Growth and decline of suburbanization in Hungary
Abstract
The urbanization and inner-migration trends of the last decades are well-known. The mass-urbanization process was the main migrational process in Hungary before 1990, the population of the towns became larger, the villages’ smaller. First we could see this population growing process at the large towns than later at the medium-sized and small towns as well. The size was also really important at the villages, the smaller was the village, the larger was the migrational loss.
After 1990 most of the towns also had natural decrease, and the previous migration trends changed dramatically. The population of the large and medium-sized towns became smaller and smaller. The most important reason of this decline was the suburbanization. First around Budapest, than around the other large towns we could see villages with increasing population and the reason was the migration from the towns. During the 1990’s and the first 3-4 years of the 2000’s we could see declining large and medium-sized towns, increasing suburban regions and stagnating small towns and rural areas in Hungary. After 2004-2005 some of these trends seem to change.
We divided the settlement of Hungary by the population change trends into two large groups and into eight small, inside them. The two large groups are the towns and the villages. The towns mean not the administrative ones (more than 300 in Hungary), but the functional ones. We had four groups: Budapest, the large towns (regional and county centres) medium-sized towns and the small towns. In the second large group there are the villages. We made also four sub-groups, three dynamic ones and one laggard. There are two suburban groups of villages (and small towns), one around Budapest and one around the other large towns, and a touristic one. The largest group of villages are the rural settlements.
After 2004-2005 new trends started, which are not well known yet. The most important changes are the next: the population loss of Budapest and the large towns stopped and their population started to increase. Anyway we can see a continuous increase in the agglomeration of Budapest. In the suburban areas of the other towns first we could see just smaller and smaller increase and finally in 2009 the population increase of these regions stopped. We can see really huge decrease of population in the rural areas nowadays. This decline of the rural areas is as large, as their loss in the 1960’s and 1970’s during the era of mass-urbanization.
One of the most important actors of regional development is the local govern-ment. In this study we made a questionnaire research of more than 500 local govern-ments of Hungary with population increase. Some of these settlements are near Budapest, others near the large towns, while the last group scattered in the rural areas of Hungary. The local governments of course feel the in-migration especially from the nearby towns. Most of the newcomers came from the block of flat quarters of nearby large towns to the suburban areas. The largest in-migration wave reached these settlements in the first part of the first decade of 2000’s. On the other hand the local governments also feel the decline of suburbanization in the last some years.
The reasons of the decline of suburbanization are disputable now. The economic crisis, the decline of new house buildings, the wider housing possibilities in the towns, the change in life-stage cycle, the increasing traffic problems of suburban areas also can be among the reasons.
