A Method for Redefining the Agglomeration of Budapest : New Indicators, New Results?

The Agglomeration of Budapest consists of the capital of Hungary and 80 surrounding settlements, each of these are located in Pest county. This delimitation has been in force since 1996 and, as a result, it no longer appropriately reflects the current and real spatial relations and processes of Budapest and its surroundings (Schuchmann & Tóth 2010; Schuchmann 2019). In 2007 the Development Council of the Agglomeration of Budapest – which has been disbanded by today – formulated the necessity of redefining the agglomeration (DCAB 2007). As a result in 2010 and 2014, a statistically-based method has been published, however, the results couldn’t be put into practice (Schuchmann & Tóth 2010; Tóth 2014). In 2019, “Strengthening the cooperation between Budapest and its region” came forward, as the Budapest 2030 program set it as a goal. It was formulated as a criticism that the Act CXXXIX of 2018 was drafted without redefining the Budapest agglomeration, so no substantial progress has been made in this matter since the adoption of the National Development and Spatial Development concept in 2014 (Schuchmann 2019). Even though the National Development and Spatial Development defines “the reinterpretation of the delimitation of the Agglomeration of Budapest” as a development policy task, and that the Long-Term Urban Development Concept of Budapest formulates „defining the new boundaries of the Agglomeration of Budapest by taking into account spatial A METHOD FOR REDEFINING THE AGGLOMERATION OF BUDAPEST new indicators, new results? EGY MÓDSZER A BUDAPESTI AGGLOMERÁCIÓ LEHATÁROLÁSÁRA új indikátorok, új eredmények?