Metropolitan Research Institute

Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest

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MRI organising storytelling workshops with local young people and local experts on housing, employment and education in Pécs

On 22 and 23 June 2022 MRI organised storytelling workshops in Pécs within the frame of our UPLIFT project, with the participation of local young people and local experts and practitioners. After having done the qualitative research phase of the project, including 40 interviews with local young people and several interviews with local experts on housing, education and employment, these workshops intended to share the stories we have heard and put together to challenge some of our early conclusions before finalizing the local case study report on Pécs. 

We organized three separate group discussions: 1) with some of the young people with whom we have made the interviews, 2) with local experts and practitioners in the field of education (school director, expert on programmes for young people with learning difficulties, experts from Tanodas and social institutes) and 3) with local experts and practitioners on housing (homelessness service providers, social institutes).

We have invited some of our young interviewees for a group discussion about some of the main points that were drawn from all the interviews with young people. Our discussions were based on pre-defined questions letting the participants build their own narrative which we are able to compare with our concluding observations on their possibilities and actual capabilities in the field of education, employment and housing. This method helped us find common pathways that seemed to be more likely based on common socio-economic situations.

  • In housing: The conversation affirmed that there are seemingly unbridgeable gaps between the public rental sector and the private rental market, and between the private rental market and the owner-occupied market.
  • In employment: The statement said by many experts that ‘all who want to have a job can have it in Pécs’ was proved to be rather overgeneralizing, hiding main barriers of accessing a desired labour market position: like being Roma, having a child or children. Moreover social capital and informal mechanisms seem to be crucial in discovering different opportunities in the labour market, which, even if determined by status, constitutes a more effective labour market asset than institutionalised opportunities such as those provided by the Employment Office.
  • In education: The discussion on educational possibilities and experiences reinforced the picture that the segregated nature of the institutional system in Pécs results in a strong path dependency of school choices (e.g. from elementary to secondary), and the limitations of institutions such as Tanodas that are complementing the school system, e.g. in regard to age groups.

The methodology was somewhat different in the meeting with local experts and practitioners in the field of education, where three focal points were defined: the capacity of the local education system to create opportunities, cooperation between schools, and early school leaving in late adolescence. The conclusion of the meeting was that most of the problems root in the ‘resource space’, the current national educational system that strengthens school segregation and creates competing institutions instead of collaborating ones. Education was considered as a part of a social system in which social disadvantages should be treated from birth. It was also emphasised that teacher education must be reformed concentrating more on pedagogical skills and the freedom of educational methodologies. Finally our assumption was strengthened that there are practically no services for young people above 14-16 years – in case they do not have a child. It seems to be a lost age group, in that aspect.

In the workshop with local housing experts and practitioners we have discussed the following statement, which we have found to be describing the essence of housing problems in Pécs: ‘The main problem is the deep gap between the different housing positions. If there is no possibility to move from one position to another, then perverse behaviours occur to stay safe in the current position.’ Local experts have reassured that the municipal stock is rather rigid: it is unlikely to exit if one got access to a municipal flat; both the system seems not motivating for leaving the municipal sector and both the local market rental sector seems to be unwelcoming especially with people from the Roma community and families with children, while entering to the public rental sector is very limited and impenetrable as eligibility criteria is rather unclear and again informality seems to be playing an important role. 

These main points will be further analysed in the upcoming Case Study Report on Pécs.

Urban Reports on Pécs (HU), Łódź (PL), and Bratislava (SK) written by our colleagues are now available together with 10 others from different urban regions of Europe

The UPLIFT project, which is coordinated by Metropolitan Research Institute in the framework of EU Horizon programme, has reached a milestone by completing 13 reports on different urban areas of Europe. The goal of the reports was to understand the educational, housing, employment and social possibilities of vulnerable young people (aged 15-29) in these locations, taking into account the nature of the local economical dynamics and the national and local welfare systems.

Metropolitan Research Institute in cooperation with local experts have written three of these ‘urban reports’ on  Łódź (Poland), Bratislava (Slovakia) and Pécs (Hungary).

We found that even though the cities share a common historical, political and economic heritage, there are substantial differences in their social inequality outcomes and policy performances both in employment, housing, and education. While Hungary and Slovakia seemed to suffer from the consequences of the financial crisis, Poland was less affected. The recovery period seemed to be successful in all three locations also with regard to the currently ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

There is a rather conspicuous difference between Pécs, Łódź and Bratislava. While Bratislava (being a capital) city and also the region itself is among the most economically developed regions in Europe, that provides a wide variety of jobs for both low and highly skilled employees, Łódź and Pécs sharing a post-industrial heritage; both are suffering from the difficulties of importing foreign investments to boost the local economy and improve the variety of jobs. This difference also reflected in demographic trends: while there is a substantial influx of mainly high skilled employees from other regions to Bratislava, Łódź and Pécs experiences outmigration of high-skilled workers. In Łódź, influx of low-educated immigrants, mainly from Ukraine, even before the war period, also significantly shapes the economic situation of the city. Despite the differences, the unemployment rate is low in all three locations, even among young people, but the rate of people, who are active in the labour market is different: many are inactive and not even seeking for a job in Łódź and Pécs functional urban areas.

Inhabitants face very different housing difficulties in the three locations. Poland and also Łódź faces a lack of housing supply which manifests into worse overcrowding numbers while in Bratislava due to the prosperous economic position and henceforth the already mentioned influx of people from other regions of Slovakia keeps the local housing market under a huge pressure which is reflected in increasing housing prices and rents. The affordability of both buying and renting a flat in Pécs blending into the national and European tendencies of the housing crisis. Due to path-dependency, home ownership is still the most common and most desired tenure type in all three countries and cities, while despite the different timing and dynamics of the privatization of public stock, the availability of social housing is quite different in the three locations. While in Bratislava the social stock is resudialized (around 1%), it reaches 5,5% in Pécs and nearly 12% in Łódź. The common feature however is the run-down physical state of municipal buildings that result in high rate of unusable flats.

The Polish education system seems to be the most efficient among the three examined countries and cities. In Bratislava and Pécs (in Slovakia and Hungary), the outcomes are among the worst in Europe with regard to compensating the inherited social difficulties of pupils. All three educational system seems to be highly centralized although they seem to differ in regard of freedom of local authorities and schools. While in Łódź and Bratislava the local system seems to have more delegated competences set by law, in Pécs local authorities are completely left out from education. Another similarity that vocational education has been reported as a school type that has a negative perception among especially highly educated parents and seemingly reforms have already tried to tackle with this e.g., with the implementation of the dual education and scholarship programmes.

Concluding the comparison, it can be seen, that there are many consequences of local and national economic and social welfare conditions to the life chances of young people, which we will further examine in case of Pécs, in the next research phase, to understand not only the policy setup but also the perception and the perspective of vulnerable young people through 40 individual interviews.

Please find the all the urban reports in the UPLIF website: https://uplift-youth.eu/insights-reporting/official-deliverables

URBACT Action Planning Networks RiConnect, Space4People and Thriving Streets are launching a city policy learning platform on the topics of mobility and public space – organized by Iván Tosics

URBACT Action Planning Networks RiConnect, Space4People and Thriving Streets are launching a city policy learning platform on the topics of mobility and public space. A first webinar bringing together all city partners and a wider group of interested stakeholders will be organised on Monday 29 November, 10.00 – 14.00 CET. It will showcase examples of innovative mobility and public space practices and allow time for discussions and networking. Moderator: Iván Tosics URBACT Thematic Programme Expert

To register, please click here: link

For more regular updates and exchanges with the networks, join the (link is external)Walk’n’Roll Cities LinkedIn group.

Metropolitan Research Institute at the Europe Housing Forum 2021

Four members of the Metropolitan Research Institute gave presentations in different sessions of the Europe Housing Forum 2021 that was organised by Habitat for Humanity between 16-19 of November 2021.

József Hegedüs in contributing to the session on “Diverse approaches and common challenges to housing” emphasized that the most important determinants of housing outcomes and thus of the affordability problem are economic potential of the urban environment and the national/local welfare system. Different housing interventions have different outcomes in economically strong cities where housing affordability is the most crucial issue, and in shrinking areas where quality of the stock and large share of empty and abandoned housing creates the impediments.

Éva Gerőházi, participating in one of the side events of the conference  (REELIH Regional Conference II.) called the attention of the audience that the energy efficient renovation of multi-family buildings in countries like Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina or North-Macedonia requires first to establish the legal and organisational foundations of the renovation (e.g. legislation on Home Owners Associations, metering consumption, development of financial products) before energy poor households can be the specific targets of interventions.

Nóra Teller Nóra spoke in the outbreak session “Is housing the solution to homelessness in CEE?” chaired by Ruth Owen, deputy director of FEANTSA on the opportunities of tackling homelessness through housing solutions in the CEE region, along with colleagues from Chechia – Jan Milota (Platform for Social Housing), Slovakia – Tomáš Dobrovič (Nota Bene, Slovakia) and Poland – Jakub Wilczek (President of the Polish Federation for Resolving the Problem of Homelessness, vice-president and representative of Poland in FEANTSA). The speakers reviewed ongoing and past initiatives, like housing first and housing led interventions, in their respective countries, lessons learned from these programs, and the barriers and obstacles that hinder scaling up service delivery which is based on providing housing for the most vulnerable groups. Whilst the most progressive approach and strategic mainstreaming of Housing First is present in Czechia, local small pilots in Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary seem to be important but are technically very marginal compared to the national shelter-based homeless provision systems. The speakers also concluded that EU funds have been an important lever in paving the way for more progressive solutions to tackling homelessness, but systemic changes are needed to handle affordability and tenure security issues.

 

Iván Tosics was one of the key note speakers in METREX yearly conference

METREX, the Network of European Metropolitan Regions and Areas, organized its yearly conference in Riga/online on 30 September and 1 October 2021, with the title „Metropolitan area formation aspects in transforming countries”. The first keynote presenter was Iván Tosics, followed by Paul Gerretsen and Charles Landry. Ivan’s concluding remarks were as follows.

There is no unified Central European Approach on Planning Metropolitan Regions existing. After 45 years of socialist development the fragmentation of the local governments and market processes prevailed. Planning has weakened and metropolitan cooperation was not at all on the agenda in the Central and East European countries.

Although since 2004 the countries are again under a joint socioeconomic framework, the EU initiatives towards metropolitan development were not strong enough.

Planning remained subordinated to national policy making in the post-socialist Central and East European countries. EU messages are diverted according to national political interests: some countries support metropolitan development while others forbid metropolitan authorities, being afraid of the expansion of urban governments.

UPLIFT presents at the European Week of Cities and Regions

Metropolitan Research Institute is happy to announce that the UPLIFT project, coordinated by MRI, which deals with social inequalities among urban young people, will be present in the European Week of Cities and Regions on the 12th of October at 11.30 to 13.00 (CET). The session will give an insight into policy co-creation processes that involve young adults directly. Besides having plenary discussions and quizzes the participants will be split into four groups to talk about four interesting examples in housing, education, environment and strategic development domains. Please check the detailed agenda and register for our session at  https://eu.app.swapcard.com/event/eu-regions-week/planning/UGxhbm5pbmdfNjMxMDYz .

Schedule for the event:

  • Key facts and drivers of inequalities among young people: introduction & setting the scene
  • Examples of policy co-creation processes with youth: sharing & learning
  • Participants will be divided into 4 smaller groups in which they will discuss 4 interesting cases of collaborative policy-making together with young people. Each group will be facilitated by a practitioner deeply involved in the policy co-creation process with the support of young people and city representatives. The group work will be kicked-off by the short storytelling session to zoom in on each individual case. This will be followed by conversation with participants.
  • Drawing on participants knowledge and experience: final inspirations & next steps

The rooms will discuss the following topics::

  • Room 1: Co-creation of housing policy in Amsterdam
  • Room 2: Co-creation of an educational programme in Sfantu Gheorghe
  • Room 3: Co-creation of a Youth Strategy in Budapest
  • Room 4: Empowering young climate activists

The European Week of Regions and Cities include other amazing sessions on various topics. Look at what is in your interest and choose your sessions at https://europa.eu/regions-and-cities/
But first of all check the UPLIFT website and social media channels for additional interesting contents!

twitter: @uplift_youth
facebook: @upliftyouthEU
instagram: @uplift_youth