Land use changes in the rural-urban fringe of Kecskemét after the economic transition

The rural-urban fringe is a transitional zone between the central city and the countryside characterised by rapid land use changes. In the Western countries, the changes in the rural-urban fringe started decades ago, and the processes of this area are quite well described. In Hungary, drastic transformation of the fringe only started with the political and economic transition. The ongoing processes of the rural-urban fringe, although resembling to those experienced in the western countries, were slightly modified by the special social and economic circumstances. The aim of this paper is to provide a survey of the transformation processes in the rural-urban fringes of Hungary through the case study of Kecskemet, a county seat city in Hungary. To achieve that, the study gives a short overview of the theoretical concept of the rural-urban fringe and of the historical development of Kecskemet, a former market town with a unique relationship with its countryside. The analysis of the changes which took place in the fringe of Kecskemet relied on the field research implemented by the Great Plain Research Department of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies (CERS) of the HAS (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) in 2010. The authors also took the results emerging from previous studies (e. g. [1]) into consideration.