The studies of this book clearly demonstrated the spatial social inequalities, the dichotomies of metropolitan and rural areas, the differences between cities and their urban zones, in other words the contradictions between cores and peripheries. They revealed the socio-economic gaps between the cities studied, including the developmental differences between the capital city and the major cities but also highlighted the differences between the develop-ment stages of their suburban zones.
As for methodological reasons, the comparison was a key consideration, therefore, not only differences and similarities in the vari -ous spatial formations were compared, but changes in the main trends of social structure were analysed in temporal dimension as well, including the exploration of differences between Budapest and the metropolitan regions of Hungary. This latter one was imp lemented in 2014, by the analysis and a later re-analysis of representative sociological data collected in nine Hungarian met-ropolitan regions.
As the data of 2014 show, the strict social order of sharp spatial hierarchy measured in 2005, started to ease as a result of the si-multaneous manifestation of two typical processes of global ur-banization. One is the re-intensification of economic and social concentration: the changing functions of the inner city: the process of urbanisation, the regeneration of inner spaces, and ur-ban gentrification, the emergence of middle-classes in the city’s in-ner parts as a result. This latter one was influenced by the citizens’
changing moving patterns, and this strengthened city life again. As living in a city represented something which was valuable outward migration efforts were reduced, but it was also influenced by out-migrations from the city centre towards outer districts, and by the space occupation of urban middle classes. The other process was the trend of deconcentration, attaching new economic functions
to suburban zones: this included the relocation of several compa-nies to the city’s peripheral zone, and suburbanisation, the cre-ation of high prestige suburban zones. This was simultaneous with the displacement of vulnerable, less educated and low income groups from internal urban spaces, leading to the shaping of low social rank suburban zones as well. All these resulted in a rather high social status population in central metropolitan areas, the differentiation of the neighbouring settlements, the composition of partly rather low, partly rather high social status spatial units.
There has been another change: it is namely the social transfor-mation of the cities’ neighbouring settlements: the survey con-ducted in 2005 differentiated (both by economic and physical conditions) developed and undeveloped suburban settlements with differing social composition. At that time the presence of higher social status people was greater in economically advanced places, than in the other type. As the 2014 data indicate, social structural differences show a convergence, due to the influx of mainly young graduates in more significant proportion than be-fore, into previously undeveloped municipalities. (This explanation suggests less correlaexplanation with the transformaexplanation of the in -s titutional or infra-structural -sy-stem taking place in the meantime, but may rather be bound to much lower real estate prices here than in large cities or developed municipalities.) By now the di-chotomy between cities and their urban peripheries, which was still valid in 2005 has been changed, inequalities may partially ap-pear between big cities and their agglomeration zones but they are manifested mainly between cities and their suburban settle-ments inhabited by poor social classes.
However, the very sharp spatial inequalities are revealed in com-paring metropolitan and disadvantaged rural micro-regions, namely between city centres and rural micro-regions such as the two counterpoints of research, where an ecological and social slope lies showing gradually diminishing values. On the highest and lowest parts of the slope, namely at the two endpoints, the values of economic development and potential show great differences, and the indicators of the supply of sources, of the openness to ex-ternal sources, of resource hosting absorption capacities are also differing. Economic activity is more typical on the ‘upside’ than the
‘downside’ part, while unemployment and participation in public work programmes are more typical at the end of the slope. The
so-cial and demographic structures are also separated from each other: between the top and the bottom endpoints there are discrepan -cies between the ratio of high- and low-educated people, as well as between the proportion of young and elderly people.
The settlement slope is also unique: the most dynamic players in today’s economic and social development, the units holding strategic functions, the spatial units integrated into the global economy often by multiple threads (such as the regions of Buda -pest, the capital city, of Győr, Székesfehérvár, and recently Kecskemét), are able and ready to participate in global econo mic competition, sometimes these are even only urban centres, but sometimes they enter into the ring of competition with their own regions. Although even they several times remain at the bottom in social competition because the mitigation of urban spatial inequalities the expansion of middle class cannot obscure the pheno -mena of social exclusion, the growing number of those unable to meet the demands of the global economy who are referred to just as ‘social burden’ by many people. Nevertheless, their number at the other end, at the bottom of the ladder is much higher. The re-ally poor, are not those who live in metropolitan areas, but rather those who are located in small rural settlements, who are stuck there, often without any future and hope, and although many of them are longing for living in towns but only those with better market position can succeeded in it.
At the bottom of the settlement ladder are the areas with well-being deficit: the peripheral border areas, today’s victims of the historically evolved social and economic closure, they are those who excluded from modernisation, and global economic life, those struggling with weak economy, scarcity of resources, and quickly decreasing population, and increasing migration day by day. And this ladder will not break even by the comparison of in-termediate units: the comparison of metropolitan areas and ru-ral peripheru-ral settlements also shows significant inequalities: the relations of the two spatial forms follow the previous trend, there are significant differences in well-being conditions between urban and rural peripheries and the disadvantaged position of rural pe-ripheries are clearly seen.