URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND SETTLEMENT MORPHOLOGY OF SZÉKESFEHÉRVÁR
Abstract
Székesfehérvár was one of the centres of Hungary in the centuries of the Middle Times, the coronation and burial city of the kings of Hungary. The city – that had no preliminaries either in the Ancient Times or at the time of the Great Invasions – was founded by Hungarians in the 10th and 11th centuries. The first part of our paper is a summary of the history of the city from two aspects: on the one hand we sought those components in the development of the settlement that are responsible for today’s socio-economic development and the image of urban structure; on the other hand, we analysed the development of the base plan of Székesfehérvár, which served as the foundation of the functional morphology examination of the city.
Székesfehérvár is one of the founded cities of Hungary and Transdanubia, which, especially since the late 18th century, has more and more markedly shown characteristic of the naturally grown cities in its base plan and other aspects of urban geography. The development of the base plan of the city and the style of building up today are similar in several respects to other historical cities in Transdanubia (Győr, Sopron, Szombathely and Veszprém), but it also shows individual features in many respects.
The image of Székesfehérvár is urban in the inner city and the inner residential zone, while it is garden city like or even rural in some places in the outer residential zone. The vertical diversity and especially the horizontal closedness of building up differ from those of the former free royal cities with long historical past; the former is a little bigger, the latter much smaller than in the other cities. The city is dominated by multi-storey blocks of houses, detached houses and closed rows of multi-storey buildings; the other styles are either missing (villas) or have a marginal significance, only.
The functional structure of the city is similar to those of the other big cities of Hungary, with all functional zones typical of the cities of Hungary present in it. Coming from the very strong industrial and economic character of the city, industrial territories have large areas, and so the proportion of residential and non-residential areas is almost the same in the city. The relatively small but developed inner city has already expanded beyond the boundary of the historical city core. The inner residential zone, consisting mostly of housing estates, is a real belt around the city. The outer residential zone, on the other hand, is not a real belt; it can be divided into three parts and is mainly built up with detached houses. A large number of hypermarkets, specialised department stores and shopping centres have settled in Székesfehérvár, creating six sub-centres along the incoming or bypass roads, sharing thereby the commerce functions of the inner city. The industrial areas of Székesfehérvár are huge, made by seven industrial parks, several old traditional industrial areas and a few industrial enclaves (in the inner residential zone). The size and proportion of green areas is relatively small, and they are scattered in the city.
