Historical-scale territorial development studies may entail a number of methodological difficulties, which we attempt to overcome in this study. Through the analysis of the settlement-level Human Development Index (HDI), we explore the territorial differences within the current borders of Hungary and their development in a total of six time periods between 1910 and 2022, paying special attention to the developed center and underdeveloped periphery regions.
Our analysis confirmed that the Trianon border demarcation did not cause the uniform backwardness of the border regions by 1941, as the significant unfavourable situation of some of them could be detected already in 1910, and developing zones could also be identified along the new borders. The backwardness of several regions, which are considered as traditionally backward nowadays, only became truly detectable during the socialist period (Cserehát, Ormánság, Közép-Tiszavidék). At the same time, the spatially extensive developed areas around Budapest and the Northwest Transdanubia, as well as the island-like zones of the agglomeration areas of Eastern Hungary, constitute the core regions.
Our studies indicate the long-term tendency that the developed and underdeveloped settlement groups are characteristically separated from each other, which also shows the increasingly compact location of the development zones.
Keywords: centre-periphery, HDI, regional inequalities, spatial development pattern
