Edit SOMLYÓDYNÉ PFEIL, Széchenyi István University, Doctoral School of Regional- and Business Administration Sciences, Hungary
Budapest is ranked in the back among liveable cities, in which, according to the author’s hypothesis, the disintegrated governance structure of the metropolitan region plays a significant role. It may hinder the competitiveness of the functional urban area too. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to introduce the main features of during the last decade formulated bipolar hybrid metropolitan governance model dominated by public actors. In the course of the analysis, on the one hand, the internal two-tiered power division system of the core city – the capital of Hungary – will be highlighted which has an adverse effect on the utilisation of the metropolis’s resources. It will be worth making a comparison with Warsaw and Prague from the Central Eastern European macro region. On the other hand, it is gaining on importance, that the unity of the metropolitan region has been terminated by Hungary’s decision announcing new NUTS2 regions in the EU, based on separation of the capital city and its hinterland in 2018.
According to these facts, the presentation focuses on the power relations of the four main groups of actors of metropolitan governance in terms of horizontal cooperation. The core of the new hybrid model is characterised by the cut out of the municipalities of the agglomeration and the subnational territorial unit from cooperation and coordination structures. In contrast, a new area of tension has emerged in the institutional design between the central government and the capital self-government, which seems to be the backbone of the hybrid model. The specificity of the latter is that since 2012 the legislator offers neither an institutional form nor an authorisation for the metropolitan wide cooperation, meanwhile the central government is gaining increasingly growing power over the metropolitan region. Finally, the paper summarises the problematic institutional, financing and planning elements in the framework of a multi-layered governance structure.
Keywords: metropolitan governance|hybrid model|vertical coordination|planning authority|Budapest
A103938ES