary in 1241; they defeated the royal Hungarian 
troops. they invaded. robbed and destroyed the majority of the territory of Hungary (only a few 
tbrtresses stood their siege) and caused a serious loss of human lives (which is estimated to be 
15-0%, by more pessimistic views. 40% of the Hungarian population). However, the Mongols 
left Hungarian as early as the year after. in 1242. 
7 Already n the 15th century. Hungary was in a constant fight with the advancing Turkish Empire. 
In the beginning, the Balkans were the battlefield, but by the end of the century, the raiding 
Turkish troops broke into the Hungarian territories several times. The Hungarian army suffered 
a final defeat in 1526, the Turks occupied the Hungarian capital city. Buda in 1541, and invaded 
the middle third of the country (almost the whole of the Great Hungarian Plain, South 
Transdanubia. the major part of the area between the Drava and the Szava rivers and the 
southern edge of the Upper Northern Hungary). The Turks also made Transylvania, that had 
withdrawn from the royal Hungary, a dependent state. The liberation wars — after several 
unsuccessful attempts — started in the 1680s; in 1686, Buda was in Christian hands again. 
Following that. however. a national war of independence against the reign of the Habsburg 
House took place in 1703-711. It was not until after 1711 that a longer peaceful period was 
enjoyed in Hungary. To describe the devastations of the "war — stricken" 16th and 17th century: 
Hungary had approximately the same number of population in the early 18th century as in the 
beginning of the 16th century. In such a long time, the population of the country should have 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
doubled even with the natural increase of the Middle Ages. The loss of human lives in the 16th 
and 17th century was approximately 4 million. 
8 The long — lasting feudal circumstances in Central Europe — the Habsburg Monarchy, Poland 
divided at the end of the 18th century, in the Eastern provinces of Germany, and in the Baltic 
region — is called the period of the "second villeinage" by the historians, referring to the fact that 
while in the Western part of Europe, from the 15th and 16th century the free peasant way of 
development became general, in Central Europe the bondages of the serves were tightened, and 
the serves were deprived of some of their former "allowances" (right of free moving, redemption 
of the force work with cash etc.). 
9 For the definition of the urban hierarchy, the "inventory" method was used. In our view, the 
hierarchic rank of the towns is provided for by the quantity and versatility of their basic urban 
functions ("central place" functions). The basic urban functions are embodied in the roles and 
institutions at the higher levels of the hierarchy of the services in the broader sense (e.g. in the 
field of education, secondary schools. colleges and universities etc.). The hierarchic rank of a 
settlement primarily shows the differentiated nature of the (basic) urban functions, the level of 
the tasks fulfilled and the "frequency" of the accepted functions (universities, at a higher 
hierarchy level, are more scarce than secondary schools). The selected urban functions (and 
institutions)  Were  ranked according to the frequency of their occurrence. The comparability of 
the different institutions was made possible by the so — called "dispersion value" (frequency of 
occurrence). i.e. the consideration of how many settlements within a given stock of settlements 
are home to some of the institutions. The less frequently an indicator occurs, the higher 
hierarchy level it marks. Based on the given hierarchy. we listed the considered institutions into 
6 classes (hierarchy levels), then we examined which was the highest level in the settlements in 
which they had most of the indices. 
10 The territory of Hungary was divided into counties in the "general public administration" (the 
approximately 325 000 km 2  territory into 71 counties) and towns with municipal rank, with 
similar legal status and competence to the counties. The territory and population of the 
individual counties varied; on the average, 261 000 people lived in one county (without the 
towns with municipal rank). The counties were further divided into the so — called districts; in 
1910. there were 424 districts in Hungary, with an average population of 40 000 people. (Some 
of the towns. the so — called corporate towns were equal to the districts, so their population was 
not calculated into the population of those.) The small towns were usually the seats of the 
districts. giving home to general administrative offices. court, land registration office, tax office, 
notaries. which naturally could be escorted by other urban functions — secondary schools, retail 
trade. markets and fairs, local press. savings bank, lawyers etc. 
I I Following World War II, "new towns -  were built not only in Hungary. or in the "Osocialist 
camp". but all over the world, mostly with the intention to handle the social conflicts caused by 
urbanisation with the tools of planning and urban architecture. While — in Hungary — the power 
only saw the conditions of the rapid development of industry in the "socialist towns" and these 
towns were promoted as the ideal location for the socialist way of life, their planners were 
hoping that the envisaged and planned towns could drive the development of the local societies 
in a favourable direction. However, apart from a few slogans, the theory and even more the 
practice of the socialist urbanistics was underdeveloped (if there was such a thing at all, 
considering that actually socialism never existed, either). There is only one single ideological 
element that a research of this era can find, which is the application of the "neighbourhood 
units-  with architectural—social political content (these were where e.g. the child care institutions 
were located, as well as certain functions providing basic services, etc.). 
Finally. the construction of these towns started within frameworks set by limited financial 
resources, primitive construction technologies and the hegemony of the "socialist—realist 
architecture - . 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
The so — called "homesteads" were the supplementary farms of the co — operative members; they 
could cultivate their home gardens, very small lands of the co — operatives that they were 
allowed to use and small vineyards that had not taken into the co — operatives. Many times there 
was a co — operation between the homesteads and the co — operatives; e.g. the co — ops gave 
fodder to the homesteads, and the animals "produced" there were sold through the co —
operatives. In the homesteads mostly primeurs, vegetables, fruits, wine and live animals were 
produced; thus the quantity of goods was fairly large compared to the size of lands tilled by the 
small farmers, significantly contributing to the incomes in the villages. 
13 The ideas of regional and settlement development were approved of in two documents in 1971: 
these were the Settlement Development Concept of Hungary and the Directives of Regional 
Development. The strategic objectives of the Concept and the Directives were double: to 
safeguard the effective use of the resources of the people's economy and to moderate the 
disparities in the living standards — "... financial and cultural level" — of the population. They 
wanted to decrease the disparities of the living standards within the hierarchic levels of the 
settlements. The two objectives could easily be confronted with each other, although the 
guidelines of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, giving the ideological background of the 
government decrees. "...placed economic efficiency in the foreground of the regional 
development policy, aiming this way at the equalisation of the discrepancies of the level of 
economic development in the different regions. the harmonisation of the interests of the counties 
and regions. and the economic. social and cultural development of the countryside". 
The most important planning "tool" of the Concept was the categorisation of the settlements. 
This allowed the selected development of the settlements with central functions to receive an 
ideological—"theoretical" foundation, emphasising the advantages of the concentrated 
development of the economy and the economical operation of the institutional network. The 
development objectives were set for the development categories, using a single national system 
of  indices and criteria (e.g. it was defined what composition the institutional networks of the 
settlements in the individual categories had to have). 
The number of settlements in the categories of the Settlement Development 
Concept of Hungary 
Central function 
Number of settlements in the 
In per cent of all 
category 
settlements 
National centre 
I 
0.03 
Selected higher level centre 
5 
0.15 
Higher level centre 
7 
0.22 
Partial higher level centre 
11 
0.34. 
Middle level centre 
65 
2.02 
Partial middle level centre 
41 
1.28 
Selected lower level centre 
142 
4.43 
Lower level centre 
530 
16.52 
Partial lower level centre  
292 
9.10 
Settlements in the Budapest agglomeration 
44 
1.37 
Other settlements 
2 071 
65.54 
All settlements 
3 209 
100.0 
The effects of the Concept were heavily debated and criticised, because: 
• In infrastructure developments. the methods of the planned economy still had a leading role. 
The development possibilities of the municipalities were decided upon by the national organs, 
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Discussion Papers, No. 27.
also. the local societies had little interest and competence in the effective location of the 
"acquired -  goods. 
•
The dictatorial "development" made the use of national "normatives" and schematic models 
necessary in planning. These models neglected the local endowments and characteristics of the 
settlement network. This made the Concept unsuitable for controlling the development of the 
settlements especially in the Great Plain or in the areas of the agglomerations. 
•
The Concept gave a "system of objectives", it detailed the goals to be achieved (e.g. the criteria 
for the certain centre — categories). but it had practically nothing to say about the road or roads 
leading to the desired goals. 
•
The Concept — at least in the practice of implementation — was an urban development concept, 
made by the extreme concentration of the investment goods and the over — estimation of the 
"radiating effect -  of the towns (according to which the developing towns automatically solve 
the problems of their surroundings). 
•
The settlement network is a changing system, including declining elements; the Concept did 
not offer a solution for the stagnating and declining settlements. It planned growth (growth of 
the urban population, infrastructure investments, settling down of new generations), it had tools 
for this purpose. As soon as growth stopped, the Concept failed to manage the territorial 
processes. It was not up to the indirect control of settlement development. 
•
The Concept had a one — sided technical — (economic) attitude; settlements appeared in space 
as conglomerates of technical establishments. (For further details on this, see Hajdir, Zoltan: 
Settlement Network Development Policy in Hungary in the Period of State Socialism (1949-
1985). — Discussion Papers, No. 17., Pecs, 1993.) 
14 Berenyi, Istvan — Dovenyi. Zoltan: Historische und aktuelle Entwicklungen des ungarischen 
Siedlungsnetzes. — Beitrage zur regionalen Geographic, Bd. 39. Leipzig, 1996. 
15 A classical example for that is W. Christaller's examination based on the "importance surplus" of 
the telephone stations; in Hungary, Major, Jena defined urban hierarchy by turnover data of the 
retail trade, while Kubinyi. Andras did the same for the Middle Ages, by the number of the 
students attending foreign universities. 
16 Grimm, F.: Zentren Systeme als Trager der Raumentwicklung in Mittel — und Ost — europa. — 
Beitrage zur Regionalen Geographic, Bd. 37. Lepizig, 1994. 
References 
Bartke, I. 1985:  A teritletfejlesztesi politilca Magyarorszagon  (Regional development policy in 
Hungary). Budapest. 
Becsei, J. 1983:  Bekescsaba, Bekes es Gyula es tanyavihiguk telepitlesmoriblogicija  (Settlement 
morphology of Bekescsaba, Bekes and Gyula towns, and their scattered farms). Budapest. 
Beluszky, P. 1967: Die Kleinhandelszentren Ungarns und ihre Anziechungsbereiche. —  Acta 
Geographica Debrecina, torn. XII—X III. Debrecen, 
Beluszky, P. 1974:  Nyfregyhtiza vonzaskOrzete  (The hinterland of Nyiregyhaza). Budapest. 
Beluszky, P. 1984: Az "Alfold-szindrome eredete (Vazlat) (The origin of the "Great Plain 
Syndrome" (Draft). —  Ter es Torsadalom, 4. 
Beluszky, P. 1990: A polgarosodas tOrekeny vaza — Varoshakizatunk a szazadfordulon. (The fragile 
frame of bourgeois development — The Hungarian urban network on the turn of the century).  —
Ter es  Torsadalont, 3-4. 
Beluszky. P. 1992: Budapest es a modernizacio kihivasai (Budapest and the challenges of 
modernisation). —  Ter es Tarsadalont  3-4. 
82 

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Beluszky, Pál: The Hungarian Urban Network at the End of the Second Millennium. 
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 1999. 83 p. 
Discussion Papers, No. 27.
Beluszky, P. 1996: VAhog) helytink EurOpaban (Our changing place in Europe). — In: Frisnyak, S. 
(ed.):  A Karpcit-medence torteneti foldrajza  (Historical geography of the Carpathian Basin). 
Nyiregyhdza. 
Beluszky, P. 1999:  Magyarorszag telepideshalozata (The settlement network of Hungary). Pecs. 
Berdnyi, I. 1994: Transformation of the Urban Structure of Budapest. —  Geo-Journal, 32. 
Berdnyi, 1.—DOvdnyi, Z. 1996: Historische und aktuelle Entwicklungen des ungarischen 
Siedlungsnetzes. —  Beitrage zur Regionalen Geographie,  39. Leipzig. 
Csanddi, G.—Ladanyi, J. 1992:  Budapest terbeni-tcirsadalmi szerkezetenek valtozdsai  (The transitions 
of the spatial and social structure of Budapest). Budapest. 
Ehrlich, E.—Revesz, G.—Tamasi, P. 1994:  Kelet-Kozep-Europa: Honnan hova?  (Central Eastern 
Europe: From where to where?). Budapest. 
Enyedi, Gy. 1984:  Az urbanizacios ciklus es a magyar telepalesholozat alakulcisa  (The urbanisation 
cycle and the development of the Hungarian settlement network). Budapest. 
Enyedi, Gy. 1996:  Regionalis folyamatok Magyarorszagon az &menet idOszakdban  (Regional 
processes in Hungary in the transitory period). Budapest. 
Frisnyak, S. (ed.) 1996:  A Korpat-medence torteneti foldrajza  (Historical geography of the 
Carpathian Basin). Nyiregyhaza. 
Granasztoi, Gy. 1980:  A kozeplcori magyar varos  (The Hungarian towns in the Middle Ages). —
Budapest. 
Grimm, F. 1994: Zentren Systeme als Trager der Raumentwicklung in Mittel- und Ost-europa.  — 
Beitrtige zur Regionalen Geographie,  37. Lepizig. 
Gyimesi, S. 1975:  A varosok a feudalizmusbol a kapitalizmusba valo &menet idOszakaban  (The 
towns in the transition from feudalism to capitalism). Budapest. 
Gyimesi, S. 1985: Kelet-kOzep-europai utak. A varosfejlodds sajatossagai a XV—XIX szazadban 
(Central-Eastern Europen ways. The characteristics of urban development in the 16th and 17th 
centuries). —  Vilagossag, 2. 
Gyarffy, Gy. 1973: A kOzdpkori varos es kezdetei Magyarorszagon (The medieval towns and their 
origins in Hungary). — In: Gerevich, L. (ed.):  Budapest Ortenete az oslcortol az A rpod-kor vegeig 
(The history of Budapest from the prehistoric age until the end of the Arpadian age). Budapest. 
HajdO. Z. 1993: Settlement Network Development Policy in Hungary in the Period of State Socialism 
(1949-1985). — Discussion Papers, No. 17., Pdcs. 
Handk, P. 1986: KOzep-Europa mint torteneti rdgie az Ojkorban (Central Europe as a historical region 
in the modern times). — Lectures presented in the Institute of Historical Sciences.  3. Budapest. 
Kubinyi, A. 1971: A lotizepkori magyarorszdgi varoshalezat hierarchikus terbeli rendidnek kerdesehez 
(Contributions to the issue of the spatial hierarchy of the medieval Hungarian urban network).  — 
TelepiiMstudomanyi Kozlemenyek,  18. 
Lettrich, E. 1965:  Urbanizalodas Magyarorszagon  (Urbanisation in Hungary). Foldrajzi 
Tanulmdnyok, Budapest. 
Lettrich, E. 1968:  Kecskemet es tanyavilaga  (Kecskemet and its scattered farms). Budapest. 
Mendol, T. 1936:  Alfaldi wirosaink morfologiaja  (The morphology of the towns of the Great 
Hungarian Plain). Debrecen. 
Perczel, Gy. (ed.) 1996:  Magyarorszag tarsadalmi-gazdasagi foldrajza  (The socio-economic 
geography of Hungary). Budapest. 
Rechnitzer, Janos 1993:  Szetszakadas vagy felzarkozas. — A terszerkezetet alakito innovaciok 
(Splitting or catching up. — Innovations shaping the spatial structure). GyOr. 
Szalcaly, F. 1995:  Mezovaros es reformacio  (The country-towns and the reformation). Budapest. 
SzOcs, J. 1981: VazIat Europa harom torteneti regiOjar151 (Drafts of three historical regions of 
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83 

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Discussion Papers 1999. No. 27. 
The Hungarian Urban Network 
at the End of the Second Millennium
The  Discussion Papers  series of the Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian 
Academy of Sciences was launched in 1986 to publish summaries of research 
findings on regional and urban development. 
The series has 4 or 5 issues a year. It will be of interest to geographers, 
economists, sociologists, experts of law and political sciences, historians and 
everybody else who is, in one way or another, engaged in the research of spatial 
aspects of socio-economic development and planning. 
The series is published by the Centre for Regional Studies. 
Individual copies are available on request at the Centre. 
Postal address 
Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 
P.O. Box 199,7601 PECS, HUNGARY 
Phone: (36-72) 212-755,233-704 
Fax: (36-72) 233-704 
Director general 
Gyula HORVATH 
Editor 
Zoltan GAL 
* * * 
Forthcoming  in the Discussion Papers  series 
Changes in the Politico-geographical Position 
of Hungary in the 20th Century by Zoltan HAJDO 

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Discussion Papers 1999. No. 27. 
The Hungarian Urban Network 
at the End of the Second Millennium
Papers published  in the  Discussion Papers series 
No. 1 OROSZ, Eva (1986): Critical Issues in the Development of Hungarian Public 
Health with Special Regard to Spatial Differences 
No. 2 ENYEDI, Gyorgy — ZENTAI, Viola (1986): Environmental Policy in 
Hungary 
No. 3 HAJDU, Zoltan (1987): Administrative Division and Administrative 
Geography in Hungary 
No. 4 SIKOS T., Tamas (1987): Investigations of Social Infrastructure in Rural 
Settlements of Borsod County 
No. 5 HORVATH, Gyula (1987): Development of the Regional Management of the 
Economy in East-Central Europe 
No. 6 PALNE KOVACS, Ilona (1988): Chance of Local Independence in Hungary 
No. 7 FARAGO, Laszlo — HRUBI, Laszlo (1988): Development Possibilities of 
Backward Areas in Hungary 
No. 8 SZORENYINE KUKORELLI, Iren (1990): Role of the Accessibility in 
Development and Functioning of Settlements 
No. 9 ENYEDI, Gyorgy (1990): New Basis for Regional and Urban Policies in East-
Central Europe 
No. 10 RECHNITZER, Janos (1990): Regional Spread of Computer Technology in 
Hungary 
No. 11 SIKOS T., Tamas (1992): Types of Social Infrastructure in Hungary (to be  not 
published) 
No. 12 HORVATH, Gyula — HRUBI, Laszlo (1992): Restructuring and Regional 
Policy in Hungary 
No. 13 ERDOSI, Ferenc (1992): Transportation Effects on Spatial Structure of 
Hungary 
No. 14 PALNE KOVACS, Ilona (1992): The Basic Political and Structural Problems 
in the Workings of Local Governments in Hungary 
No. 15 PFEIL„ Edit (1992): Local Governments and System Change. The Case of a 
Regional Centre 
No. 16 HORVATH, Gyula (1992): Culture and Urban Development (The Case of 
Pecs) 
No. 17 HAJDU, Zoltan (1993): Settlement Network Development Policy in Hungary 
in the Period of State Socialism (1949-1985) 
No. 18 KOVACS, Terez (1993): Borderland Situation as It Is Seen by a Sociologist 
No. 19 HRUBI, L. — KRAFTNE SOMOGYI, Gabriella (eds.) (1994): Small and 
medium-sized firms and the role of private industry in Hungary 

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Discussion Papers 1999. No. 27. 
The Hungarian Urban Network 
at the End of the Second Millennium
No. 20 BENKONE Lodner, Dorottya (1995): The Legal-Administrative 
Questions of Environmental Protection in the Republic of Hungary 
No. 21 ENY EDI, Gyorgy (1998): Transformation in Central European 
Postsocial ist Cities 
No. 22 HAJDO, Zoltan (1998): Changes in the Politico-Geographical 
Position 
of Hungary in the 20th Century 
No. 23 HORVATH, Gyula (1998): Regional and Cohesion Policy in Hungary 
No.24 BUDAY-SANTHA, Attila (1998): Sustainable Agricultural Development 
in the Region of the Lake Balaton 
No. 25 LADOS, Mihaly (1998): Future Perspective for Local Government 
Finance in Hungary 
No. 26 NAGY, Erika (1999): Fall and Revival of City Centre Retailing: Planning 
an Urban Function in Leicester, Britain 

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