Why Budapest, Warsaw, and Lithuania split themselves in two
May 7, 2019 7:47 AM Subscribe
On January 1, 2018, Hungary split the region of Central Hungary, or Közép-Magyarország in Hungarian, into two new regions: the Budapest region (containing the capital of the same name) and the surrounding region of Pest. This decision was made to increase the amount of funding received from the European Union, which dedicates a third of its budget (50 billion euros) to less economically developed regions for investments in infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals.
Also, in the No Duh department: cities concentrate wealth and subsidize everyone else. Not that will stop representatives from rural and exurban places from griping about how those lazy city people are taking all their money, when it's the exact opposite.
posted by RakDaddy at 8:15 AM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by RakDaddy at 8:15 AM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
...someone hasn't noticed the difference between a voivodeship (roughly, province) and a city. Poland has done a Lithuania-lite, not a city division - we divided the Mazowieckie voivodeship into Mazowieckie and Warsaw ("Warszawski stołeczny" means "Warsaw capital region"). The rest of the analysis is correct, because Warsaw is London-levels of head-and-shoulders above the rest of the country, while the rest of Mazowieckie is dirt-poor agricultural territory.
Mind you, that still means Warsaw is siphoning a hell of a lot of EU funding, just divided into more projects (because the per-project funding is limited with a higher GDP per capita). The city is going ahead with a new metro line, a giant tram expansion to newly (densely!) urbanised areas, hundreds of rolling stock and lots of utility infrastructure work, while country-level programs fund a new ringroad and modernising the rail network.
Anyone who thinks the EU doesn't make sense, they're welcome to come over here and check. And maybe see some photos of how it looked like 15 years ago.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 8:18 AM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
Mind you, that still means Warsaw is siphoning a hell of a lot of EU funding, just divided into more projects (because the per-project funding is limited with a higher GDP per capita). The city is going ahead with a new metro line, a giant tram expansion to newly (densely!) urbanised areas, hundreds of rolling stock and lots of utility infrastructure work, while country-level programs fund a new ringroad and modernising the rail network.
Anyone who thinks the EU doesn't make sense, they're welcome to come over here and check. And maybe see some photos of how it looked like 15 years ago.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 8:18 AM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
Obviously any maneuver like this is necessarily cynical to a certain extent, but considering that Viktor Orban is, within Hungary, basically accusing the EU of being run by the Jewish New World Order, it's kind of astonishingly cynical. I guess maybe you can come up with a framework by which it's not immoral to maximize your income from what you claim is a plot by depraved globalists to turn Budapest into the new capital of ISIS, but it takes some work.
posted by Copronymus at 8:22 AM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by Copronymus at 8:22 AM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
> Warsaw is London-levels of head-and-shoulders above the rest of the country, while the rest of Mazowieckie is dirt-poor agricultural territory
Yeah, looking at the Hungary map, Pest is a rural agricultural region very comparable to any of its neighboring regions. Whereas Budapest is now just the city itself and immediate environs--wildly different and far more wealthy than any of the neighboring regions, including Pest.
This isn't some wild and unreasonable scheme--rather a more logical approach to geographical divisions.
When dividing populated countries for purposes of representation, economic development, etc, it makes far more sense to do it by population than geography.
posted by flug at 3:29 PM on May 7, 2019
Yeah, looking at the Hungary map, Pest is a rural agricultural region very comparable to any of its neighboring regions. Whereas Budapest is now just the city itself and immediate environs--wildly different and far more wealthy than any of the neighboring regions, including Pest.
This isn't some wild and unreasonable scheme--rather a more logical approach to geographical divisions.
When dividing populated countries for purposes of representation, economic development, etc, it makes far more sense to do it by population than geography.
posted by flug at 3:29 PM on May 7, 2019
> Anyone who thinks the EU doesn't make sense, they're welcome to come over here and check.
Yeah, in the U.S. for some reason both the city and rural areas have decided it's best to hate and resent each other, both sides think they are subsidizing the other wildly and so on (and yes, it's always the cities subsidizing the countryside--that's how economies work; the cities get most of the money and projects because they form the majority of the population and economy, but per capita or per dollar of the economy the cities get less than their "fair share" and the countryside gets more).
But if you want to actually counter things like Orban's nonsense, the best long-term strategy by far is to develop Hungary's economy and infrastructure and integrate it's economy more fully into the EU.
Working long-term towards economic parity and widespread wealth is how you build stability and a cohesive civilization.
posted by flug at 3:35 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yeah, in the U.S. for some reason both the city and rural areas have decided it's best to hate and resent each other, both sides think they are subsidizing the other wildly and so on (and yes, it's always the cities subsidizing the countryside--that's how economies work; the cities get most of the money and projects because they form the majority of the population and economy, but per capita or per dollar of the economy the cities get less than their "fair share" and the countryside gets more).
But if you want to actually counter things like Orban's nonsense, the best long-term strategy by far is to develop Hungary's economy and infrastructure and integrate it's economy more fully into the EU.
Working long-term towards economic parity and widespread wealth is how you build stability and a cohesive civilization.
posted by flug at 3:35 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yeah, in the U.S. for some reason both the city and rural areas have decided it's best to hate and resent each other, both sides think they are subsidizing the other wildly
They are subsiding each other. The cities give the rural areas money and the rural areas give the cities food. It’s been this way more or less since the founding of cities 10,000 years ago.
posted by jmauro at 6:53 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
They are subsiding each other. The cities give the rural areas money and the rural areas give the cities food. It’s been this way more or less since the founding of cities 10,000 years ago.
posted by jmauro at 6:53 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
They are subsiding each other. The cities give the rural areas money and the rural areas give the cities food. It’s been this way more or less since the founding of cities 10,000 years ago.
No. Words have meanings. You're describing trade, where cities and rural areas exchange food and raw resources and manufactured goods and entertainment and healthcare and so on, using money as a medium of exchange; just as it's not a subsidy (in either direction) when I go to McDonald's and buy food, or when a farmer goes to the hospital in town.
What is (also) happening is subsidization, where cities contribute relatively more money to government than rural areas, while rural areas have relatively more money spent on them from the government. This is generally a more recent phenomenon, (where recent means only a couple of centuries) thanks to industrialization making cities more economically productive, and thanks to stronger central governments taking a more active role in the economy and funding larger projects.
I happen to think it's good that cities are subsidizing rural areas; I think that a civilization should be judged by how it treats it's weakest members, whether that means direct poverty relief, or programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Swiss PostBus system or the Alberta SuperNet. Or, more to the point, this EU funding mechanism.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 9:01 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
No. Words have meanings. You're describing trade, where cities and rural areas exchange food and raw resources and manufactured goods and entertainment and healthcare and so on, using money as a medium of exchange; just as it's not a subsidy (in either direction) when I go to McDonald's and buy food, or when a farmer goes to the hospital in town.
What is (also) happening is subsidization, where cities contribute relatively more money to government than rural areas, while rural areas have relatively more money spent on them from the government. This is generally a more recent phenomenon, (where recent means only a couple of centuries) thanks to industrialization making cities more economically productive, and thanks to stronger central governments taking a more active role in the economy and funding larger projects.
I happen to think it's good that cities are subsidizing rural areas; I think that a civilization should be judged by how it treats it's weakest members, whether that means direct poverty relief, or programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Swiss PostBus system or the Alberta SuperNet. Or, more to the point, this EU funding mechanism.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 9:01 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Kaczyński may be less famous than Orban, but he'd just as eagerly get us out of the EU to be freer with right wing idiocy like this. The reason he's currently contorting himself to seem pro EU even as Brussels rightly points out every breach of legal order, and the European Council president is his greatest opponent? Upwards of 88% of Poles are pro-EU. Not just because of the money - the freedom of movement is nothing to sneeze at for people who had to petition for passports for every trip and promise to report on fellow travellers to security services - but wow does the money help.
The agricultural subsidies are a kind of basic income for farmers, but most other things are capital, infrastructure, start up funds and advice on how to make it all work efficiently. Targeting it more efficiently on the poorest regions is exactly the right direction to combat populism.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:49 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
The agricultural subsidies are a kind of basic income for farmers, but most other things are capital, infrastructure, start up funds and advice on how to make it all work efficiently. Targeting it more efficiently on the poorest regions is exactly the right direction to combat populism.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:49 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm living on the city border of Budapest and it gets rural real quick out here.
posted by Skwirl at 5:59 AM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Skwirl at 5:59 AM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
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posted by RakDaddy at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]