Győr: How to compete with capital cities E-Book

Éva Gerőházi

• Herausgeber: European Investment Bank
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: city, transformed
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 39

Beschreibung

Located between three European capital cities, 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. Here's how a "secondary city" builds on its industrial past even as it breaks away from its dependence on it.

Leseprobe

Cover

Before the economic transition

Economic development

Spatial development

Social development

Future challenges and opportunities

References

Bibliography

About the European Investment Bank

The European Investment Bank is the world’s biggest multilateral lender. The only bank owned by and representing the interests of the EU countries, the EIB finances Europe’s economic growth. Over six decades the Bank has backed start-ups like Skype and massive schemes like the Øresund Bridge linking Sweden and Denmark. Headquartered in Luxembourg, the EIB Group includes the European Investment Fund, a specialist financer of small and medium-sized enterprises.

GYŐR

How to compete with capital cities

Éva Gerőházi

Iván Tosics

The findings, interpretations and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Investment Bank.

Éva Gerőházi, an economist, is a researcher at the Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest. Her expertise includes housing policy and urban development, mainly concentrating on the socio-economic aspects. She has participated in European Union research programmes on the regeneration of housing estates, energy efficiency in housing stock and the green space development of urban areas. She has also assisted Hungarian ministries, municipalities and international organisations in formulating programmes for urban regeneration, housing refurbishment and social inclusion.

Iván Tosics is a principal at the Metropolitan Research Institute. A mathematician and sociologist (PhD), he teaches at the University of Pécs in the doctoral school of the Department of Political Studies. He is one of the Thematic Pole Managers (Programme Experts) of the URBACT programme, Vice-Chair of the European Network for Housing Research, a Board Member of the European Urban Research Association and Policy Editor of the journal Urban Research and Practice.

Éva Gerőházi

Iván Tosics

Located between three European capital cities, 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. Here’s how a “secondary city” builds on its industrial past even as it breaks away from its dependence on it.

Győr is a Hungarian “secondary city” close to Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest. These 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.

With 125,000 residents, Győr is located in north-west Hungary, 40 km east of the Austrian border and exactly halfway between Budapest and Vienna. The city boasts a special geographical position within the triangle of three European capital cities (Bratislava being the third).

Figure 1. Location of Győr between three capitals

From a domestic perspective, Győr has an outstanding economic position. It currently is — and has been for a long time — a flagship of Hungarian heavy industry, having made a very successful transition from socialist machine industries to modern car manufacturing. Győr was the only city in Hungary barely affected by major economic crises (the economic and social transition of the early 1990s and the global financial crisis at the end of the 2000s). It experienced continued growth when all other Hungarian cities faced a downturn. On the other hand, the local economy has always relied on a single dominant industry. Before the economic transition of the 1990s, the Hungarian Waggon and Machine Factory RÁBA was the largest employer, dominating the local economy. Audi Hungaria took over this role after 1994, with nearly as many employees as RÁBA previously.

The following figure displays key milestones in Győr’s urban development, grouped into three categories: economic, spatial, and social.

Figure 2. Milestones in urban development in Győr

The development of the city is determined largely by market actors. In the last two or three decades, the local government has made consistent efforts to create a “triple helix” structure: that is, to increase the role of local government and higher education institutions to foster their function as equal partners for strong economic players. On its path from industrial city to centre of innovation, research and creative industries, the city has to continue its efforts, building up institutional structures for territorial cooperation in the large and expanding functional area of Győr. Thus, the successful period of development based on market logic should be followed by a new period of public-led development, to consolidate previous achievements and strengthen the role of the city as a regional centre.