THE IMPACT OF THE 1971 NATIONAL CONCEPT FOR SETTLEMENT NETWORK DEVELOPMENT ON GYŐR-MOSON-SOPRON COUNTY’S SETLLEMENT NETWORK

Abstract

The 1971 NCSND had two levels, a national and a county one. A group of researchers, compiling the nationwide concept, defined higher and middle level centers, county councils were responsible to select the lower level centers in each county. The concept’s main goal was to create a capable settlement system with centers that are able to manage their regions. High-level centers received a huge support, respectively new centers without town rank were cued to receive financial aid from government to be town in short or medium range of time. Regular and partial low-level centers got only bits of governmental resources; finally, villages without central spatial function mainly lost their own council, in many cases their independence. With a few exceptions, they were forbidden to develop (for example dwelling, services, infrastructure), even if they had own financial resources.

As the county’s settlement network had a mature form, no new towns were planned but in long term. The effects of the concept can be measured on Győr, the county seat and the villages with very few or zero central functions. Győr emerged to the five first rank centers, figure shows that its population change had a significant break after 1971. (Population growth can be seen as an indicator of governments “favor”, because large scale dwelling project depended exclusively on central government in the planned economy.) Other high- and middle level centers showed moderate growth in their population. The population slope of the “disfavored” villages begins mainly before 1971 but we can see some dramatic cases, where previously flourishing settlements shrunk (many to one third of their maximum population), that can be caused by several factors but all of them originated from losing the former position in the hierarchy of the settlement network. Despite that fact, that Győr-Moson-Sopron county was one of the most developed in Hungary, financial resources were never enough, so the concept could not evolve even favored centers (excepted Győr, Sopron and Mosonmagyaróvár)! We cannot find any break upwards in the population figures (Exceptions are settlements in special situation, like agglomeration, respectively transport nodes.), so we can state, that villages paid the development of the three biggest cities.