THE ROLE OF RESILIENCE IN THE DEVELOPEMENT OF SMALL TOWNS – A CASE STUDY FROM KOMLÓ

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the small towns’ development within the theoretic framework of resilience. The concept of resilience has become a wide-spread narrative among human geographers and spatial scientist after its more and more common usage in ecology and environmental sciences. Nowadays, the term, which was originally used for biological organisations, later for complex ecological systems is often applied in a more general meaning: the competence of complex social systems to giving flexible answers to external impacts. The multiple changes of the post-socialist transformation appear as a major external shock at the level of small towns. Among the elements, deindustrialisation, the loss of industrial workplaces could be used as an indicator of these processes. The present case study is based on own empirical surveys (interviews) conducted in Komló, Baranya county, a shrinking former socialist mining-town. Surveys tried to reveal elements of the resilient answer to the shock of the mine closures between 1990 and 2000, focusing some potential “soft” factors.