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The East-Central European region has undergone a unique urbanisation process during socialist and postsocialist periods. These peculiarities result from social and economic development delays, which the state has tried to remedy through massive interventions. One such intervention is urban reclassification, where the state promotes certain places it deems crucial, granting them urban status, often without actual development or urban characteristics. Due to its artificial character, this intervention is called formal urbanisation in our approach being a specific local feature of the urbanisation process. The visible result is the growth of the urban population, often only by administrative causes, with the reclassification of villages as towns. The emergence of numerous small towns, which we refer to as newest towns, has significantly influenced urbanisation, altered the concept of towns and cities3, and generated significant debates. In this paper, we compare the formal urbanisation of the socialist and post-socialist eras, trying to estimate the added value of formal urbanisation in the latter period. We compare the administrative backgrounds of formal urbanisation in selected ECE countries for similarities and differences. Throughout the research, we analyse their formal urbanisation involving approximately 800 municipalities promoted since 1990 in Poland, Czechia, Hungary, and Romania, trying to identify common and unique features in the processes. Based on historical determination, modernisation, and integration into new spatial processes, considering demographic and functional changes, we developed types of formal urbanisation. Our research has revealed several common factors in the reclassification process, such as local initiatives, while we have also identified disparities between principles and practices and varying levels of control from regional and national actors. The study has also led to a deeper understanding of formal urbanisation in the context of the urbanisation process as a whole.

The East-Central European region has undergone a unique urbanisation process during socialist and postsocialist periods. These peculiarities result from social and economic development delays, which the state has tried to remedy through massive interventions. One such intervention is urban reclassification, where the state promotes certain places it deems crucial, granting them urban status, often without actual development or urban characteristics. Due to its artificial character, this intervention is called formal urbanisation in our approach being a specific local feature of the urbanisation process. The visible result is the growth of the urban population, often only by administrative causes, with the reclassification of villages as towns. The emergence of numerous small towns, which we refer to as newest towns, has significantly influenced urbanisation, altered the concept of towns and cities3, and generated significant debates. In this paper, we compare the formal urbanisation of the socialist and post-socialist eras, trying to estimate the added value of formal urbanisation in the latter period. We compare the administrative backgrounds of formal urbanisation in selected ECE countries for similarities and differences. Throughout the research, we analyse their formal urbanisation involving approximately 800 municipalities promoted since 1990 in Poland, Czechia, Hungary, and Romania, trying to identify common and unique features in the processes. Based on historical determination, modernisation, and integration into new spatial processes, considering demographic and functional changes, we developed types of formal urbanisation. Our research has revealed several common factors in the reclassification process, such as local initiatives, while we have also identified disparities between principles and practices and varying levels of control from regional and national actors. The study has also led to a deeper understanding of formal urbanisation in the context of the urbanisation process as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suburbanization is one of the most defining processes of the post-socialist urban development. According to Czech, Slovak, and Polish examples, the process is differentiated at the sub-municipal level as much as at the municipal level. A typical case is when suburbanization occurs in villages previously attached to cities and their associated agricultural areas and scattered settlements. This study aims to prove the existence of the phenomenon in Hungary based on an empirical field survey and by analysing national statistical data. The outskirts and other inner areas of the agglomerations took on a significant population number in the surroundings of midsize and large cities. In many cases, the population growth of the cities is entirely linked to such settlements, at the same time in many suburban villages only one of each settlement area has been affected by the influx. The basic trends and driving forces are similar to the foreign examples, furthermore, in Hungary, too, the process has been partly covered up in statistics by its certain features, so its significance in our country may be greater than previously assumed by the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the special settlement system in Hungary a municipality can be divided into three parts, the central inner area (core city), other inner areas (incorporated settlements) and outskirts. Because of this system and special settlement network, the process of suburbanisation in Hungary has some unique characteristics. In this paper we examined the spatial structure and social properties of the rural-urban fringe of four Hungarian cities, with emphasise on the other inner areas and the outskirts. The outskirts are mostly scattered or interim habitations within the administrative limits of a city or village but these are usually separated from the main built-up areas and almost all of them characterised remote-rural-like infrastructure and way of life. This spatial structure resulted in the phenomenon of the suburbanisation within city limits. Our research aims to examine how it influenced local society and land use pattern in the rural parts of the agglomerations. The used method was based on a questionnaire involving 1800 households and census of outskirts plots in the sample area of a middle-sized city in West Hungary. During this process, residents tend to change their living conditions to a more rural one without leaving the municipality, thus areas of former villages and outskirts attracted 55.1% of suburban movement outside of Budapest Agglomeration since 1990. Most of the residents came from the city to rural milieu and their main motivations were low utility costs, gardening opportunities and slow lifestyle. A significant part of them is especially looking for remote-rural-like environment and community, however they want to stay close to the city. A high proportion of migrants have low-income and disadvantages. The repeated expansion of modest houses resulted in a chaotic townscape that is creating conflicts within neighborhoods. Even villages, incorporated villages and outskirts, which are at the same distance from the city centre, show significant differences in rurality, suburban motivations and society. The rural-urban fringe transformed into a highly complex spatial and social structure during post-socialist transformation, therefore the existing urban and spatial development methods of Hungarian Administration are not able to handle this phenomenon.

The recent urbanisation of Poland and Hungary can be characterised by two main processes, urban sprawl, suburbanisation on the one hand, birth of new towns from villages through a legal process on the other hand, that have provided significant changes in the share of urban population. Suburbanisation has been investigated in details throughout the post-socialist region, while formal urbanisation could gain less attention, although in certain cases like in Hungary it has doubled the number of towns and cities within less than three decades. The present study introduces the similarities and differences of the formal urbanisation process in Poland and Hungary, giving an evaluation of the new-born towns. Their size and socioeconomic development are measured and contrasted on the basis of statistical indices, furthermore, their geographic location and functions in the settlement network are compared, too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]