The paper takes the first steps to analyse changes concerning Hungarian urban planning
in the recent years, focussing on the implementation and challenges of the integrated
urban planning in Hungary in the light of planning traditions, arguing for the need
of a better understanding of such traditions to understand current planning practices.
It provides a sociological analysis on the effects of the political and economic context
on urban planning, with specific regard to public participation, in different eras,
like the state socialism, the period following the 1989/1990 transition and recent
years. It presents how urban planning operated in very different and changing ‘faces
of power’, under continuously strong external resource-dependency with varying key
agents. It discusses the constraints of public participation rooted in contextual
factors and in planning traditions. Finally, it also summarises existing research
and presents hypotheses for a recently launched new research project.
