Four waves of urban regeneration in Hungary: The role of the state in the (re-)production of marginal urban spaces

Abstract

Since its first appearence in the 1970s, urban rehabilitation as a policy tool has continously gained more importance in the field of Hungarian urban development. Though in the last five decade the concept itself remained the same, the practice of urban rehabilitation has been radically reshaped. This article will scrutinize this process of change through four historical periods: in the late state socialist period from the 1970s; in the period of the 1990s and early 2000s characterized with liberal practices built on the ethos of entrepreneurialism; in the period after the mid-2000s defined by increasing amount of incoming EU funds; and in the authoritarian period after 2010.

After a short historical and theoretical introduction describing the roots and the definition of urban rehabilitation in relation to other similar concepts, the article analyses the changing role of the state in (re-)producing marginal spaces from two perspectives. First, how the rescaling and the institutional reshuffling of the state has unfolded in the context of global restructuring. Second, how the functions of urban rehabilitation has changed given the processes described above. The final part of the article discusses the dialectic of these two perspectives, and provides a historical narrative of how the state takes part in the process of producing space through urban rehabilitation throughout different historical periods.