Development Opportunities of Homesteads in Rural Areas a Social or an Economic Question?

Abstract

Abstract The survival of special Hungarian settlement forms (homesteads), due to the increasing urbanization phenomena, raises more and more questions. Are these forms of settlements of special, natural, landscape and cultural value? Or are the empty spaces that have lost their original function, which are relocating to the growing urban agglomerations? In our research, we sought to find out what kind of vision the Hungarian ‘farm’ could have on the 21st century Hungarian Great Plain. On the one hand, our empirical research focused on a homestead survey in the Bács-Kiskun County, where we surveyed the general condition of the farms, and on the other hand we carried out an opinion survey of the population. We have tried to compare the opinion of the urban population and the vision of the people living on the farms, to identify new functions that will fit in with the European rural development policy, financial and professional support in the future. Our results show that diversified developments can help the survival and development of homesteads.