Gentrification and rescaling urban governance in Budapest-Józsefváros

The most stigmatised area of Budapest, the Eighth District (Józsefváros) has been undergoing significant urban and social change since 1989. However, compared with what rent gap theory would have forecast, gentrification took off relatively late. After a historical narrative of how rent gap in Józsefváros had been produced throughout the 20th century, we will argue that examining the mechanisms and outcomes of the three dominant dynamics of rescaling urban governance in Hungary – decentralisation without the redistribution of resources in the 1990s; EU accession and Europeanisation of public policies from the 2000s; and recentralisation after 2010 – help us understand when, where and how gentrification has been unwinding in Middle-Józsefváros, the most dilapidated area of the Eighth District. The article will present three case studies of local urban regeneration as paradigmatic for the three rescaling dynamics: Corvin Promenade, Magdolna Quarter Programme, and the ongoing Orczy Quarter project. It will show the underlying revanchist policies and discourses in each case. The main aim of the current paper is to illustrate how a scale-sensitive political economic approach can go beyond the mainstream public and political discourse in scrutinising gentrification, through shedding light on structural factors contributing to exclusion, criminalisation, displacement, and othering

Regional risk assessment. The electronics industry in Hungary

The Regional Risk Assessment on the ICT and battery value chains in Hungary has identified risks for workers in nine thematic areas of the Electronics Watch code. A collaboration between Electronics Watch, Periféria Policy and Research Center (Hungary), and University of Bristol (UK), the report explores each of these risks in detail, and provides recommendations on key actions to mitigate them

Regulatory NLRs Control the RLR-Mediated Type I Interferon and Inflammatory Responses in Human Dendritic Cells

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Regulation of type I interferon responses by mitochondria-derived reactive oxygen species in plasmacytoid dendritic cells

Mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS) generated continuously under physiological conditions have recently emerged as critical players in the regulation of immune signaling pathways. In this study we have investigated the regulation of antiviral signaling by increased mtROS production in plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), which, as major producers of type I interferons (IFN), are the key coordinators of antiviral immunity. The early phase of type I IFN production in pDCs is mediated by endosomal Toll-like receptors (TLRs), whereas the late phase of IFN response can also be triggered by cytosolic retinoic acid-inducible gene-I (RIG-I), expression of which is induced upon TLR stimulation. Therefore, pDCs provide an ideal model to study the impact of elevated mtROS on the antiviral signaling pathways initiated by receptors with distinct subcellular localization. We found that elevated level of mtROS alone did not change the phenotype and the baseline cytokine profile of resting pDCs. Nevertheless increased mtROS levels in pDCs lowered the TLR9-induced secretion of pro-inflammatory mediators slightly, whereas reduced type I IFN production markedly via blocking phosphorylation of interferon regulatory factor 7 (IRF7), the key transcription factor of the TLR9 signaling pathway. The TLR9-induced expression of RIG-I in pDCs was also negatively regulated by enhanced mtROS production. On the contrary, elevated mtROS significantly augmented the RIG-I-stimulated expression of type I IFNs, as well as the expression of mitochondrial antiviral-signaling (MAVS) protein and the phosphorylation of Akt and IRF3 that are essential components of RIG-I signaling. Collectively, our data suggest that increased mtROS exert diverse immunoregulatory functions in pDCs both in the early and late phase of type I IFN responses depending on which type of viral sensing pathway is stimulated