Governance Philosophy of the New Urban Policy

Abstract

The paper wishes to call the attention to the fact that the increasing role of cities – which could be experienced even in the European cohesion policy –, is in many respects absent in the domestic institutional system of regional policy and in the territorial public administration.

While cities, especially larger towns with regional and metropolitan functions become even officially the eligible recipients of the development supports their position within the system of public administration is not privileged at all.

On the other hand the spatial functions of the cities are not integrated systematically neither in the provisional system of public services at district level nor in the territorial planning.

The voluntary micro-regional associations of municipalities and the model of cities with county rank do not provide for proper solutions.

The paper implies that much more attention should be devoted to the new paradigms of city governance which were formulated for example by the urban regime theory but its adaptation in Hungary has been fulfilled just partially.