Discussion Papers 2004.
New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the
Urban-Rural Relationship 65-73. p.
RURALITY IN HUNGARY IN GENERAL
BÁLINT CSATÁRI
European emphasis on rural research and development
Two typical and distinct units of the spatial structure of comprehensive and global
urbanisation in the 20th century – with a profound impact on the economy, society
and settlements – are urban and rural districts. Rural areas were, as it were, ‘suffer-
ers’ of the effects of urbanisation, particularly in the initial phases of this rather
intense spatial transformation. Agrarian crises including migration, depopulation,
ageing and marginalisation were the most common phenomena in village/rural
districts.
This is, indeed, why attention turned, to an increasing degree, to the transfor-
mation of ‘non-urban districts’ and likely solutions to their modernisation mainly
in West European countries in the 1970s, following waves of intense concentration
of urbanisation in developed economies.
In Hungary such changes occurred much later and followed a path ‘approved’
by state socialism. Accordingly, only recently have very similar ‘rural symptoms’
emerged here, with a simultaneous shift in academic attention towards them.
As to these issues, politics often comes heavily into play. Debates on the di-
chotomy of rurality and urbanity, suppressed in the socialist era, were resumed
after the changeover. Also the political and common interpretation of the statement
that “compared to Budapest, ‘Hungary excluding Budapest forms one contiguous
rural area’” frequently presents problems as regards the substantive perception of
rurality.
Whether current ‘modern’ rural spatial processes in Hungary, coming late onto
the scene, follow a path similar to the one that their Western counterparts did,
raises a series of intriguing questions.
The first related problem that developed European economies had to resolve
mostly in the 1960s was the inevitable and radical transformation of agrarian pro-
duction as well as land and area utilisation. This was followed by a gradual rise in
the awareness of the relative advantages of rural districts, with the resulting
planned and deliberate development of landscape and nature protection in these
countries.
The second major stage of transformation, especially when the infrastructure
between cities and their respective environs had been successfully established and
the spatial unevenness of its quality had been made more equal, was characterised
Csatári, Bálint : Rurality in Hungary in General.
In:New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the Urban-Rural Relationship.
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 2004. 65-73. p. Discussion Papers, Special
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by the emergence first of commuting, and then phenomena accompanying agglom-
erisation and suburbanisation in the rural space; new village-like functions (e.g.
second homes) initially of a residential and later recreational type followed swiftly
and mushroomed in rural areas.
Furthermore, disputes over rurality are imbued – and not just in Hungary – with
the clashes and contradictions between urban mass culture and village/rural tradi-
tions, constantly-recurring differences in income and social opportunities, and re-
sulting spatial, settlement-related, social and political conflicts.
The initial key issue of the development of rural/village-like regions that faced
developed European economies was the same as the one currently facing Hungary.
As a French author once put it, ‘The future of villages and rural areas hinges on
solutions to objectively existing problems of agrarian production under various
natural environmental, economic and social conditions.’ (George, 1963).
Dealing with this topic, a textbook used at British universities in the 1970s dis-
cussed three provincial issues of a much broader scope, namely the depopulation of
rural areas, the ‘re-population’ of certain regions, commuting, burgeoning social
mobility and evolving links as well as the need for consistent landscape planning
and provincial development warranted by an increasing demand for recreational
and landscape development (Clout, 1972).
A series of excellent analyses addressed the issue of access to rural space and
settlements as a fundamental issue as well as the need for the deliberate develop-
ment of ‘key settlements’ acting as suppliers and service providers in villages and
small towns (Mosely, 1979).
Conducted in the wake of partially successful rural development interventions
that had then been going on for close to one and a half decades, studies examining
this topic in the 1980s and 1990s unambiguously chose, as the focus of their analy-
ses and proposals for rural development, the issue of subtly defined environmental,
economic and social sustainability looked at from a variety of perspectives
(Briant–Maroi, 1995). In general, the objectives and results of these studies on
rural and village geography were closely related to the practice of spatial
development that had been gaining ground.
It is the well-known Brundtland Report that provides the most general definition
of sustainable rural development, claiming that ‘rural development must be un-
compromising, and implemented in a manner that provides all the values, opportu-
nities and necessities that can be reasonably expected.’(WCED 1987) Sustainabil-
ity thus interpreted is strongly linked to the need for the mitigation of regional ine-
qualities, not only in terms of economic development, but also to an improved
awareness of the role of the environment and, most recently, the need for creating
‘living conditions that are as good as those in the city’ on a small regional scale
(Mayer, 2000).
Csatári, Bálint : Rurality in Hungary in General.
In:New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the Urban-Rural Relationship.
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 2004. 65-73. p. Discussion Papers, Special
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Emphasising the wide variety of interpretations and stressing that the motives
underlying them vary from country to country, studies on rural development seem
to agree on the following prioritised points of action:
– nature protection, the heritage of the rural landscape and a balanced relation-
ship between landscapes and settlements;
– new dimensions and development capabilities of the town and country
relationship;
– issues of local identity and local communities.
What is more, they all highlight the moral (the legal system and social equality),
social (community and self-esteem) and material (water, food, personal safety and
security) aspects of development philosophies concerning rural space. Scientific
approaches strive to make a clear distinction between sustainable and environmen-
tally friendly agrarian and rural development and the demands and capabilities of
profit-driven agriculture, emphasising, as a rule, the particular role that village
communities play in renewal.
In evaluating the processes of rural transformation, the literature published in
developed European economies on rural settlement and small regional develop-
ment makes use of a suitably wide variety of methods and theoretical approaches,
stressing the need for adopting a sophisticated approach to these issues.
To sum up, there are three distinct phases of rural research:
– that of identifying, examining and resolving problems and effects connected
with agriculture and forestry,
– the improvement of supplies/goods offered in rural areas warranted by
changes in the economic and social structure of rural space, also encouraged
by spatial solidarity and
– in the wake of the emergence of new rural/village functions, the interpreta-
tion of sustainable modern rural development and a customised application of
such an interpretation in a manner that reflects the diversity of areas.
It is worth noting that, in all the countries where rural development was fairly
successful – including, for instance, the UK, the Netherlands and Scandinavia – the
results of scientific research and the various stages of the development outlined in
them were followed by the introduction of a series of training programmes, indis-
pensable for the implementation of rural development, as well as the establishment
of the institutional system of planning and local economic and social development
and a network of specialised professionals.
Csatári, Bálint : Rurality in Hungary in General.
In:New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the Urban-Rural Relationship.
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 2004. 65-73. p. Discussion Papers, Special
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Conceptual approaches to defining the rural area
There are several approaches to providing a definition for the rural area. The initial
problem arises from its numerous possible interpretations and translations from
foreign languages into our language.
Recalling the title of Ferenc Erdei’s classic book, we would suggest that the
simplest way of defining the rural area is to say that it is ‘the environs of a city’.
According to this interpretation, the very concept implies an attitude, a relationship
and a network of various links. Thus the rural area, in its broadest sense, means a
‘non-urban space’ woven from a loose fabric of settlements. Its most fundamental
characteristic is the dominance of the utilisation of the agricultural landscape, with
villages and other scattered settlements belonging to an urban centre of some in-
definite size and quality.
Nevertheless, the rural area (or the countryside) is best defined by the specific
and typical geographical processes taking place in it, including landscape and na-
ture protection, the utilisation of indigenous natural resources (e.g. water and re-
sources of a recreational nature), food production, its classic ‘duty’, and residential
and employment functions. As for residential and employment functions, today
they offer a full range of modern rural living conditions. That said, as regards the
town and country relationships, spatial relationships (e.g. communications and
commuting) in this space as well as the way service providers and suppliers operate
in the ‘countryside-like space’ are particularly important.
Traditional village geography defines the rural area as “hinterland”. Having
particular settlement, economic and social-setting and special development char-
acteristics, it is quite distinct from urban space. Obviously, the characteristics of
rural space are different in developed countries where the influx of the population
into cities and the traditional expansion of the urban space had finished by the
1950s and 1960s. They are different from those in the developing world where
such processes are still ongoing.
The size, functions and built-up environment of the settlements in rural space
can also serve as a basis for defining the rural area. Broadly speaking, scattered
settlements (farmsteads) and villages of various sizes with a low proportion of
built-up areas and an increasingly wide selection of functions and, based on good
indicators provided by a number of studies, small towns with a population of
10,000 to 20,000 are unequivocally rural settlements.
Many believe that, as the definition of the city is more unambiguous, the village
is simply a non-urban settlement; likewise, the rural area is a ‘non-city-like area’.
In Cloke’s opinion the space that the majority of its residents consider to be rural is
a village or rural area.
The specific emergence, content and geographical picture of rural functions,
along with an increasing awareness of what they look like, can be considered as
Csatári, Bálint : Rurality in Hungary in General.
In:New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the Urban-Rural Relationship.
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 2004. 65-73. p. Discussion Papers, Special
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factors which play a key role in the definition of the rural area (Cloke, 1983). Add
to this the way of life and lifestyle typical of the rural space, social and family re-
lationships and the special spatial cohesion they create as well as the unique quality
and awareness of the environment and ‘the rural space lived in’.
A common feature of attempts at defining and categorising rural areas in Hun-
gary and of related debates is that, for the time being, they almost exclusively adopt
the approach of agriculture and the agrarian community (Kovács, 1998; Romány,
1998; Fehér, 1998; Dorgai, 1998). This should hardly come as a surprise since,
owing to the time lag mentioned above, it is only recently that rural space in Hun-
gary has become the scene of agrarian transformation and development of the kind
that occurred two or three decades ago in developed economies.
A major problem that has surfaced in the debates on the definition of the rural
area is that the encouragement of a scientific classification and attempts at reaching
a ‘uniform’ definition may easily clash with economic and political interests ar-
ticulated with varying degrees of underlying influence (Fehér, 1998). Thus ap-
plying for European funds alone may exert a significant impact on the (flexible)
definitions and classifications of rural areas. So may the fact that a professionally
satisfactorily substantiated definition of the rural area based on multi-disciplinary
results and a consensus would necessarily differ from those based on indicators and
priorities set as objectives to be achieved through the use of various funds (Dorgai,
1998). Neither does there seem to be any consensus – at the settlement and regional
levels – about the interpretation of the rural area. However, there does seem to be a
point of consensus on small regions as the spatial unit of the rural area making up a
collection of typically rural settlements.
Hence it is difficult, if not impossible, to give a precise and succinct definition
of the rural area. The above approaches undoubtedly reflect a certain degree of
relativity, the essence of which being that rural space is primarily characterised by
the deliberate manifestations and special development interventions of the relation-
ship involving human society and space, which are unique to rural spaces. Thus the
spatial aggregate of these special manifestations and the economic and social func-
tions (environment, agricultural, economic, residential and recreational) unique to
this space can be regarded as the most general definition of the rural area.
The countryside as a target area for development
Another major approach claims that the definition of the countryside (rural area) as
a target area for development is of crucial importance. In this respect, the concep-
tual and spatial policy agreement as put forward by the European Charter of Rural
Areas is generally accepted throughout most of Europe.
Csatári, Bálint : Rurality in Hungary in General.
In:New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the Urban-Rural Relationship.
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 2004. 65-73. p. Discussion Papers, Special
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EU policy aimed at these regions, that is the Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP) and its policy on the use of Structural and Cohesion Funds, generally refer
to space and ‘the development of multi-functional rural areas’ where – ‘in line
with the management of European urban regions’ –, ‘new sustainable development
can be implemented’.
A further basic principle is that of subsidiary, that is local and regional au-
thorities and local governments, which are fully conversant with local residents and
their problems, should be responsible for the development of rural regions. The
Charter suggests that ‘These authorities should be primarily relied upon. Co-opera-
tion between them and their objectives should be encouraged.’ The Charter pro-
vides a definition of rural areas and their characteristics, allowing for – owing to its
very nature – a rather broad interpretation. According to this, ‘the rural region’ is
an area in a broader sense of the word or a ‘coastal’ area where villages and smaller
towns form a uniform economic and social unit. Compared to ‘urban regions’,
– the concentration of the population as well as economic, social and cultural
structures is significantly lower here;
– most of the area here is employed for the purposes of agriculture, forestry,
nature protection and recreation.1
It follows that both scientific and spatial development literature on the defini-
tion of target areas for intervention of rural development is rather extensive, taking
the form of various calculations of what is called ‘the rurality index’ based on indi-
cators developed using sophisticated methods. Population density and (usually)
indicators of target areas and small regions to be classified are used to determine
percentage indicators that denote the population concentration.
What is called ‘the rurality criterion index’ (defined by the OECD), for instance,
views a spatial unit (normally a small region) as fundamentally rural where less
than 50% of the population live in an area with population density below 150 per-
sons/km². That is, this simple indicator alone reflects the relativity of rurality if
cities with high population density are excluded, and reflects the low settlement
concentration of the classified rural area.
Essentially, various specific classifications of rural areas and index definitions,
which vary from one country to the next, depend on public administrative and re-
gional units and their size. In the UK and other highly urbanised countries it is
often the case that fundamentally urban districts are separate public administrative
1 Article 3 that follows the above definition and Article 28 stipulating the national
classification of rural areas based on the definition identify classification as the statutory
obligation of signatories to the Charter. Classifications, along with the signatory docu-
ments of the Charter, must be submitted to the Secretary General of the European Coun-
cil. The same applies to any subsequent modification of the classification of rural areas.
Csatári, Bálint : Rurality in Hungary in General.
In:New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the Urban-Rural Relationship.
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 2004. 65-73. p. Discussion Papers, Special
RURALITY IN HUNGARY IN GENERAL
71
units; ‘interim or highly rural’ districts are measured against them. As a rule, clas-
sifications affect township and municipal levels of public administration (Cloke,
1983, p.10).
More sophisticated classifications of rural districts combine these simple indi-
cators with those reflecting processes typical of village space, e.g. a higher-than-
average proportion of agricultural workers, unemployment, the index of ageing and
migration.
With respect to the use and development of rural space, natural heritage, recrea-
tional capabilities, environmentally sensitive areas, the sensitivity of which is es-
tablished using various methods, and partially renewable natural resources (e.g.
soil and waters) constitute an important and relatively new group of factors. These
characteristically rural functions of protection, conservation and landscape reha-
bilitation are becoming an increasingly important part of environment development
philosophies targeting rural space in developed economies.
The previous approaches to and interpretations of rural objectives are manifold.
It follows then that research into and development of target areas matched with
such objectives may add further detail to the perception of rural goals and target
areas. The ultimate meaning of entire social interests and regional values that they
reflect is that the European landscape should be populated, well looked after, and
used in a sustainable and fully justified manner.
European rural development policies have an increasingly significant role to
play in the establishment and even reinforcement of regional-level economic, so-
cial and area cohesion, with the system of financial support for the productive,
social and environment protection functions – the three ‘key functions’ of these
special European policies – evolving gradually (Situation and Outlook, 1997).
Types of rural space
Based on the above, it is evident that formulating a precise definition of the rural
area and rural area-like regions is nigh impossible. A rural area-like region may be
a region
– that is not urban area-like,
– with settlements that are, generally speaking, rural in nature, a settlement
structure dominated by villages and scattered farmsteads and a centre that is a
small town (or a market town),
– with a low regional concentration of economic and institutional systems,
– where the dominance of the agricultural sector is characteristic or even pre-
dominant in certain regions and
– whose community identifies itself as ‘rural’.
Csatári, Bálint : Rurality in Hungary in General.
In:New Aspects of Regional Transformation and the Urban-Rural Relationship.
Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, 2004. 65-73. p. Discussion Papers, Special
72 BÁLINT
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The ‘rural area-like’ nature of regions may be reinforced by their agrarian na-
ture, landscape characteristics, relics of folk architecture, peasant/folk traditions as
well as archaic social norms and traditions.
The chart below serves as a basis for the definition of Hungary’s rural ar-
eas and small regions (the percentage of a given region’s population living
in settlements with population density below 120 persons/km²)
Based on this, 57.8 % of the settlements in Hungary are located in rural regions;
in 61% of the country’s area the rural population is 39.7% of the country’s popula-
tion, with that of Budapest excluded. European and domestic funds earmarked for
rural development should be channelled in a more concentrated manner than previ-
ously to designated target areas.
This is further justified by the fact that rural classification based on this single
indicator correlates with nearly all the above rural indicators that may urgently
warrant targeted interventions of rural development. The rural population is de-
clining and ageing, the dominance of agriculture is high and income in rural areas
is falling behind the national average to a great extent.
Conclusions
Without a doubt, rural regions in former Soviet bloc countries are losers of the
major economic and political transformation that the regime change brought about.
Growing regional inequalities have hit these regions particularly hard.
Rural regions in Hungary do not seem to have any other choice than to follow
the path that spanned approximately three decades in the West, from which
emerged a dedicated network of a viable policy frameworks, facilities and the in-
stitutional system needed for rural development.
Each stage of development will have to be covered. It is only time durations that
could be shortened. For the time being, however, political commitment to this
seems to be rather moderate.
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