Gabriel Chitac

chitacgabriel@yahoo.com

Introduction to the human geography of Hungary

Table of contents:

-Introduction

-Theory

- Empirical part

-Analysis

-Conclusion1
Suburbanizationin the city of Budapest

Suburbanization is about moving people from big cities like Budapest, to surrounding neighbourhoods creating small communities. I
think moving from the city to the suburbs is an important phenomen in these days, people with families mostly likely are living here.
They have the same conditions as in the city, in recent years these areas are developing more and more and they commute
between the city where they work and suburbs where they live. Personally Im a fan of this idea, in living in a decent suburb area out
1In the 1950s, 60% of the industrial output in Hungary was concentrated in Budapest. After the 1950s, this
ratio began to decrease.

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com
of the crowded city but close enough to work there and in the same time is one of the most important demographic phenom in XXI
century.
Earlier knowledge
In the post-socialist cities we find an increasing number of people from the city to the surrounding areas and this one of the
developments in these types of cities, as is the case for Budapest now. It was the case of people living and working there. After some
economical and political changes in the 80 and 90 suburban areas of Budapest started to receive more people than before. Of course,
this migration is not uniform on all the Budapest surrounding areas as Hungarian Statistical Office shows that.
It cannot be explained by any pattern like where people want to live, is just whrere they have housing construction opportunities,
attitude of local government etc.
The change of job is less important as a reason. Job motives, however, are important for households moving into the agglomeration
from elsewhere. This rural urbanization process is rather strong in the Eastern zone, implying that rural urbanization has not come to
an end.

Empirical Part
During the 90s city of Budapest lost 15% of its population while suburban areas grew up to 20%. Most of these people who moved
out of the city were looking for a green zone.During the communism the autorities totally neglected this suburban areas while with
the 90s they improved quite fast the infrastrucure and obviosulyatracting rich people with new lifestyle. As a result, the suburban
areas expanded and the settlements developed rapidly.

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com
Budapest was established in 1872 by the unification of three towns: Pest, Buda, and Obuda ('Old Buda'). There was a series of
settlements as a effect of urban development, all of these were closely connected to Budapest beeing in a number of 23 settlements.
Speaking about the period before 89/90 these surrounding areas were quite different after the change of the regim. In the Socialism
state the agglomeration process was determined by huge demand of jobs in Budapest.
The capital was the main city with the most important development of industry witch generated huge demand for workers. Moving
from the city center city outside to the settlings included administrative difficulties involved in settling within the city boundaries and,
secondly, an under-financing of urban infrastructure which arose out of the preoccupation with industrial development. This led to
some consequences such as a long-term housing shortages in Budapest2.

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com

The increasing number of population in the suburban areas came as a reason for people leaving their villages, other cities, and
moving to Budapest3. The suburbanization around Budapest seems to be highly segregated process, the residents are moving far from
the city centre to the suburbs in a radial direction. They tend most likely to stay in the same part of the urban region. The short
distance from Budapest to the surrounding areas is not one of the main reasons when it comes for people to move. Having a job in
Budapest is not an obstacle for people to move to the suburbs. The decision on moving out of the city to the suburbs is based on

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com
several reason such as: environmental preferences and family preferences. People want to live with their families in a nice and quite
environment proper for development.

People dont want to live in a polluted environment , they want to evoid agglomeration of the city and these are just two
reasons of people moving. Nowadays Budapest is confronting with these wich are some of the most problems the city have. The
Budapest FUR (Functional urban region) delimited according to the above-mentioned method incorporates 170 settlements with more
than 2.8 million inhabitants, which is more than one-quarter of the population of Hungary. The study area is similar to other major
Central and Eastern European metropolitan areas (Prague, Warsaw) concerning population, size and the level of economic
development. As not all data used in this research are available for the FUR, a number of different territorial units will be referred to in
this study. Table 1 explains their meanings and coverage. oundBudapest seems to be a

Area NUTS/LAU
Territorial unit

Budapest (central city, core city,

capital)

level
2 (km
)

525

NUTS 3

Number of

Population

municipalities

(2012)

23 districts

1 740 041

Comment

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com

Budapest and 80 municipalities around

Budapest Agglomeration

3063 n.a.

81

2 268 652

Agglomeration belt

2538 n.a.

80

755 290

Pest County

6393 NUTS 3

187

1 245 048

Central Hungary

6919 NUTS 1 & 2

188

2 925 500

Budapest and Pest County

5748 n.a.

170

1 150 968

See definition above

n.a.

LAU 1

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

LAU 2

n.a.

n.a.

Functional Urban Region (FUR)

without Budapest

Microregions

Municipalities or settlements
(used as synonyms)
Table 1

Territorial units used in the study

it as delimited in 2007

The agglomeration without Budapest

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com

New economic growth poles in the Budapest urban region

Some of the big companies relocated their headquarters and it is an indication of jobs who can be found out of Budapest and created:
Central European regional centres in Budapest's suburban zone.The Torokbalint-Budaors area has the highest number and greatest
variety of such headquarters (for example: Media Markt, TESCO, Auchan, METRO, Regional Centre of Tetra-Pak, Opel Hungary,
ENI Hungaria, Telenor). The difference between this headquarters in Western Europe, USA and Budapest is that they didnt relocate
from Budapest to the suburban zone, they preffered to have headquarters in a green area in the suburbs when they first apperead in the
1990s. On the one hand, most of these companies set up their headquarters attached to their new production, logistics or commercial
sites. Thus they could economise on the costs of establishing their offices. On the other hand, the incentives for the relocation of
companiesheadquarters (e.g. unavailability of free land in the city centre, workforce moving out of the city) has not been strong. This
is especially true for companies that require large office spaces as brownfield development areas in or near the city centre could still
attract most of the office developments.

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com
There are, however, some exceptions. Telenor, one of the
major mobile phone providers, whose headquarters contains
exclusively offices, relocated within the suburban zone, from
Budaors, its first headquarters, to a newly built company head
office in Torokbalint. Post-suburban areas are dominated by
services, high-tech industry, for research and development
centres also. As a culmination of post-suburban development,
the construction of a large-scale artificial town started in 2008
in the Western-Agglomeration adjoining the BudaorsTorokbalint cluster that would feature a combination of the
above post-suburban elements in an edge-city manner.
ToPark, the first complex residential, office and commercial
development in the inner suburban area will offer 5-6,000
office jobs in the short term and 20- 30,000 jobs in the long
run. In addition, flats, an exhibition centre, Hungary's largest shopping mall, and services on 20,000 square metres (hotels, school,
medical centre) will be constructed on an area of 200 hectares (Walker and Williams Investment Group, 2008).

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com
Conclusions
In the last years, decade the most spectacular change in the
migration pattern of Hungary is suburbanization. This was
due several reason and we can name some: congestion,
pollution, high prices of houses, taxes, increasing number of
car ownership stimulated people to move out of Budapest,
to suburban areas. Due to the size of the agglomeration and
advanced communication infrastructure in Budapest we
could observe this phenomenon better. Between 1990 and
1996, Budapest lost nearly 130 thousand inhabitants
(approx. seven per cent of the total population). The new
type of suburbanization generated by the capitalist of the
labour and the housing market has also impacted people in Budapest.The properties in inner-city parts of Pest left behind by the
people who moved to the suburbs, are mostly taken over by poor people coming in from the countryside. If the present outflow of
people continues, Budapest will find itself in a difficult economic situation, as Western cities did in the 1960s and 70s. The outmigration of higher-income groups and the rapid expansion of lavish garden cities in the periphery results in lower tax revenues for the
city. But those people who move away often continue to rely on urban services. The poor people, who stay behind, are not able to
generate sufficient tax revenues to maintain the current level of services.
References

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com
Hegediis, J., S. Mayo, and I. Tosics (1996) Transition of the Housing Sector in the East Central European Countries, Budapest: MRI.
Kovfics, Z. (1998) "Aspects of post-socialist transformation in Eastern Europe with special attention to the labour and housing
market", in Weesep, J., van (ed.), Proceedings Conference Transformation Processes in Eastern Europe, Part 1 Housing and the Labour Market, pp. 43-56, The Hague: ESR.
N6meth, Zs. (1996) Hungary's Affair with Urbanisation: A Study on Old and New Urban Development Trends, Rotterdam: Urban
Management Centre.
KSH K6zponti Statisztikai Hivatal - Hungarian Central Statistical Office (1996) Mikrozensus, 1996 - A N6pess6g 6s a lakfisok
jellemz6i [Microcensus 1996 KSH K6zponti Statisztikai Hivatal - Hungarian Central Statistical Office (1996) Mikrozensus, 1996 - A N6pess6g 6s a lakfisok
jellemz6i [Microcensus 1996 Characteristics of the population and dwellings], Budapest: KSH.

http://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11871881.pdf
http://eur.sagepub.com/content/8/4/349.short
Kovfics, Z. (1992) "Assessing the postwar urban developement in Budapest", in Kert6sz, A., and Z. Kovfics, (eds.), pp. 159-169, New
Perspectives, Hungarian Geography. Studies in Geography in Hungary 27, Budapest: Akad6miai Kind6.

Gabriel Chitac
chitacgabriel@yahoo.com