Search results

Abstract
Across the River Tisza, there lies a town, Berehove (hereinafter also referred to as Beregszász [Hu]), situated on the north-eastern edge of the Great Hungarian Plain with the wind swaying ears of wheat, on the flatlands surrounded by rustling oak forests, gold-sweating trachyte mountains, and rivers subsiding upon reaching the plain. It is a veritable fairy garden, a small piece of the realm that out foremother, Emese, dreamt of back in the day. Places, just as people, have their own destinies: they emerge, evolve, thrive, and then, if they are destined so, disappear from the stage of history. The very first mention of Berehove dates back to early 1063, recorded under the name Lamperti, as the estate of Prince Lampert, son of Béla I of Hungary. Prince Lampert founded the later town. At the time, a small settlement must have been situated here with the prince's countryseat inhabited by the garrison and the household servants. Residents of the house were mostly the gamekeepers and huntsmen of Bereg Forest County.
To fully uncover the past is not possible – at the very most, some attempts can be made at its reconstruction by drawing on contemporary sources and relying on archaeological research. The mediaeval layout of the settlement is known from the available sources and serves as a basis for the present study in its efforts to reconstruct the settlement image of the historical town centre and to find out why Lampertszásza did not embark on the path of the 'classic, city wall/fortification' type of settlement development. The parish church is the only building of the mediaeval townscape that has survived partially, which, however, provides us with indications about the contemporary buildings of the one-time reginal town and the related 'block of church buildings'.

Abstract
The necessity of operational urban development becomes obvious if we intend to respond with a planned urban development to the challenges posed by an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable urbanization. We all know the means necessary to enable operational urban development, the ones making planned urban development possible in the most developed founding Member States of the EU as well as in Central Europe – the region of the former 'Mitteleuropa'. Operational urban development needs to be fully consistent with its objective in a constantly changing public policy, market, economic, and social environment while also being guided by the current local conditions, which is why improving and developing its toolbox and methodology according to scientific standards is an ongoing task. In terms of the evolution of this process, the culture ensuring its control is a crucial factor, wherefore not only the existing toolbox and methodology, serving as its subject, is worth investigating but the very historical foundation it relies on. Indeed, this is a factor that, even despite an uncertain public policy and social environment, can prove conclusively that operational urban development, acting as a prerequisite for a conscious and planned urban development, is possible not merely because there is an established and rich toolbox in place in the most developed Western European EU Member States, which has been functioning continuously and efficiently since the end of World War II and which has, since 1990, increasingly provided for the reintegrating countries of Central Europe too, allowing for adaptation to the local conditions, but it is also possible because what we call in today's terms operational urban development is not some questionable practice of uncertain past but is nearly as ancient as the present-day European civilization with thousands of years of history, taken root in the wake of the Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian cultures – and this statement holds true not only for the most developed and richest countries but for those of Central Europe as well. The activity known today by the name of operational urban development already yielded some results in the past without which our cities would not be the same. This is not just the case in Western Europe but also in Central Europe. The mainstream of the European history of operational urban development that can be identified in connection with Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and England is a better-known and internationally more addressed topic in the literature even if it does not emerge in public awareness directly by this name but as a phenomenon integrated in other dimensions of the history of urbanism and architecture, the history of ideas, engineering, history, and geography. At the same time, although the turning points in its Central European history are increasingly present in scientific publications, the latter is still awaiting substantive treatment. In the above-specified context, the present study aims to facilitate this European cognitive process focused on Central Europe for 'the history of science is science itself'.

Abstract
The necessity of planned urban development might seem self-evident, but in reality is far from being so – particularly in former socialist countries turned into EU Member States such as Hungary or Romania. In Hungary, for instance, prior to EU accession, there was no generally accepted public opinion supporting the necessity of a planned urban development controlled by the public sector. However, the substantial resources – that in Hungary, e.g., involve impressive amounts – placed at the disposal of urban development within the framework of European Union development policy are not sufficient by themselves to answer the question as to why planned urban development is truly necessary. Based on the most recent research results on the topic and some relevant earlier Hungarian and foreign studies lesser-known in Central Europe, the present paper seeks to answer this question. It analyses the international literature as well as certain Western European, Hungarian, and Romanian cases in order to define the general objectives of urban planning and uses them as a starting-point to demonstrate the necessity of planned urban development.

Abstract
An operational urban development relying on the structured cooperation of the public and private sectors is indispensable to purposefully address the challenges posed by sustainable development. Its evolution in Hungary may serve as inspiration for other countries as well. In the period preceding the regime change, it underwent a much more significant disruption as compared to regulation-based urban development. Afterwards, its methods, procedures, and instruments suitable for use in a democratic rule-of-law state and under market economy conditions had to be rebuilt from scratch. For this to happen, two external factors provided assistance: the French–Hungarian urban development cooperation and the EU. As a result, we could witness the successful development of the methods as well as of the conceptual, strategic, and operational planning tools forming a coherent system of operational urban development planning carried through with the public sector's physical intervention into the urban tissue.