Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 25. (1996)

TANULMÁNYOK - Szekeres József: Nagy-Budapest kialakulásának előzményei 269-314

fejlődés nyomán, azon országokban, ahol erős volt a központi hatalom, általában egy nagyváros alakult ki, amely mellett más, igazi nagyvárosok nem jöttek létre. Ahol viszont erős volt a regionális hatalom, ott több középváros alakult ki, mint például Svájcban, vagy az 1870 előtti Németországban. Hollandiában például 12 középvárosból alakult ki az Amszterdam-Rotterdam agglomeráció. (Uo.) 79. Magyar Hírlap, 1989. június 16. JÓZSEF SZEKERES GREATER BUDAPEST SUMMARY Greater Budapest was created in 1949 through Decree XXVI. On January 1 of the following year seven towns and sixteen large villages from surrounding counties, practically the entire metropolitan area, were annexed to the capital. Previously divided into fourteen districts. Budapest expanded to twenty-two. Elections for city council on October 22, 1950 were followed by the orgar.ization of district councils and the Central Budapest City Council. The development of Greater Budapest was simultaneous with the establishment of a Soviet-style council system that ended the autonomy the capital had enjoyed since 1873. As a consequence of annexation, Budapest's territory expanded from 207 to 525.5 square kilometres and based on the 1949 census, its population increased from 1,058,000 to 1,590,000. Thus, Budapest had come to be home for 17.3 percent of Hungary's population. Budapest's economic, social, cultural and political significance however, was far greater than the share of the country's population would suggest. In the middle of the twentieth century Hungary was still below the average development typical of European countries, and the majority of its population still worked in agriculture, living in villages. Budapest constituted the single metropolitan area that could be compared to the level of development characteristic of similar regions in Western Europe. Three-fifths of Hungary's post-war industry, four-fifths of its trade, as well as most of its cultural life and administration came to be concentrated in the new metropolis capital. In other words, one half of one percent of the country's territory was home for slightly more that seventeen percent of its population, contained forty-seven percent of its factories, employed sixty-two percent of its work force, and produced almost sixty percent of its industrial output. When we include the surrounding area, Greater Budapest had a population of two million at the time of annexation. This figure made the city Europe's fifth largest, surpassed only by London, Paris, Berlin and Moscow. In 1950, the capital and its surroundings constituted a geographically unified settlement, which had come together as a result of the fusion of different administrative units and several centuries of socio-economic development. The agglomeration created a common administration for a region that in economic terms had virtually been united but witch had been divided organizationally. The unification established administratively what had already existed in daily life since the beginning of the century. The preceding liberal and counter-revolutionary governments had been either unable or unwilling to accomplish this task. Consequently, the administrative actions of 1950, the preconditions for which had been in existence for decades, furthered the development of the capital. Although it took place at the beginning of an era of dictatorial policy and embodied motivations and goals that later proved to have negative consequences, the establishment of Greater Budapest realised the efforts for unification and growth typical of twentiethcentury metropolitan development. In this regard, we can view the event as something positive. It must also be stated however, that the the wisdirected political and economic policy dominant at the time was unable to make use of the new potential and advantage unification brought to the metropolitan area. 314