The results of the survey conducted in 2005 analysing the eco-nomic and social competitiveness of metropolitan areas and their relationships showed that success in economic sense is mostly coupled with failures in social sense, i.e. in economically success-ful urban regions various social problems have proven to be stronger (mainly regional disparities, social conflicts and their threats) than in economically less successful regions where social relations were somewhat more balanced.
It was explained partly by the contemporary characteristics of competition, their almost exclusively economic orientation: from the first years the system change and even from the late 1980s, until the infiltration of the 2008 global economic crisis it was evi -dent (and there is almost a full social consensus in this matter) that the favouring of economic interests and the unfavouring of social interests is the precondition of the western type closing up, and of the adaptation of western urban development models.
The almost one-sided commitment to economic development was coupled with the efforts made for the perfect cutback of the former socialist system, and for the rapid expansion of market economy. But it was also interconnected with a very important
additional fact: the rapid development of the enforcement of the economic interests based advanced western societies seemed to be unbroken, the social tensions of the narrow-minded economy-driven development have not emerged yet. Prior to 2008, only a few well-known economists thought of the global effects of the United States’ starting mortgage crisis, the negative conse-quences destructing both the economic and social conditions. In 2006 Nouriel Roubini, and in 2007 George Soros have repeated-ly warned the world for the potential dangers of the existing eco-nomic and financial model, but the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest US investment bank, started only one year later, in 2008.
By the 2014 survey of metropolitan regions the negative conse-quences of the global crisis had subsided, the world, among them was the Hungarian economy were slowly recovering, but at the level of everyday life it was not noticeable: Neither for the great amount of social structural problems, nor for the presence of re-gional disparities. The domestic effects of the global crisis had not gone away yet, more and more people were involved in pover-ty, and the economic and other difficulties affecting living condi-tions became more and more appreciable.
This is also reflected in the changed way how the population of metropolitan regions in 2005 and in 2014 saw the preconditions of local success and competitiveness. The population of metro-politan regions interviewed in 2005, considered mainly social fac-tors to be important for the achievement of local success and competitiveness; for example, favourable living conditions, love to live at their place of residence. At that time these factors seemed to be more important than economic factors such as the settlement of multinational companies, the promotion of small and medium enterprises. In the opinions expressed in 2014 the role of these very same economic factors clearly increased, al-though the prioritization has not changed: local success and competitiveness still remained the most important factors of so-cial aspects.
This recently experienced and still perceived anxiety, associated with worldwide and domestic economic crises, can be explained by the grievous conditions of life over the last decade, by the loss of jobs or even by the fear of redundancy as well as by deteriorat-ing incomes. But a new demand of metropolitan societies may
also be presumed to emerge: this is openness towards competi-tive urban development solutions, covering different areas of eco-nomic and social life, seeking to develop both areas, and the af-firmation of expectations towards them.
Based on today’s development progress of metropolitan re-gions, satisfying this new demand would really be much needed because the years of the first decade of 2000s did not really bring substantial changes for the competitiveness indicators of metro-politan regions based whether on economic or social or complex i.e. both economic and social ingredients. Compared to the indi-cators of 2005, year 2014 did not show much difference: it is met-ropolitan regions that continue to be the most dynamically de-veloping territorial units of the country, in comparison with espe-cially disadvantaged rural areas, but also compared to the na-tional average these regions have the highest economic potential, economic performance and employment level and the majority of jobs is concentrated here. Here lives the highest proportion of skilled and educated social strata, and here unemployment is the lowest, and income levels are the highest. Their attractiveness of population also increased: while in 2005 37.8%, in 2011, 39.0% of the domestic population lived in the metropolitan regions of the nine domestic major cities.
However, interior, more differentiated analyses show a slight deterioration: their previous advantages seem to fall in compari-son to both national and rural areas’ data. This may be due to the economically and socially unequal internal development of some urban areas as well: between the two dates of investigation the situation of the nine metropolitan regions has significantly changed relative to one another. According to the measurement data during the past nine years sometimes one’s, sometimes an-other area’s position changed, due to the modifications of once the economic, other times of social competitiveness indicators.
While there are some solid positioned players among them (but only in terms of economic competitiveness), they are especially the central places of central-western regions and the capital city of the country.
It is not easy to interpret this partially stillness partially deterio-ration, but it is certain that complex, i.e. both economic and so-cial processes can both be the explanatory factors. Namely, the domestic economic downturn, reflecting the consequences of the
2008 global economic crisis, but also the problems of social structure, among them the impacts of disparities between urban and rural areas on urban processes, as well as their special fea-tures manifesting in different areas of social well-being and in dif-ferent social strata, i.e. the differences between the difdif-ferent di-mensions of well-being. These factors are worsening not only the national level positions of metropolitan regions which have been compiled by various indicators, but also they are hindering their positive chances for participating in global competition. This is why developing and applying complex economic and social com-petitiveness concepts comprising well-being factors as well is be-coming increasingly indispensable.