This paper intends to fill a gap in critical smart city scholarship regarding the Central Eastern European (CEE) context. To this end, smart city understandings and practices in Hungary's five ...(non-capital) major cities are examined through a discourse-analytical focus on relevant municipal planning documents, existing interventions and key actors' interpretations. The paper concludes that although smart city building in Hungary in many ways aligns with trends in the Global North and South, there are also notable differences that need to be contextualized in the country's historically shaped trajectory of urban (policy) development, especially its post-socialist institutional path-dependencies.
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.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The world’s agriculture faces many challenges nowadays, such as tackling the effects of climate change, conserving agrobiodiversity, or feeding the Earth’s growing population. These issues often ...induce conflicting development directions, such as digitalization and ecologization, as the case of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) shows. In the last decades, policymakers have focused mainly on greening agricultural production and the food industry, and now the CAP is part of the European Green Deal. In our research, we assessed the sustainability problems affecting the agribusiness sector and food consumption in Hungary using descriptive statistical analysis. On the other hand, we examined the latest sectoral development documents (Digital Agricultural Strategy, Digital Food Industry Strategy) in order to find out to what extent they answer the identified issues. Our results revealed that the Hungarian agribusiness sector is struggling with several sustainability challenges, which do not receive adequate attention from policymakers. The newest development strategies are characterized by forced digitalization efforts, while their applicability and effectiveness are uncertain. Because of similar development trajectories, we believe most of our results are relevant to other Central Eastern European Member states. Hence, further CAP and national policy reforms are needed to make Europe’s agribusiness sector more sustainable.
Livestock farming in developed countries faces adverse environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. Moreover, economic and social issues have emerged, such as farm ...concentration and the aging of farmers. Consequently, the decline of small farms and household animal husbandry substantially impacted rural communities, posing challenges for rural development. This study investigates these processes within the Hungarian livestock sector from the 1990s to recent years in the context of rural development, which is a rarely explored viewpoint in the literature. The research employed a statistical and policy document analysis, a literature review, and interviews (n = 66) conducted in Hungary’s Southern Great Plain region. The results reveal a decline in the number of animals and small farms in rural settlements, accompanied by an intense farm concentration, negatively affecting income generation opportunities. The established large-scale industrial animal husbandry has adverse environmental effects without positive externalities. The interviews highlight the severe challenges that young farmers face in starting their businesses, including land, labor, and capital shortages, leading to a slow generational change in the farming society. These processes demonstrate the limited multifunctionality of animal husbandry in Hungary. Our findings differ from those advocating for large-scale industrial agriculture development because an overly one-sided development pathway could lead to unsustainability.
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.
Rezső Mészáros was born in Makó, on March 4, 1942. In 1965 he graduated from the institution formerly known as Attila József University as a teacher of Geography and Biology. Then he taught in ...Csanádpalota, until 1974, when he joined the “school of human geography” in Szeged. His candidate dissertation was defended in 1980, and his DSc thesis in 1989. In 1990 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, later (between 1994 and 2003) served as rector of the university, becoming one of the longest reigning heads of the institution in its history. During his rectorship the integration of the university was carried out. Rezső Mészáros dealt with several research topics such as agricultural geography, regional and settlement development, globalisation, and analysis of cyber and virtual spaces. In recognition of his work he was declared an honorary citizen of Szeged and he was awarded the Hungarian Middle Cross of Merit. From 2007, he has been a full member of The Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Professor Mészáros’ personality and work is inevitable in the Hungarian human geography. This conversation intends to provide insight into the different stages of his life, giving some advice and lessons to the scholars of Hungarian geography.
Mészáros Rezső 1942. március 4-én született Makón. 1965-ben a József Attila Tudományegyetemen szerezte meg földrajz–biológia szakos középiskolai tanári oklevelét. Ezt követően Csanádpalotán tanított, ...majd 1974-ben került a szegedi társadalomföldrajzos iskola kötelékébe. 1980-ban védte meg a kandidátusi, 1989-ben pedig az akadémiai doktori értekezését. 1990-ben a Természettudományi Kar dékánja volt, majd később, 1994-től 2003-ig a rektori tisztséget töltötte be. Ezzel az egyetem történetének egyik leghosszabb ideig hivatalban lévő vezetőjévé vált. Ehhez a korszakhoz kötődik többek között a Szegedi Tudományegyetem integrációja is. Mészáros Rezső számos kutatási témával foglalkozott az évek során, többek között agrárföldrajzzal, terület- és településfejlesztéssel, globalizációval, illetve a kiber- és virtuális terek vizsgálatával. Munkája elismeréseként Szeged díszpolgárává nyilvánították, a Magyar Köztársaság Elnökének Aranyérmét és a Magyar Köztársasági Érdemrend középkeresztjét is elnyerte. 2007 óta a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia rendes tagja. Mészáros Rezső személye, munkássága megkerülhetetlen a magyarországi társadalomföldrajzban. Jelen beszélgetés betekintést kíván nyújtani a professzor életének különböző állomásaiba, mindemellett tanulságokat, tanácsokat fogalmaz meg a hazai földrajztudomány és annak művelői számára.
A városok felgyorsult növekedése, az egyre nagyobb léptékű népességkoncentrációk kialakulása és az ezzel egyidejűleg végbemenő technológiai fejlődés következtében napjainkra a városkutatásban szinte ...megkerülhetetlen témává vált az ún. okos város koncepció. Az okos város fogalma az elmúlt évtizedekben alakult ki, főként az urbanizáció, a digitális forradalom és a hatékonyabb és fenntarthatóbb városi szolgáltatások és környezetvédelem iránti társadalmi igényekre adott válaszként. Az infokommunikációs technológiák használata a településfejlesztésben jelentős potenciállal bír, ami okán a smart city koncepció egy új fejlődési paradigmaként is értelmezhető. A tanulmány első részében bemutatom, miképpen magyarázható az okos város koncepció, milyen összetevői vannak, a nemzetközi szakirodalomban hogyan definiálják. Ezt követően kitérek arra, hogy bár a városfejlesztési trendek az okos városok felé mutatnak, a koncepció gyakorlati megvalósításának (megvalósíthatóságának) vizsgálatakor a kritikai városföldrajzi megközelítés számos olyan területet azonosít – mint például a fejlesztések területi- és társadalmi fókusza, közösségi bevonás, adatgazdálkodás – amelyek alapvető fontosságúak a sikeres, befogadó és fenntartható okos városok létrehozásához. E kritikai elemzés a jelenleg uralkodó neoliberális várospolitika ismérveivel veti össze az okos város koncepció egyes elemeit, valamint hiányosságait. A tapasztalatokra építve megfogalmazom, hogy a témában milyen új, eddig feltáratlan kutatási kérdések merülnek fel.
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.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Regional inequalities in Hungary, which have been conserved for decades, are well documented by human geography and regional science. However, changing policy frameworks, policy decisions, and ...finally, local decisions and value choices influence the development trajectories of regions that lean on new approaches. For example, the concept of smart settlements is a relatively new policy tool, which builds on the use of information-communication technology not only in urban, but also in rural areas. In this paper, we investigate the topic of smart rural development from a policy and regional development perspective, giving insights into the influencing factors of the spread of smart villages in Hungary, and how the actors interested in Hungarian rural development interpret the smart village concept. Based on qualitative analysis of expert interviews and online questionnaire survey, we describe what factors influence the feasibility of smart projects. We point out the shortcomings of technology-oriented, top-down, project-based development and planning practice, and building on our results, we provide policy recommendations.
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