Metropolitan Research Institute
Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest
The global crisis and recession created a new situation for urban financing. Severe changes in economic and financial conditions extorted the revision of existing public policies. Under the worsening financial conditions, the traditional functioning of cities collapsed – writes MRI director Iván Tosics in the special issue of Urbanisme, focusing on the URBACT programme.
Hanna Szemző, managing director of Metropolitan Research Institute gave a presentation at the launch event for a new report by the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG) titled ‘The energy transition in Central and Eastern Europe: The business case for higher ambition’ in Bucharest on the 21 of March 2019.
European Investment Bank assigned Metropolitan Research Institute with the preparation of a study on the urban development of Győr, a thriving economic hub in Western Hungary – at the same time, a “secondary city” in the vicinity of three dynamic metropolises, which has to compete for workforce and other resources. The study, elaborated by senior experts Iván Tosics and Éva Gerőházi, also takesi nto account EIB’s role in the city’s outcomes.
Located between three European capital cities, Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest, Győr has to work hard to attract investment and jobs. The Hungarian city has set itself up to attract innovative companies, creating new urban values such as education-based innovation, a high-quality urban environment and a lively cultural sphere. Yet the three capital cities attract most of the development potential in the area, making it difficult for smaller cities such as Győr to attract the headquarters of international companies or to develop large-scale new urban areas.
Győr’s response has been to focus on “smart specialisation” in line with its broader innovation-based development concept. The city’s industrial heritage helped attract investment, especially a major AUDI plant, which has become a definitive player in the local urban economy. Yet this runs the risk of resulting in a monofunctional local economic development direction, and make the city vulnerable to economic cycles. To prevent this, the municipality has long been focusing on diversifying the local economy, relying among others on EU funding (for which national co-financing was advanced in the form of an EIB loan). A flagship pole in these diversification effort is the cooperation between Széchenyi István University, the public sector, and market actors. This is manifested in the Center for University-Industry Cooperation, permitting the implementation of the future Technopolis vision. In addition, EU funding supported the improvement of urban environment and alleviating spatial segregation in Győr.
The study authored by Tosics and Gerőházi is available in English, German, French, and Hungarian on EIB’s website.
József Hegedüs, Eszter Somogyi and Nóra Teller assessed housing market trends and indicators for the 2019 Social Report. The volume takes a look at Hungary’s key social and socio-economic phenomena in nineteen studies. MRI’s researchers compare housing regimes and periods before and after the global crisis – and find the reemergence of some pre-crisis issues.
Tárki, one of Hungary’s most renowned social research institutes, has been publishing its edited Social Reports biannually since 1990. The issues take broad overviews of well-being and progress in Hungarian society, and aim to contribute to evidence based decision making. The Reports collect the analyses of outstanding social scientists, and have gained outstanding reputation over time, cited by media, public administration and academia in and outside of Hungary.
The present volume, whose English version was made available to the public on 5 February 2019, takes a look at social and demographic indicators and questions of social mobility. A number of essays focus specifically on vulnerable groups, and on evolving values and attitudes. The chapter on housing, authored by lead MRI experts, is featured in the part on non-material well-being.
The full Social Report 2019 is available for download through the website of TÁRKI. On this website, previous English editions are also available. The 2019 edition was funded by the State Secretariat for Social Affairs and Social Inclusion at the Ministry of Human
Capacities.