ABSTRACT
Within the context of European integration and the opening of state borders to everyday interactions and cooperation, borderlands have acquired a new significance as spaces that connect different national economies, societies, and cultures. Hungary, which neighbours seven different countries, can in some ways be understood as a borderlands society par excellence due to ethnic Hungarian communities that transcend state borders. In addition to ethno-cultural links, functional cross-border urban networks have re-emerged since 1989 and massive cross-border agglomeration processes can, for example, be observed between Hungary and Slovakia. In the case of the Slovakian capital city, Bratislava, and the second largest Slovakian city, Košice, suburbanisation stretches far to the territory of Hungary, while in many other cases, border towns have partly regained their historic urban functional zones and started strategic cooperation. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of these borderland formation processes (cross-border labour and educational mobility, transport, tourism, suburbanisation, integrated development, and governance) based on comprehensive data and place-based information. In this chapter, the authors also address the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the above processes.
