Post-socialist Urban Ecosystems in Flux: The Socio-spatial Differentiation of Three Budapest Districts

This paper investigates the changing post-socialist patterns of social and environmental segregation in Budapest, through a case study of three of its inner-city districts. These quarters represent a north-south cross-section of the city, because they contain the northern edge of the mixed-use residential and commercial urban core of Budapest, in addition to a wider range of historical residential and industrial areas in the inner city, and former industrial suburbs. The paper also includes a review of the spatial structure of the human, built and natural components of the urban ecosystem at the onset of the transformation, with the aim of clarifying how socialist-era trends have influenced urban residential inequalities. This has been supplemented with an outline of the qualitative features and temporal trends of urban spatial ecological differentiation in the post-socialism. The concluding section of the paper outlines the policy issues related to the social and environmental problems observed in the given context