DEVELOPMENT DIRECTIONS OF THE SMALL TOWNS IN THE NORTH TRANSDANUBIA, ON THE BASE OF COMMUTING DATA
Abstract
In our research we are going to examine the changes of the small towns (less than 50 thousands inhab.) and we are going to analyse and compare the data of the 2001 and 2011 censuses on commuting. The places of residence and work of the respondents are known, thus, based on this data we calculated the number of employees living in the given settlements, as well as the number of people travelling to work in the given city and the number of people travelling from these cities to work elsewhere. The current significance of commuting in Hungary is shown by the data of the 2011 census: approximately 35% of the 4 million employees work in a different settlement, then where they live, and the number of commuters and their proportion referred to the total number of employees have also increased significantly. Where the number of employees increased by 7% on national level between 2001 and 2011, the respective figure in case of commuters was 25%. The majority of the employees living in smaller settlements travel to work elsewhere: the smaller a settlement is, the higher the proportion of commuters to other settlements is (in settlements with less than 2,000 inhabitants this proportion exceeds 60%).
The role of economically developed territories is getting more important in the employment of rural spaces. But there are large zones from where these big centres aren’t easy to approach. The small and medium sized centres offer an alternative for employment, maintenance of life quality, thus, their role is significant in conserving the local population.
The small towns have very different development paths. Some of them develop successfully but the majority have lost their population and workplaces during the last decade. The decrease in the number of locally employed people is not followed everywhere by the decrease in the number of commuters. In case of Pápa, beside the slight fall in the number of locally employed people, both outward and inward commuting had gained ground significantly. However, we could see in other, smaller centres as well that besides an increasing outward commuting the other two indicators show strong decrease (e.g. Mór). The lessons these examples teach us are the following: important district centres, like Pápa, have maintained their position as important commuting destinations, while the surrounding settlements are not in the transport geographical situation that would facilitate for the inhabitants to commute towards larger and more distant centres. On the other hand, several smaller employment centres, where mainly commuter manpower based mobile assembly activities are organized, typically in an industrial park, might see a quick decrease too.
Generally the big centres and their agglomerations have more and more higher role in the employment, there is a visible process of concentrations of population and workplaces. The success of small towns depends on the geographical position considerably.
