Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
6. Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border
Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border sums they actually spent confirms the former statement that it was due to good luck which of the high number of applications meeting the specifications of the tender became successful (Mezei 2004). In any case, as far as both their domestic and foreign relations are concerned, local governments could rely on a rather poor supply in the grant market. They are still continuously confined to it because of tight municipal income. Only a thorough examination of the incomes could provide exact information to compare the structure of the income of municipalities in general and that of municipalities along the border, to find the percentage of money coming from grants, and to assess whether the income that municipalities along the border have won from grants to ease their backward situation and the proportion of support granted to them has increased. The clarification of actual conditions, a situation analysis, has become the prerequisite of joint planning; only on this basis can plans be devised. Expertise is involved in situation analyses to an increasing extent. Local governments apply the analysis approach when planning cooperation necessary for investments and the implementation of investments. They sometimes involve researchers, sometimes their own experts. The papers evaluating the situation are sometimes superficial, but they tend to rely on thorough statistical data collection when analysing inter-settlement and regional conditions, which serve as the basis for the development that can be expected or planned there. Examples for this can be found among the administrative organs, too, because job centres also employ statisticians and analysts. When planning cooperation, factors such as geographical area, population, employment rate, education, business environment, and communication opportunities have to be surveyed, which postulates that more and more theories and principles of sciences, such as geography, sociology and economics, are involved in the particular vocations. The people engaged in planning include the representatives of several walks of life. Apart from the representatives and officials of local governments, experts of administration, actors of economic life, business federations of enterprises, and civil organizations are also involved. The structure of the institutional system of planning and the method of its operation have not yet come to a rest in Hungary. The subjects of development are also continuously changing. At first, the politicians of the most backward villages wanted to urge the governments to develop the backward regions, and then regional units, such as larger regions, 168
