One of the most important territorial processes in the highly urbanised continent of Europe is suburbanisation, urban sprawl which occurs in a gradual manner over long periods and is not perceived as dramatic. Nevertheless the built-up urban areas and the urban lifestyle occupy step by step the periurban territories. Urban sprawl affects the essential environmental, economic and social functions of the impacted settlements. In the last decades these processes reached the less urbanised Central European region, leading to very fast and less planned changes in its settlement system. The research deals with these processes in the Central European non-metropolitan areas, around regional centres, and with their environmental impacts. The aim of this paper is, based on theoretical and empirical knowledge, to point out to spatial patterns of urban sprawl and suburbanisation in functional urban areas (FUA). This paper examines the urban sprawl and its impacts in Slovakia in the case of Nitra Functional Urban Area, in the agglomeration of an economically growing regional centre. The research is based on standard geographical methods including field research. Desktop and field empirical researches were conducted, with different methods such us GIS analysis of land use change. The analysis shows then to what extent cities and urban areas grow, from which one can conclude to how landscape surrounding the urban residential areas has changed, how the proportion of non-permeable surfaces increased, basically influencing the runoff of precipitation. The data demonstrate, moreover, how artificial patches and barriers fragment landscape more and more, endangering thereby biodiversity and decreasing green surfaces. The examination covers the 2000-2018 period, using the CORINE CLC 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018 databases. Thereby the authors are able to examine changes in a longer period of almost two decades, and three internal periods. All this is compared to the demographic changes of the urban area of Nitra as well, in order to see to what extent the change in the number of population contributes to the transformation of land cover and thereby to environmental impacts. The characteristic features of Nitra and its hinterland within this are analysed, then the Nitra FUA and within that the suburban zone is examined in detail. Nitra and its area feature high enlargement dynamics looking at the whole of the period, compared to other FUAs. It is typical almost everywhere that the enlargement of areas surrounding cities is more intensive than the growth of the city itself, which demonstrates general suburbanisation.

There are numerous examples of cross-border regions in Europe, which are regions not properly demarcated by national borders. One of the main driving forces of the European Union is to turn the dividing borders into connecting borders by strengthening the cohesion between states and regions, thus, encouraging regions to remedy the existing ethnic and cultural fragmentation by increasing the intensity and number of cross-border contacts. Our research focuses on proving that, in symbolic places, such as the cross-border area of Komárom and Komárno, the cultural values, monuments, and heritage sites are the strongest attraction factors for nationality-based cultural tourism. To support our hypothesis, we conducted an empirical survey within the framework of the H2020 SPOT (Social and Innovative Platform on Cultural Tourism and its potential towards deepening Europeanisation) in the cross-border region of Komárom and Komárno. The evaluation concentrated on four aspects of cultural tourism: the nature of cultural tourism in the area, the resident and visitor perceptions of the cultural tourism offerings, opportunities to increase cross-border collaboration, and options to improve the cultural tourism offerings of the area. Our results show that, although there is a great potential in the cross-border tourist destination of Komárom–Komárno, the integration of the (once united) two towns is advancing very slowly, which can be witnessed in the weaknesses of tourism integration as well.

This paper intends to delve deeply into the current understanding of the ways in which the transition from a central-based economy to an economy relying on free competition has led to changes in the big urban centers, bringing about a change in the relationships with the suburban areas. The authors take into account the high population density, the lack of space, and the elevated price of land within the big cities, which leads to urban functions migrating beyond the administrative boundaries, thus favoring the process of suburbanization. Given the context, commercial forces shift, migrating from the center to the urban peripheries or even outside them. This research is based on a comprehensive process of participative investigation (2012–2022) in Bucharest, Romania’s capital city. The research relies on field investigation, statistical and quantitative analyses and bibliographical sources. The conclusions rely primarily on the idea that political changes cannot be separated from economic, cultural and environmental ones, highlighting globalizing flows and the development of big cities. Industrial activities, strongly developed within a central-based economy, have significantly declined, which is partly compensated for by the development of the tertiary sector and, in particular, of commercial services leading to a functional reconversion of the urban peripheries and of suburban areas. The conclusions suggest that it is very important to be highly careful regarding the dilemmas and challenges ensuing from uncontrolled urban growth; therefore, several measures of urban planning should be taken with a view to achieving a better cooperation between urban stakeholders and those from the metropolitan areas so as to attain some common objectives in infrastructure in order to reach an integrated regional development.

Magyarország nagyobb városai körül már szinte mindenütt kimutathatók szuburbanizációs jelenségek. Tanulmányunk azon munkák sorába igyekszik beilleszkedni, amelyek a magyar vidéki szuburbanizáció összehasonlító vizsgálatát segíthetik elő. Győr környékének településein végzett lakossági és önkormányzati kérdőívek és interjúk segítségével tárjuk fel azokat a jelenségeket, amelyek a megindult és gyorsuló lakóhelyi szuburbanizációra utalnak. Vizsgáljuk e települések lakosságszámának változását, a kiköltöző népesség összetételét, motivációit, s azt, hogy mindez hogyan hat a befogadó települések társadalmának átalakulására, hogyan tudnak az újonnan jött családok beilleszkedni a helyi közösségbe. Fontos kérdés továbbá, hogy a kiköltöző városi lakosok korábbi kapcsolatrendszerükből mit őriznek meg költözésük után, hol veszik igénybe a különböző szolgáltatásokat. A gyorsuló szuburbanizáció ellenére kérdéses, hogy a folyamat jelentős tömegeket és területeket fog-e érinteni az elkövetkezendő időszakban.

Examining the urban sprawl around middle-size cities in Hungary and Central Europe the rural change and suburbanization can be characterized by residential out-migration from cities and at the same time by immigration from the rural areas. These processes have intensibed in the former socialist countries after the 2000s and a number of problems have not been addressed, which have become apparent during the eighties and nineties in Western countries. A fast urban sprawl took place with a low level of special control and planning but under the pressure of economic and financial development. The rate of spatial growth often exceeds the rate of population growth, it even occurs in the absence of population growth. In Central European countries, the main destination for migration is the capital cities and their suburbs, therefore suburbanisation studies focus on these areas. However, our aim is to focus on regional centres and their agglomerations, comparing them to capital cities and rural areas. The most dynamic and new urbanisation processes are taking place in urban agglomerations. The phenomena observed in these countries, especially in regional cities, have no historical precedent, but are a novelty from both a social and an economic point of view. The paper concentrates on the urbanisation tendencies of three post-socialist countries – Slovakia, Hungary and Romania –, on the basis of the expansion of the impervious surfaces and the change in the number of the population. In each country the capital cities, the areas of the regional centres, and more remote rural areas are analysed separately. The goal is to examine how much these countries fit into world tendencies, and to see the differences in the density of inhabitants in areas touched differently by urbanisation, among the countries and compared to world tendencies. It is examined in all three countries that have gone through similar economic and political transitions what differences are caused by the diverse historical, geographical and settlement hierarchy endowments at the time of the development and migration boom following the world economic crisis of 2008. It is hard to detect what role the economic crisis played in this, but it is certain that the crisis led to a significant fall, which was followed by a development with quite different directions in the cities, urban fringes and rural areas in the surveyed countries. The flow into cities seems to have accelerated, concerning in the first place capital city regions and the edges of regional centres. Besides population movements, the expansion of built-up areas is much faster than that, especially in less densely populated areas where the dynamism of these was outstandingly high between 2012 and 2018. This may have several negative consequences. In areas in the vicinity of cities zones of such high population density may emerge which may lead to societal problems later.