REGIONAL DIFFERENCES OF URBANIZATION IN THE CARPATHIAN-BASIN BETWEEN 1950 AND 2010

Abstract

The urbanization process, its stages, regional differences are well-known in Hungary and also in the neighbouring countries. The historic background is also similar in the different countries, so the main characteristics of the process are similar. Are there any regional differences among the countries in the urbanization process? In the Carpathian-basin (the former territory of the Hungarian Kingdom) there are smaller or larger parts of nine countries (Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine). It is hard to define similar urban levels in these counties, so we used the word ‘urban’ for the settlement with more than 10 000 inhabitants. There are 365 towns, where the population were larger than 10 000 at least once between 1950-2010 by a census. The speed of urbanization was fast between 1950-1990 at any countries, but the fastest in Slovakia and Romania. After 1990 a new stage of urbanization process emerged, the suburbanization, so the population increase of most of the towns stopped. We can see the largest decline of population of towns in Romania and at the industrial towns. On the other hand there is population increase nowadays in some Slovakian towns and the suburban ones. We made clusters of towns of the Carpathian-Basin by population change with cluster analysis, among the eight clusters there are special groups, like Budapest, the large towns, industrial small towns, socialist industrial towns, suburban towns and the declining agricultural towns of the Great Plain (Alföld).