This study compares the social sustainability of urban renewal interventions in Hungary and South Africa. The societal and environmental challenges arising from urbanisation and the associated ...population growth in major urban centres around the world have increased the research and policy foci on urban sustainability and governance. While urban regeneration projects are vitally important to urban sustainability, these interventions have been widely criticised because social sustainability issues have been overlooked or ignored. Therefore, there is a need for governance practices that are applicable to different national and urban contexts. The main aim of this study is twofold: firstly, it provides a literature review on the social sustainability of urban renewal and secondly, it compares urban renewal interventions in two different geographical settings to provide recommendations about public participation and stakeholder involvement, which can contribute to increasing social sustainability of urban renewal projects. To this end, a comparative approach was adopted through the analysis of two urban renewal projects: Magdolna Quarter Programme (Budapest, Hungary) and the Albert Park (Durban, South Africa), the data for which were based on a review of secondary sources, including international literature and policy documents. It was found that although urban renewal serves a city-wide purpose (and not just a local one), the socio-economic impacts of these projects have not yet been adequately explored. Furthermore, to achieve higher urban renewal sustainability, there is a need for impact assessments (with special attention paid to the social effects) to promote public participation and empowerment.
This paper aims at expanding the scope of the dominantly pragmatic, local scale-oriented smart village scholarship towards a perspective that recognizes that smart village development is a ...multiscalar political process. To show the necessity of this move, the shaping of smart village policies and practices in Hungary is examined through a qualitative lens. As the authors argue, path-dependent structural obstacles and interscalar relations undermine the prospects of smart village building in the sense of bottom-up integrated rural development, and there is a risk of a bias towards technological innovation. This exploratory article, using Hungary as a case study, argues that smart village scholarship should draw on the results of critical smart city scholarship to acquire in-depth understanding of current debates regarding potential smart village developments.
In the literature studentification is closely associated with gentrification. Many authors consider the mass invasion of students to inner-city neighbourhoods as a type of gentrification, some of ...them even use the two terms interchangeably. Regardless of theoretical considerations, it seems that there is a consensus on the significance of studentification in contemporary urban transformations. Recent studies demonstrate that the appearance of students as 'transient' inhabitants in inner-city neighbourhoods, accompanied by growing differences in lifestyles and socio-cultural attitudes weakens social cohesion in the affected neighbourhoods Haase, A. et al. 2012). This study focuses on the interplay between studentification, socio-cultural diversity and social cohesion in an inner-city district of Budapest, Józsefváros. The district has been characterised by several waves of urban rehabilitation and subsequent gentrification since the transition of 1989-1990. Studentification has also become dominant phenomenon in the area due to the settling of new higher education institutions, the concomitant influx of students, as well as low rent and dwelling prices providing a niche for the spontaneous movements of a new generation of urbanites (Grabkowska, M. 2011; Bernt, M. et al. 2015). The main research questions we intend to answer in this paper are as follows. Firstly, what is the relationship between studentification and gentrification in Józsefváros? Secondly, what kinds of effects has the influx of students on the social cohesion of the district? According to our findings, studentification in Józsefváros is not the pioneer phase of gentrification, but - especially in the rehabilitation areas - it runs more or less parallel with it. Most of the students use the place as a springboard in their career, and after graduation most of them leave. The attitude of students is, however, very much resembles those of the young, highly educated newcomers, i.e. early gentrifiers. The impacts of studentification on the social milieu of Józsefváros are contradictory. On the one hand, the inflow of students and young intellectuals increases the socio-cultural diversity of the district, contributing to the recognition of diversity in a post-socialist context, and fostering tolerance and the acceptance of different cultures and lifestyles. On the other hand, it seems that the ongoing population change hampers the establishment of strong social ties at the neighbourhood level and leads to certain conflicts.
This article investigates the interconnectedness between neighbourhood diversity and local business structures. For this purpose, interviews with residents and entrepreneurs were conducted in three ...European cities: Budapest, Copenhagen, and Milan. The results show that diversity in the economic structure of urban neighbourhoods is equally important with regards to residents’ quality of life, the image of the neighbourhood, and local social cohesion. Therefore, the main recommendation is that policy makers should act to preserve the diversity of local business structures, and that the concept of diversity itself should be understood in a broader sense, taking local peculiarities into account.
Smart cities have spawned a global discourse, which is, however, dominated by notions and theories originating from major metropolis regions in the Global North/West, as well as by quantitative ...approaches. Drawing on case studies from Hungary, this paper aims to reveal how place-specific factors influence smart-city development and to discover the characteristics of this development in the Hungarian context. For this purpose, qualitative research methods, namely a content analysis of policy documents and semi-structured expert interviews, were used. Based on the results, we distinguished four development paths: representative, stalled, organizational model, and focused smart city. Findings broaden the general understanding of smart-city development, providing policy recommendations for the future adaptation of the concept.
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