Some of the literature on catchment areas offers valuable insights into spatial units defined by the various types and functions of urban centres. In addition, a range of functional urban region delineation methodologies contribute significantly to understanding citizens' commuting habits. However, while the former often lacks a complex, multifunctional perspective, the latter typically focuses on labour market areas linked to global megacities. As a result, smaller centres fulfilling a wide range of everyday functions are frequently omitted from regional maps, and they remain hidden in the catchment area of larger cities. This research aims to address these gaps by proposing a method for identifying urban centres on the basis of multidimensional selection criteria. This approach enables the general mapping of their multifunctional catchment areas and their wider functional urban zones. This analysis extends the range of statistics commonly used: in addition to labour market commuting, it includes commuting for general and vocational education, as well as accounting for the accessibility of everyday commercial centres and frequently used urban-level public services. Owing to differing spatial organizing principles, this research highlights that everyday centres take on varied structural forms – justifying a multidimensional mapping approach that is in addition to traditional labour market commuting analyses. Although this study is grounded in the Hungarian context, its multidimensional approach to mapping functional urban catchment areas offers valuable insights and a flexible framework for international research. By integrating a wide range of everyday spatial behaviour indicators, this analysis not only deepens our understanding of urban networks but also provides urban planning and regional development professionals with a robust tool for identifying gaps in public service provision. In doing so, it can help increase access to essential services, particularly for residents in rural areas far from major urban centres, which are typically the focus of the literature.

The prevailing methodology for delineating functional urban areas relies predominantly on labour market commuting data related to urban centres with more than 50 thousand inhabitants. However, this approach does not account for other functional relationships arising from residents' daily needs. In the development policy of the European Union, the widely used functional urban area delineation method (Dijkstra et al. 2019) maps connections between settlements by analysing a specific segment of the population on the basis of their location, jobs, and activities. A notable shortcoming of this method is that it neglects the role of small and medium-sized towns – places of unquestionable importance from a regional development perspective. To obtain a more accurate and comprehensive picture of society's spatial usage, extending these studies to a broader range of spatial and temporal characteristics of residents' activities is necessary. This multidimensional analysis allows for more accurate mapping of Hungary's functional catchment areas (FCAs) than the widely used EU-OECD functional urban areas (FUA) framework does. The methodology used is also capable of identifying smaller functional urban areas that are organised around less attractive peripheral, rural towns or suburban subcentres in a more fragmented and complex system of inter-settlement relationships. The resulting primary FCAs, with few exceptions, have an average spatial extent of approximately 468km^2 (73% are between 100 and 1,000km^2). However, in terms of population, they exhibit significant variation, with an average of 43,776 residents, ranging from 6,093 to 321,953 inhabitants. As a result, the spatial structure of the mapped catchment areas can provide forwards-looking guidance for a more territorially balanced organisation of services. However, there is a need for further development of the methodology, considering the principle of population proportionality more strongly. This can play an important role in mapping the internal, partly intraurban daily spatial use subsystems of agglomeration areas. While the framework developed in this study is rooted in Hungary's urban network, its multidimensional methodology and findings focusing on daily space use offer valuable insights for researchers examining urban-rural structures across diverse national and international settings.