Defining daily space use patterns in Hungary:
mapping functional catchment areas
Kristóf Bertalan Orbán – Gábor Mayer – Katalin Mezei – Judit Berkes – Tibor Navracsics
Regional Statistics, Vol. 16. No. 4. 2026: 697–722; DOI: 10.15196/RS160401
The prevailing methodology for delineating functional urban areas relies redominantly on labour market commuting data related to urban centres with more than 50 thousand inhabitants. However, this approach does not account for other functional relationships arising from residents’ daily needs. In the development policy of the European Union, the widely used functional urban area delineation method (Dijkstra et al. 2019) maps connections between settlements by analysing a specific segment of the population on the basis of their location, jobs, and activities. A notable shortcoming of this method is that it neglects the role of small and medium-sized towns – places of unquestionable importance from a regional development perspective. To obtain a more accurate and comprehensive picture of society’s spatial usage, extending these studies to a broader range of spatial and temporal characteristics of residents’ activities is necessary. This multidimensional analysis allows for more accurate mapping of Hungary’s functional catchment areas (FCAs) than the widely used EU–OECD functional urban areas (FUA) framework does. The methodology used is also capable of identifying smaller functional urban areas that are organised around less attractive peripheral, rural towns or suburban subcentres in a more fragmented and complex system of inter-settlement relationships. The resulting primary FCAs, with few exceptions, have an average spatial extent of approximately 468 km² (73% are between 100 and 1,000 km²).
However, in terms of population, they exhibit significant variation, with an average of 43,776 residents, ranging from 6,093 to 321,953 inhabitants. As a result, the spatial structure of the mapped catchment areas can provide forwards-looking guidance for a more territorially balanced organisation of services. However, there is a need for further development of the methodology, considering the principle of population proportionality more strongly. This can play an important role in mapping the internal, partly intraurban daily spatial use subsystems of agglomeration areas. While the framework developed in this study is rooted in Hungary’s urban network, its multidimensional methodology and findings focusing on daily space use offer valuable insights for researchers examining urban–rural structures across diverse national and
international settings.
Keywords: functional urban area, use of space, functional catchment area (FCA), accessibility, spatial planning, small and medium-sized towns, commuting between 100 and 1,000 km²).
