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Because of the special settlement system in Hungary a municipality can be divided into three parts, the central inner area (core city), other inner areas (incorporated settlements) and outskirts. Because of this system and special settlement network, the process of suburbanisation in Hungary has some unique characteristics. In this paper we examined the spatial structure and social properties of the rural-urban fringe of four Hungarian cities, with emphasise on the other inner areas and the outskirts.The outskirts are mostly scattered or interim habitations within the administrative limits of a city or village but these are usually separated from the main built-up areas and almost all of them characterised remote-rural-like infrastructure and way of life. This spatial structure resulted in the phenomenon of the suburbanisation within city limits. Our research aims to examine how it influenced local society and land use pattern in the rural parts of the agglomerations. The used method was based on a questionnaire involving 1800 households and census of outskirts plots in the sample area of a middle-sized city in West Hungary.During this process, residents tend to change their living conditions to a more rural one without leaving the municipality, thus areas of former villages and outskirts attracted 55.1% of suburban movement outside of Budapest Agglomeration since 1990. Most of the residents came from the city to rural milieu and their main motivations were low utility costs, gardening opportunities and slow lifestyle. A significant part of them is especially looking for remote-rural-like environment and community, however they want to stay close to the city. A high proportion of migrants have low-income and disadvantages. The repeated expansion of modest houses resulted in a chaotic townscape that is creating conflicts within neighbourhoods. Even villages, incorporated villages and outskirts, which are at the same distance from the city centre, show significant differences in rurality, suburban motivations and society. The rural-urban fringe transformed into a highly complex spatial and social structure during post-socialist transformation, therefore the existing urban and spatial development methods of Hungarian Administration are not able to handle this phenomenon.

Cross-border suburbanisation around Bratislava: changing social, ethnic and architectural character of the "Hungarian suburb" of the Slovak capitalRajka is a village in Northwest Hungary with a special geographical location, only fifteen kilometres from Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. This settlement is an excellent example of the phenomenon of cross-border suburbanisation which means the migration of the urban population from the city to the not too distant rural area even if it is in another country. This process is transforming the original character of Rajka. There are huge differences between the lifestyles of the indigenous and the immigrant community. The autochthonous inhabitants are worried about Rajka's fast alteration, there are considerable problems in between Hungarians and Slovaks due to language differences and a lot of tensions because of the village's changing atmosphere, congested local traffic and the new challenges in Rajka's educational institution. Besides the presentation of social changes, this paper focuses on the ethnic and residential ancestry of the immigrants to show new linguistic and social patterns in Rajka. On the other hand, examining the specifics of the dramatic transformation of the architectural character of this settlement is also an important element of the study.

Social segregation is one of the most important social problems in Central-Eastern Europe not only in urban, but also rural areas. The social segregation usually coexists with ethnic segregation. In Western-Europe we can see segregation mainly in towns, but in Eastern-Europe also in villages, usually connecting with Roma people. In the last decades number of population of small villages dropped dramatically and in some regions the most disadvantaged social groups appeared in these villages. Nowadays some of these villages have geographical, social and ethnic disadvantages together. To stop marginalization of people living in poverty is one of the biggest challenges nowadays in Hungary. According to the definition of Hungarian Statistical Office the whole settlement is regarded segregated if it has less than 200 inhabitants, therefore we also determined this limit. These settlements with population below 200 were the subject of this study. A complex indicator system was established containing six indicators (educational level, unemployment, comfort level of homes, etc.) These indicators served as the base of cluster analysis using the K-means algorithm resulted in five clusters. The 58 segregated settlements can be found mainly in peripheral areas of Northeastern-and Southwestern-Hungary. The proportion of Roma population is high in most of the segregated settlements. The aim of the paper is to describe the most important social problems of the smallest Hungarian villages, to find the groups of villages with social segregation and marginalization and to find context between marginalization, social and ethnic segregation amongst the tiny Hungarian villages.