Minor Cities in a Metropolitan World: Challenges for Development and Governance in Three Hungarian Urban Agglomerations

Abstract

Minor cities represent urban centres on a sub-metropolitan scale which are struggling to integrate into competitive city networks characterized by intense, worldwide agglomeration processes. Lacking sufficient mass and often situated on Europe's geographic or socio-economic peripheries, they must balance specialization and diversification agendas, and develop effective urban governance to remain viable economic centres. This paper investigates ongoing urbanization processes and their effects on minor cities, illustrated by three case studies from Hungary. Findings suggest that development cooperation and the foundations of 'urban regimes' emerge even in small and institutionally weak city-regions, although the content, as well as organization of the resulting arrangements exhibit differences from the base model.

Metropolitan region policies in the European Union: following national, European or neoliberal agendas?

“…Institutionalization of metropolitan regions has been left to bottom-up initiatives based on the collaboration of local governments and administrations with Poznan metropolitan region being a prominent example. Similar policy trends can be observed in Hungary, where the centrality of Budapest has been increasing in the past years with a strong accumulation of economic, political and demographic resources in the capital city (Lux 2015). Minor cities face major challenges in order to survive in a 'metropolitan world' (Lux 2015, 23).…”

Characteristics of Post Socialist Spatial Development of the Functional Urban Area of Veszprém, Hungary

“…Furthermore, the location of new industrial sites follows the socialist heritage and are mostly opened in the neighbourhood of former industrial units. This can be explained with the importance of transport and logistic facilities nearby, as an economic incentive at other Hungarian towns, Miskolc and Győr as well (Lux, 2014).…”

“…Hungary is also affected by increase of artificial areas, however in several regions the population of urban fabric decreases (Hennig et al, 2015). Several researches showed the tendencies and differences within Hungary (for example Ladányi and Szelényi, 1997;Bajmócy, 2001;Timár, 2005) as well as in small cities like Győr, Pécs, Miskolc (Lux, 2014, Hardi, 2012Somlyódyné Pfeil, 2012), Szeged (Mucsi, 2011), Kecskemét (Ricz et al, 2009), Nyíregyháza (Kókai, 2006), most of all focus on socio-economic changes and consequences, but not land use changes. Although the trends are well known, the Hungarian spatial planning could not find satisfactory answer to manage urban sprawl and negative tendencies of increasing land consumption.…”

Discourses and practices of the smart city in Central Eastern Europe: insights from Hungary’s ‘big’ cities

“…Cities with county rights 5including those under study here -have been relatively less affected by centralization measures (Pálné Kovács 2019) and have had more funding at their disposal, including dedicated funding from the Territorial and Settlement Operative Programme (TOP), as well as under the Modern Cities Programme (a development programme aiming to turn cities with county rights into regional economic centres). Yet, even Hungary's major cities have struggled with the economic and institutional weaknesses under postsocialism (Lux, 2015); their lack of development know-how and skilled personal (ibid. ), and their -in international comparison relatively -sparse financial means and the limited scope of municipal functions have undermined their capacity to proactively shape their local business environment (Somlyódyné Pfeil 2019).…”

“…Furthermore, by studying Hungary's (non-capital) 'big cities' (nagyváros) (Faragó 2009) that appear 'only' as minor cities in the international context (see, e.g. Lux 2015), the paper also addresses the existing bias towards metropolitan areas in the literature (see Karvonen, Cugurullo, and Caprotti 2018, p. 5;Joss et al 2019). Second, in line with calls for accounts of smart city building based on in-depth fieldwork rather than document analysis alone (Kitchin 2015), the paper assumes that although they are insightful, text-oriented discourseanalytical perspectives on smart city development (e.g.…”