CENTERS OF THE NEW “JÁRÁS” DISTRICTS COMPARED TO THE SETTLEMENT HIERARCHY BASED ON EDUCATIONAL, PUBLIC HEALTH AND COMMERCIAL SERVICE FUNCTIONS

Abstract

On the 1^st January 2013 a new sub-county level governmental system was implemented in Hungary. All in all 198 districts – so called “járás” – were created, 23 in Budapest and 175 in the other parts of the country. This means that the járás-system – that had played an important role in the Hungarian government system for centuries, and ceased to exist in 1984 – came back in life after a 30 years pause. The aim of this paper is to analyze whether there is a strong connection between the new járás-centers and the settlement hierarchy or there are towns which have not deserved this new central function.

The analysis is based on a complex hierarchy-calculation method, which contains 5-5 different types of data from the education, public health and commercial service sector. As a result of this calculation every settlement got its rank in the hierarchy, which made available to classify towns and villages into larger groups.

Among settlements with central functions four main groups were created: upper, middle and lower level centers, and quasi-centers. Villages without any or with extremely low hierarchy points are mostly located in the least developed rural areas. The results show that many of the 328 towns with city rights did not necessarily deserved this superior level, but many villages would.

Compared the new járás-centers with the hierarchy rankings, it is obvious that most of the cities with higher points became district centers, however there are some anomalies, like the 28^th Budaörs now belongs to a járás which centre is the 131^st Budakeszi. In the lower levels the connection between central functions and járás-centers becomes weaker and weaker; the lowest ranked district centre is the 635^th Gönc.