CHANGES IN THE SPATIAL PATTERNS OF CHURCH-AFFILIATED INSTITUTIONS IN DEBRECEN SINCE THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY
Abstract
An important area of research in the field of settlement geography is the examination of the location of various types of units with different land use functions. The largest diversity among the different functions can be found among institutions, in connection with which, over the last several decades, researchers have analysed the spatial patterns of public administration, educational, cultural, healthcare, social and sports facilities. At the same time, little attention has been devoted to the case when a single maintaining entity operates several institutions of different kinds. The largest of such types of maintaining entities are churches, the roles of which have also changed several times over the past few centuries, primarily as a result of historical and political factors.
In the spirit of the above, the aim of this paper is to examine the spatial patterns of institutions maintained by the churches and used for various purposes in the case of a given settlement, the city of Debrecen, also sometimes referred to as the "Calvinist Rome".
The main findings of the paper can be summarised in the following. In the period examined, there was a continuous increase in the number of institutions maintained by the churches until World War II. Next, there came a significant drop in the socialist era, followed by an increase again after the political changes. Among the factors influencing the location of the institutions within the city, the territorial distribution of population can be regarded as the most important: churches strive to situate their houses of worship and educational institutions near the place where their members reside. In the period preceding World War I, this fundamentally meant the city centre; at the same time, however, certain differences can be observed among the individual denominations. The most characteristic tendency in the period between the two world wars – although typically only in case of the two largest religions – was the spatial de-concentration and spreading. The spatial tendencies of the period following the political changes were basically influenced by two factors. On the one hand, churches tried to ensure the proximity of houses of worship to their members, which was manifested in the construction of several new church buildings, primarily in the vicinity of new pockets of population concentration. On the other hand, churches set as a goal the regaining of ownership of some of their earlier institutions, and in the framework of such efforts, primarily with a view to good accessibility, they concentrated on schools located in the city centre.
