URBAN MORPHOLOGY OF DUNAKESZI
Abstract
The publication is about settlement morphology of my hometown Dunakeszi, which is a small city on the north side of county Pest next to Budapest. It’s a more than 750 years old settlement, which officially became city in 1977. Until the beginning of 19th century Dunakeszi was known about its agriculture. 1846 was the first important date in the settlement’s history, because the railway system between Budapest and Vác was established. From that time society, economy and political ideology changed in totally different ways which caused structural changes in the settlement also. After the foundation of cannery in 1910 and the foundation of train factory in 1926 industry became primary priority in economic way. Parallel the foundations of these facilities we can see that Dunakeszi has began to grow. Nowadays there are more than 6000 houses in the city which contain more than 15 000 flats.
Final result of analyzing type and size of houses and other buildings (Figure 1. Type of houses and other buildings (source: self-created figure) shows that most of the houses in Dunakeszi are family houses. In the second dominant category there are blockhouses and 4 per 10 storey buildings (mainly concentrated at the west and south east part of the city). The third biggest are semi-detached houses which can be found mainly in the district of train factory and at the east side of the city. In the oldest part of the settlement many farmhouses can be found, which structure and style remain old times in the beginning of 20th century, when agriculture was in primary priority. Final result of analyzing height of houses and other buildings shows that the highest ones can be found at west part of Dunakeszi. Final result of functional analysis (Figure 2. Different functions and their locations in the city, without living function – source: self-created figure) shows that most of the functions can be found next to Main Road number 2. There are few districts in the city without any special functions, where only family houses can be found, so the main function at there is only living. After the analysis of functional zones it can be seen that the center of the city runs next to Main Road number 2. This zone is covered by first/inner living zone which contains the oldest part of the city, the highest, 10 storey buildings’ district, and the oldest semi-ditached houses’ district which can be found next to train factory and Main Road number 2. Inner living zone is covered by second/outer living zone which mainly contains family houses which were made between 1900 and 2010. Industrial districts are concentrated at the periferic parts of the city, where periferic hypermarkets can be found also next to the exit way of main roads.
All of these results show that the settlement’s profile in the last 100 years has been totally changed (from agriculture to industry and tertier sector). These changes can be seen also on its houses’ and other buildings’ type, style and functions. Number of inhabitants from 1900 to 2010 has been growth from 2000 to approximately 40 000. We can see that more and more families from Budapest and the other parts of its agglomeration zone choose Dunakeszi, because of its good geographical position, milieu (natural surroundings) and economic indexes.
