Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 30. (2002) – Az ötven éves Nagy-Budapest – előzmények és megvalósulás
Beluszky Pál: Az elővárosok útja Nagy-Budapesthez 121-152
Beluszky Pál Az elővárosok útja Nagy-Budapesthez Pál Beluszky The Way of the Suburbs to Greater Budapest It was in the middle of the 19 th century when the urban pair of the cities of Pest and Buda reached the stage of their development when the transformation of their neighbouring settlements and the establishment of suburbs and suburbian settlements consequently, began. Due to civil changes modernization all over the country was accelerated. After 1848 and 1867 Hungary was characterized by the simultaneous appearence of - the establishment of the social, political and legal conditions of civil evoulution. The formation of the legal and organizational framework of the civil society often preceeded the real-procedures, the civil evolution and modernization of economy and society. The ready-made framework stimulated economy and society to fill it in. - Regaining the (limited) national sovereignty was completed, facilitating the formation of independent concepts of developing economic policy and railway, etc. and it also stimulated contest with Austria. - It was the needs of capitalist economy in Europe that incipited technical, technological (industrial) revolution. The evolvement of the ways of civil changes and the appearence of modern technological instruments - steam engines, steam boats, railway, telegraph, agricultural machinery etc. - were simultaneous in Hungary. - International conditions of the development of economy were fortunate. There was a surplus of capital in Europe in the middle of the 19 th century. After the 1867 Compromise the majority of investments in Hungary was worked out by foreign capital. Western european industrialization and urbanization increased the demand for food and raw materials, thus it lead to prosperity in agriculture. The manifold procedures of modernization stemming from several sources met in Pest-Buda: regaining national sovereignty made the city the centre of state life, revolution in transportation and the national railway policy changed Budapest into an unsurpassed centre of transportation of the country,- these and the prosperity of agriculture transformed the city into the centre of trade in land produce and of banks and food industry, and national independence facilitated nourished contest with Vienna. The main head of modernization in the Carpethian Basin was Budapest, and this status resulted in a fast increase of the population, (1873: 173 thousand people, 1910: 880 thousand people) the fast reconstruction of the city and its spatial expansion. Agglomeration began embedded in the above mentioned changes. The 151
