The delimitation and classification of peripheral settlements using multivariate statistical methods is presented in this article, with a case study of Hungary. A combination of four different methods provided the basis for the delimitation of settlements defined as peripheral. As significant overlapping was detected between the results of the different methods, peripheries – more than one-fifth of the Hungarian settlements – were identified in a common set of the results. The independence of the results from the applied methods points to the fact that peripherisation is multi-faceted, and the peripheries of Hungary are stable and well-discernible from other regions. After the identification of peripheral areas, we classified these settlements into groups based on their specific features. Multiple steps specifying the relevant variables resulted in selecting the most appropriate 10 indicators and these served as the basis for a hierarchical cluster analysis, through which 7 clusters (types of peripheries) were identified. Five of them comprised enough cases to detect the most important dimensions and specific features of the backwardness of these groups. These clusters demonstrated a spatial pattern and their socioeconomic and infrastructural features highlighted considerable disparities. These differences should be taken into consideration when development policies are applied at regional levels or below.
Trends in regional inequalities between 1910 and 1930 in Hungary and the successor states
The present article is a summary of a 5-year research on historical peripheries of Hungary between 1910 and 2010. The identification of peripheral zones in Hungary in 1910 – which geographers failed to do up to now – contributed to the assessment of mistargeted regional development planning policies in the last hundred years. On the other hand it also caused debates, because many of the backward areas coincided with regions dominated by ethnic minorities, thus strengthening the opinion of the historians of the successor states that Austria-Hungary oppressed national minorities.
The first part of the article summarizes the opinions, interpretations, misunderstandings emerging from this debate around mapping of inequalities and the implementation of geographical methods in historical research. The second part of the article goes further and – by drawing up the regional differences in 2010 – evaluates the development policies of the successor states, claiming that these were not better, than in historical Hungary; the successor states were driven by the same convictions and pursued similar policies toward zones inhabited by minorities as Hungary did. We show that there were remarkable shifts in the extension of backward zones and the question naturally arises when this process began. Using the census data of the 1930s we try to analyze whether some of these changes observable by 2010 can be traced back to WWII (or were generated only later), and if yes, whether these are direct consequences of the new borders drawn in 1920 or, contrary, it was the former processes during the Hungarian rule that culminated (implying that the first 10 years of the successor states was a failure regarding the integration attempts of the new territories). For this a distric level complex development level map of the region was created by combining 10 variables and the patterns in the 1930s were compared to those in 1910 and in 2010.
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