SURE

The city of Eger (approx. 60 000 inhabitants) is located in North Hungary, close to Bükk mountain range. Eger with its beautiful baroque city centre and famous castle, with its Turkish and medieval monuments, is one of the most visited Hungarian cities, the centre of one of the most famous Hungarian wine regions, and besides an important spiritual centre.

The city centre is the main tourist area. Just a few minutes north from the city centre, there are two characteristic deprived urban areas which are identified by the Integrated Urban Rehabilitation Strategy (by concrete figures) as territories of specific, urban rehabilitation, where the

socio-economic aspects should be very important due to its social disadvantaged population:

- Felsőváros: an area of block of houses built in the 70’, where 1/5 of the

inhabitants of Eger live. Characteristics: block of houses, deteriorated

building stock, deprived public spaces, high density, cheap, more and

more unworthy estate stock, socially disadvantaged inhabitants, outmoded

infrastructure.

- Valley of Verőszala: this small valley starts at the edge of the city centre

with unique, partly used wine cellars. It was at the border of the city years

ago. Characteristics: small, rural houses, headquarters of some important

wine houses, but basically residential area, no tourism at all in this area,

significant roma group, bad accessibility, bad and incomplete

infrastructure (roads), cheap, more and more unworthy estate stock,

segregation, poor social allowance system.

Eger has already started to implement its Integrated Urban Rehabilitation

Strategy – which was approved in 2009 – in other parts of the city, mainly around the city’s historical centre. The urban rehabilitation has not started yet in these two deprived areas.

Dr Hans Schlappa is an experienced regeneration practitioner and academic. He has worked for 15 years in municipalities and third sector organisations, developing and leading socio-economic regeneration programmes in the some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the UK. Since 2004 Dr Schlappa is working as a researcher and teacher at universities in Birmingham and Coventry. His publications include a wide range of conference papers and research reports, focusing on the provision of government funded services in deprived neighbourhoods, co-production and partnership working in regeneration contexts, and the impact of EU funding on third sector organisations.