The growing concentration of people and wealth often results in imbalances of resource consumption and carrying capacity, therefore, the sustainability assessment of urbanization can offer an important basis for global sustainable transition. This paper aims to provide an analysis of the environmental sustainability of urbanization in Hungary focusing on the long-term changes of ecological footprint and biocapacity at the sub-national level, with a special attention to the Budapest Metropolitan Region (BMR). During the research a hybrid method considering an input-output model and household consumption data was used for the calculation of regional ecological footprint, whereas biocapacity was measured on the basis of land use data. Findings suggest, that even though the ecological deficit of the country has been gradually decreasing since the early 2000s, due to a shrinking population and increasing biocapacity, the ecological overshoot is still significant in the case of Budapest and its agglomeration (30 fold and 2.4 fold respectively). The unsustainability of the BMR is caused partly by demographic factors (7.6% population growth as opposed to the the 7.7% decrease in the countryside) and partly by rising per capita ecological footprint values (especially in the agglomeration from 2.73 to 2.92 gha/capita), which are not balanced by biocapacity on the supply side. This research concluded that policy makers in ageing societies with a highly centralized urban system like Hungary should launch programmes targeted specifically to primary metropolitan areas to improve environmental efficiency and encourage people to change their consumption behaviour.

We examined the number of species and individuals of woody vegetation in a total of 150 front gardens in settlements located at three different distances from Kecskemét and affected by suburbanization to different degrees. Most often, one species or two individuals occurred in front gardens, but there were also front gardens with 8 or more species and 14 or more individuals in some cases. The total of 668 recorded individuals belonged to 111 species, among which the first five places were occupied by Biota orientalis, Hibiscus syriacus, Thuja occidentalis, Catalpa bignonioides and Cerasus vulgaris. The combined number of individuals of the five species accounted for 26% of all woody plant individuals observed. The data were evaluated according to several groupings: tree, shrub, hedge or liana; native, archaeophyte or neophyte; fruit tree vs. ornamental tree; deciduous vs. evergreen; and the effect of the electric power transmission lines above the front gardens was also examined. Our results highlight the plant selection habits of the residents, which can be taken into account for the development of appropriate town planning and landscape planning concepts.

The focus of the research was to measure and compare social capacity and anomie between four Scandinavian states (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and four post-socialist countries (the Visegrad Group: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) in order to analyze similarities and differences. The analysis was conducted utilizing both micro and macro approaches. Four new complex indicators were developed from the social well-being module of the 2012 6. ESS survey. These new complex indicators were used to measure the quality of the society, the quality of life and subjective wellbeing. Macro level analysis consisted of indicators from the database of Eurostat Regions and the 2011 Census that are most used in professional literature. The characteristics of each country then the features of the regions (60 NUTS2 field units) were analyzed using data obtained from micro level surveys utilizing the newly created complex indicators. Following this step, a regional analysis of the aforementioned macro level indicators was completed. The results of these two levels of analysis were compared cross-nationally and regionally. Significant differences were found between the Scandinavian group and the Visegrad group revealing underlying connections supporting the results of other European studies. Namely that the 2008 crisis with respect to subjective well being created far more trauma for individuals in countries with a weak social safety net. The analysis also demonstrated that using complex indicators as well as both a micro and macro approach complement each other bringing about an understanding of nuances and subtle differences not found in singular approaches thus creating a more accurate assessment of the status of the society.