New Norms — Old Modus. Tensions from Socialist Planning Surviving the Regime Change in Hungary

Abstract

Post-socialist transformation is a widespread phenomenon with numerous variations. Even if the study is restricted to Eastern European countries, their recent developments vary depending on their distinct socio-economic contexts and historic path dependencies.

In constructing new planning systems, these countries did not have a single model to follow. What they shared, however, is that the emerging market system demanded new regulatory forms of planning that were alien to the socialist planning tradition, in which the plan operated more as a horizontal structure synthesizing a range of sectoral public investment programs [Tsenkova, 2011]. Whereas the phenomena of post-socialist urbanization are elaborately reviewed and debated in the discourses on urban geography, economy and governance, the literature on urban planning in these cities is very limited. The first generation of studies on the era’s planning challenges, lacking sufficient empirical material, offered generalized accounts of the links between land reforms, the alienation of real estate, and the development of planning institutions [Andrusz, Harloe, Szelényi, 1996; Bertaud, Renaud, 1997; Hamilton, Andrews, Pichler-Milanović, 2005; Tsenkova, Nedovic-Budic, 2006; Stanilov, 2007]. In response, this paper presents an empirically deep single case study of the urban planning regime’s transformation in Budapest between 1990 and 2010. It introduces the substantial time shifts between the reforms in different domains and the resulting tensions. Whereas economic reforms had already targeted the decentralization of the planning under socialism in the 1960s, the spatial planning system‘s persistence remained apparent even in the years following the regime change. With the rapid and excessive post-socialist decentralization of authority, political competences concerning urban planning were delegated to lower levels. In contrast, its modus operandi long remained largely unchanged, not properly adapted to the transformation of the economic and political systems. The hypothesis is that there exists a nexus between the persistence of socialist planning and the laissez-faire type of post-socialist urban development by means of the internal tensions within the urban planning system and its resulting dysfunctionality under the new market conditions.

The methodology for this study draws on content analysis of policy documents and secondary sources of analytical information pertinent to the urban planning regime in Budapest during the time period under investigation, supplemented by personal interviews with major stakeholders.