Sára Farkas (p)

Dani Broitman

In the age of technology, the role of cities is becoming increasingly important, and technology is playing an increasingly important role in the life of cities. Considering the fact that the basis of successful cities in the 21st century is determined by the successful interconnection and networking of stakeholders interested in urban development, it is essential for every city to create the right framework and processes for a more efficient urban level partnership management and to promote networking using infocommunication solutions. The aim of the article is to offer a theoretical basis and some practical examples with infocommunication solutions for more effective connection and networking of stakeholders in urban development.

Péter Simonyi (p), Brigitta Zsótér, Sándor Illés

Sára Farkas

Following years of economic upheavals started in 2008 (great economic crisis) and 2020 (COVID-19 pandemic) the European Union and its member states did not find reliable answers to some negative effects of downturns at different spatial levels. This was highly true in East part of Europe, in the ex-socialist countries. Regional differences increased at the expanse of rural areas both crisis times. The inefficient efforts to revitalize rural countryside echoes new solutions to be empirical and theoretical bases in the past and present days. The main aim of the presentation is to investigate on the necessary elements of employment sustainability in Hungarian and non-Hungarian rural areas in the light of two different sorts of crises with the help of the potential legal circulator status. Based on an applied research series conducted 2012-2021, the previous publication of the research results and the relevant literature the authors synthetized a general model inspired by geographical spheres for practical use of stakeholders and policymakers after first crisis. The parts of the model, the interrelations, the mechanisms, and the functions between the elements will be refined under the umbrella of new-type economic downturn, nowadays. Hypothesises and guesses will be articulated, which are highly disputable, due to discuss them.

Anat Tchetchik, Sachar Hatan, Aliza Fleischer (p)

Péter Simonyi

Natural and agricultural landscapes provide a wide range of ecosystem services, among which are aesthetic landscapes. As these services have no direct market value, land use decision makers often ignore them in favor of urban sprawl, resulting in suboptimal resource allocation. Here, we suggest a novel method to evaluate the aesthetic landscape services of natural and agricultural ecosystems using the case of the agritourism market in Israel. We model the agritourism market as an oligopolistic market with differentiated products and formulate an equilibrium model with structural, double nested logit demand and pricing equations. The structural equations are expressed as a function of the attributes of the agritourism firm, among which are the components of landscape view. We use aggregate market data and GIS data to estimate the structural model. In the case of urban sprawl, the welfare loss is estimated at US$108,000–197,000 per km2, depending on the type of ecosystem that is forgone, whereas in agricultural sprawl over natural areas, the welfare loss is estimated at US$141,000 per km2. This welfare loss can be considered the economic value of landscape aesthetics services to the agritourism market. These findings illustrate the potential of using this valuation method for other ecosystems in other markets

Dani broitman (p)

Aliza Fleischer

Ecosystem services are defined as benefits obtained by humans from ecosystem functions and processes. Although the different types of ecosystem services are well defined, their measurement and quantification has remained controversial despite long last research efforts. A particularly elusive and of-ten neglected aspect of ecosystem services quantification has been a proper identification of the beneficiaries. We argue that a clear-cut distinction be-tween locally-provided and globally-relevant ecosystem services are necessary in order to manage a meaningful debate about ecosystem services quantification. Using a detailed spatial analysis of land-use change and residential location in The Netherlands over almost two decades, we operationalize the distinction between two types of services provided by “green” land uses (pro-tected natural areas, agricultural areas and parks). Recreational services available to nearby dwellers are used as an example of locally-provided eco-system services, while carbon sequestration exemplifies the globally-relevant category. The conclusion is that while monetary value can be justified as a proxy measure of globally-relevant ecosystem services, non-monetary approaches are appropriate for locally-provided ecosystem services. The distinction between both types of ecosystem services is useful also for policy-making purposes: Quantification of locally-provided services is well suited for spatial planning in general and urban planning in particular, but globally-relevant services assessment (specially its monetary approach) is more in-formative at national and supranational levels.