Developments of automotive centers in the Modern Cities Program

Abstract

The Modern Cities Program announced by the Government of Hungary in 2015 can determine the development of 23 towns with county rights for a long time. The estimated budget of the program (about 9.5 billion EUR) is unprecedented in the practice of Hungarian spatial development, therefore the ongoing examination of the project is essential.

This paper consists of three units. The first part provides an overview of the program, a literature review and a brief summary of the results of previous research. Following this, the program will be examined from a new perspective, analysing developments of the automotive centres as flagships of the Hungarian economy. Győr, Kecskemét and Debrecen are considered to belong to this group of cities, due to the national economic importance of the outstanding automotive company in the first two cities, and due to the ongoing, significant investment in the latter case. The paper investigates the statement that development projects of these cities are outstanding from the list of cities with county rights. The results indicate that developments of this city group are not considered outstanding, either in terms of the number of project elements or their planned budget. The development of automotive centres is not influenced by a central target system, as the analysis did not show a unified pattern that would equally characterize the aspirations of these cities. According to preliminary assumptions, the high proportion of project elements aimed at the development of education, R&D, innovation, and thus promotion of higher value-added economic activities, could have been such an effort, which, however, was not confirmed by the analysis. These goals are prominent among project elements of Debrecen and Kecskemét, however, in the case of the most successful urban development regime, Győr, only one project element aims to deepen the knowledge economy.

In the last unit of the paper case study analyses can be read from the examined cities and other European automotive centres. The examination of a successfully completed development and two project elements that have not yet started highlights both the exceptional opportunities and vulnerabilities of the program. The support of the central government and effective cooperation may be sufficient to implement major projects on time and to a high standard that are fitting well to the city's (economic development) strategy. On the other hand, in some cases, there is a lack of involvement of the local society and for many years no information is provided about the reasons for the delay in implementation. It is also instructive that a single personnel change could lead to revision of a development goal that has been planned for decades, supported by all stakeholder groups and included in the integrated urban development strategy of the city. Based on an international outlook, it can be stated that in all the analysed foreign automotive centres there are developments in progress that go far beyond the projects of the examined Hungarian cities in terms of complexity, target system, implementation methodology and knowledge-intensive nature.