City hierarchy and spatial structure in Hungary (1870)

Abstract

During the period of dualism, the external and internal elements of the development of
the settlement network - compared to previous centuries - changed rapidly and markedly.
The differentiation of the settlement network began, but the role of the place occupied in
the settlement hierarchy did not decrease, and the importance of geographical location
and accessibility increased. In addition to all of this, in addition to the public and state
administrative bodies, the territorial administration of most institutions and organizations of socio-economic life was still organized within the county framework. All of this
swelled the number of institutions with an urban role in the county and district seats to an
extraordinary extent. As a result of all this, the drawn spatial structure of functional cities
changed, with the drastic reduction of the number of cities in the legal sense (1876), the
legal framework proved to be narrow, compared to the range of settlements fulfilling the
role of de facto cities, which also redrawn the spatial structure configuration of the city
network. The regional city hierarchy of historical Hungary and the creation of a realistic
spatial structure based on it - with the exception of Transylvania, Croatian-Slavonia and
Bánság - are not possible at the time of the agreement (and other times).