School Buildings in the Urban FABRIC as a Result of 21st-Century Suburbanisation: Case Studies on Two Middle-Sized Towns in the Agglomeration of Budapest, Vác and Dunakeszi

Abstract

Our study explores the question: what kind of landscape situations emerge between the urban fabric and a school building as a result of 21st-century suburbanisation? To answer this question, we will compare a traditional school town and a suburban settlement. Located less than thirty kilometres from Budapest, the traditional town is Vác, one of the most important historical school towns in Hungary. Dunakeszi, on the other hand, directly borders the capital and was a rural settlement at the beginning of the 20th century. This settlement is a typical example of urban sprawl. Its schools have occupied a place in the urban fabric since the second half of the 20th century. During our research, we used thick description and thoroughly analysed where the buildings are situated within the given urban structure, how their appearance can be described, and what their architecture communicates. Our basic argument is that while traditional settlement schools are a central element of the urban fabric, in the suburbs, schools occupy empty spaces of ‘leftover plots’ or develop new campuses in the interurban landscape. The results showed that regardless of the historical past of a given settlement, 21st-century educational institutions create separated, closed campuses in areas affected by suburbanisation processes. The primary reason for moving out is simply a lack of space in downtown areas, which is universally apparent in larger cities. The various roles and tasks schools fulfil also contribute to the process, for example the integration of sports fields or the increasing expectation to be accessible by car.

1. Introduction

One of the key questions regarding 21st-century urban sprawl is whether giant villages emerging in urban agglomerations are capable of becoming independent towns. Public institutions such as churches, schools, and cultural centres, which define the local population’s identity and sense of belonging to a given place, play a key role in this process. Among public institutions, schools have the greatest influence: their existence or absence is a key factor determining the relationship between the next generation and a given settlement. A school building can be interpreted in several ways. On the one hand, it can be regarded as a place providing educational space. On the other hand, it can be viewed in the context of its environment: in its relationship with the surrounding urban fabric. In our work, the latter perspective prevails.

Regarding a school building, it is, first of all, worth clarifying its position in the urban landscape. Is it in the centre or on the periphery? Does it influence its own environment or, on the contrary, does it finely align with the surrounding canvas?

These questions are not simply of architectural or aesthetic character but also carry sociological relevance. The spatial experience by young people is closely linked to schools and their immediate surroundings. In this way, a school building conveys social norms about the place of children and young people in society as a whole, as well as the ‘adult society’, which relates to education and, ultimately, to its own cultural reproduction.

All these questions can of course be asked in any municipality. However, they are particularly exciting in suburban settlements, where the growing demand for education is creating new school buildings. In this way, the study of schools in the agglomeration not only provides a better understanding of a phenomenon common to social geography but also reflects how we see the modern school or school building and what kind of urban relations we expect from it.

To understand all these questions, we compare two very different middle-sized towns. The first one is a traditional school town where, at least in the historic urban core, school building practices from the 19th century are interpretable as a control phenomenon. The other is a typical contemporary suburban small town that is still experiencing a significant school building boom and, as such, can be considered a ‘textbook’ example of how the integration of schooling into the fabric of contemporary urban sprawl is being achieved.

2. Literature Review and Theoretical Background

The theoretical foundations of our research are laid out in two basic directions: the first is school architecture research and the second is suburbanisation and its Eastern European form. Leading contemporary school designers emphasise the necessity for quality space in and around the school building to promote salutogenic design, opportunities for multimodal learning, and ensure the well-being of students and staff [1]. From school research, we sought out works that focused not on the inner world of the school but on urban landscape relations [2]. The review clearly revealed a trend regarding the isolation of school buildings from their surrounding urban space, not only in Hungary but also across Europe. Therefore, contemporary schools differ from those of classical 19th-century buildings not only in style but also in their position within the urban structure. It was concluded that while the former buildings were typically integrated in style with the surrounding buildings, the latter stand more isolated.

The other theoretical direction was given by the specificity of the surveyed area, in particular, its suburban character. The review showed that until the end of the 20th century in Budapest, in contrast to classic American suburbanisation, the character of peri-urban settlements was not determined by outward movement from the city but rather by movement from the countryside toward the urban centre. And, although our focal geographical region also developed “dormitory towns”, these were not inhabited by representatives of the middle-class but instead were typically working-class districts. Accordingly, the school supply in the Budapest area in 1990 was particularly poor.

In recent decades, however, there has been a significant exodus of the middle classes from the city, which has directly led to increasing demand for school development. The main motivation for our research was indeed the fact that the two cities—as well as other major hubs in the agglomeration—are experiencing a very lively wave of school construction. This in turn has a fundamental impact on the established or evolving urban fabric. In addition to examining a topical, region-specific phenomenon, this study can also provide general lessons on the relationship between suburbanisation and school design.

2.1. Schools in the Urban Fabric

A school occupies a privileged position in the institutional framework of modern society. It legitimises social knowledge, ensures the transmission of privileges, and organises the life of settlements [3]. Yet, compared with the classical era of the 19th century, the social roles of schools have changed considerably [4].

In 19th-century public education, integration of the masses was expected only in the lower grades of primary schools, while at the higher levels, and above all, in secondary schools, education was not a right but a privilege. This privileged position was represented by the buildings themselves [5], and both in the metaphoric and architectural sense of the word, they served as “castles (or fortifications) of knowledge”, where “School buildings changed from small, functional units to large, beautiful edifices, glorifying the people’s devotion to education” [6]. The high walls, the bastion-shaped corner Avant-corps, and the main entrance gates created an institutional atmosphere that was sharply separate from its surroundings. The 19th-century school was part of a social change in which academic knowledge sought to mould society in its own image [7]. Schools appeared as outposts in the urban fabric [8].

During the course of the 20th century, the abovementioned expectation seemed to dissolve. Modern architecture promoted a more open school model, sought to reduce the enclosure of walls, transformed doorways into practical entrances, and thought in terms of neutral masses rather than hierarchical symmetry [9]. However, all this did not go hand in hand with the actual integration of school buildings into the urban fabric. Quite the contrary: the educational reforms of the 1970s, aiming at a more professional organisation of knowledge, merged different levels of education, often including institutions for culture and leisure, resulting in huge school centres [10]. While the traditional school, despite its artificial monumentality, remained relatively modified within the urban fabric (it used only one plot), the school centres of the seventies required a huge place. The traditional school model of the “introverted castle of knowledge” was then replaced with the campus model [11], which, to use a metaphor again, can be compared to “monasteries”. School architecture in the 21st century is now based on this campus model as it is perfectly suited to the urban planning requirements of schools [12]. From an architectural point of view, such a requirement is that the school should have a mixed-use transitional open space [13].

The municipalities responsible for public spaces have a vested interest in ensuring that a school’s space (sports fields, playgrounds, green spaces) is open to the public as much as possible outside school hours. However, school operators are not interested in providing free community space, so the open school model remains an aspiration in the vast majority of cases. Another important aspect of settlement organisation is representation [14]. In smaller municipalities, a school is not simply one building among many but “the urban building itself”. In cities, a school may blend into the common line of other elements of the urban fabric, but in a village or small town with a rural structure, a school automatically takes on the function of a central townscape element. Finally, a third aspect to be mentioned is accessibility. Schools in traditional urban centres are in a difficult position in terms of everyday access. Geographically, they are located in the centre, but it is precisely these centres that are difficult to reach by car and where parking is a constant problem [15].

2.2. The Urban Sprawl and the Case of Budapest

The American model of urban sprawl has brought radical changes in the life of cities over the last hundred years [16]. In the first phase of the process, only the housing function was removed from urban space, and this typically affected the car-owning middle class. In large American cities of the 1920s and 1930s, the suburbs were still clearly part of the city, offering only few jobs and services [16]. The American literature dates the mass wave of desurbanisation up to the 1950s when cities began to move out to the periphery with services, including schools, now following housing [17]. The process was extraordinarily driven by the post-World War II boom and the continued expansion of the road network and motorisation. The literature from the 1970s focused on the decline in inner cities when demolition work began. New city centres were already adapting to the suburban lifestyle: they were being built with expressways, theme parks, shopping centres, and huge car parks [18]. By the 1990s in America, a new urban model had emerged, replacing the inward-densifying form of old cities with organizing itself in the former vast landscape (Zwischenstadt), tightly integrated with the highway network, its linear axes, and junctions [19]. This American model appears with considerable delay and with major changes in emphasis, first in Western [20] and Southern Europe [21], and then, after 1990, in the new EU Member States [22]. Budapest, like other post-socialist capital cities, has been confronted with the phenomenon of urban sprawl over the last thirty years [23].

At the end of the 19th century, contemporaries referred to Budapest as an “American” city due to the rapid growth of the Hungarian capital, which was striking, by European standards [24]. The expansion of Budapest was indeed spectacular; however, growth anomalies appeared very early, which later led the process toward a ‘giant village’ model [25]. Budapest was unable to absorb the masses arriving from the countryside. Due to the shortage in housing, a significant proportion of rural migrants settled in the ring of villages around the capital. This is where predominantly bungalow districts were built without any agricultural function, providing a workforce reservoir for the industry around the capital. This phenomenon was also occurring in other European cities: Budapest’s “big brother” Vienna, for instance, experienced similar trends. In the latter though, after 1920, city authorities took radical steps, making private construction almost impossible, and using the city’s development energies to build social housing [26]. Budapest, on the other hand, carried out building projects in the pre-urban zones, mostly from private funds. This peculiar urban sprawl took little account of political developments and continued after the communist takeover in 1945 [27]. The situation was not fundamentally changed by the administrative reform of 1950, when settlements around Budapest were annexed to the city [28]. The phenomenon has continued, only now in a wider area including in villages beyond the new city boundaries.

From the 1960s, planners expected the urbanisation of Budapest to be solved by building housing estates. However, these new housing estates destroyed the most urbanised centres of the suburbs, for example, Budafok, Újpest and Erzsébetfalva. Meanwhile, the conglomeration of giant villages beyond the new city borders continued to expand. The most typical example of this is Érd, which has grown into “Europe’s largest village”, which was home to nearly 60,000 people on the eve of the 1989 regime change [29].

In contrast to the American suburban landscape, the conglomeration of giant villages grown around Budapest was not created by the upper-middle class but rather by the rural poor who relocated from the countryside to the capital. As a result, there was no generous infrastructure; typically, streets were not even covered with asphalt. As these giant villages were ‘undesigned’, the compulsory planning system did not assign service functions to them either. Consequently, the circle of service providers such as the school network, among others, remained weak [30]. Giant villages do not develop a real centre, nor do they show a real internal structure in general. Main streets and main squares in the original “old village” were inadequate to organise a growing population of tens of thousands of newcomers, due to their humble size as well as their original limited build-up. Some structure was provided with the transportation network. Villages began to grow along railway lines and bus routes and their junctions. Subsequent town planning efforts have tended to develop these railway stations into urban neighbourhoods—in accordance with contemporary trends—by raising multifloor housing estates around them [31].

2.3. Contemporary Processes

The outflow of the Budapest middle class to the settlements started in the 1980s, which typically contained privately built family homes and one or two public amenities and were usually scattered with factories. In recent decades, three to four hundred thousand people have moved out from the Hungarian capital [32]. With these people, a new urban model is emerging [33]. In the past, the population of the giant villages typically lived in a rural way, working in factories but cultivating small gardens at home. Accordingly, they had little need for public space, and no parks or playgrounds were necessary. In the field of education, there was a great need for daycare centres, kindergartens, and lower primary school classes, but students in upper grades had already become commuters themselves [34]. This picture has changed radically since the 1990s. Those leaving Budapest sought to detach themselves from the mother city as consumers of “rural life”, even if this was more of a dream rather than reality [35]. The fact is, however, that urban public spaces and promenades serving the ‘community’ were created one after the other in the agglomeration [36]. It is in this infrastructural boom that the educational institutions, which were intended to create the strongest local bonds in young people, are best analysed. In particular, there has been a marked increase in secondary schooling, which had been previously scarcely developed in these areas [37].

Nevertheless, the big question is: how long and in what quality can the urbanisation of the giant villages continue? The main characteristic feature of the agglomeration is the shortage of space. Since the creation of colonies occupied by bungalows/detached houses happened either spontaneously or following the simplest form of grid-plotting, the development of independent urban structures was not envisaged. Therefore, most of these settlements are spread out and merged with their neighbours [38]. The only exception is perhaps Veresegyház, where new public buildings were built in a concentrated and relatively uniform style [39]. With regard to the settlement structure, however, no historic townscape can be detected, and the urban fabric is more of a conglomeration of settlement-like units of detached homes.

The map of giant villages around Budapest still follows the layout of the railway lines leading into the city. In Pest, the pattern in the outgoing lines is typically much denser, with around ten axes including the one for Funicular Railways, while on the Buda side, there are only five [40]. Only in recent years has the outflow started towards the ‘closed’ communities situated between railway lines, indicating that the driving force of post-1990 suburbanisation is no longer public transport but individual mobility [41].

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Research Design

This paper explores some secondary schools in two towns and analyses their position within the urban fabric. The topic itself may seem unusual for a social science paper, but the results of sociological discourses on architecture in recent decades justify our choice of the topic [42].

The fundamental principle within the sociology of architecture claims that the built environment around us is not simply a background of social action but rather a specific domain of social action [43]. Architecture is a specific medium that, precisely because of its morphological character, differs from the typical verbal modes of action generally studied in sociology [44]. According to Joachim Fischer, an architecture sociologist, to understand architecture in society, it is essential to understand its specific characteristics. Most important in this respect is that the built environment is primarily given in relation to the action of speech. While traditional social research focusing on people aims to understand what is said (or non-verbal codes), in the built environment, social norms are fixed in advance in the exterior independently of participants. The size, layout and gates of a building guide its users: marking boundaries, declaring symbols, and offering a framework for interpretation. In the case of a school, we can add to this that it privileges the channels of social mobility, ‘requiring’ use to achieve certain positions [45]. The morphology of the modern school within the urban fabric is derived from this privileged status.

The fact that built environment sets norms also means that the originally intended content and its contemporary interpretation can be disconnected. Compared to linguistic action, architecture as a morphological environment adapts less dynamically, if at all, to the actual changes in norms.

A significant part of our urban environment today is made up of buildings that were created by a different set of norms from a different era [46]. In the case of schools, it is particularly striking that a significant proportion of young people attend institutions occupying 19th-century buildings, which originally operated with a scientific conception and an educational approach radically different from that of today [47]. Therefore, during an urban fabric analysis, one should note that the social role of learning and schooling has changed, while the old buildings still represent ‘traditional’ values. The sociology of architecture, however, is not satisfied with this statement, and thus we add the following questions: In what way does this fixed set of norms affect education today? Does the mere morphology of inherited historical spaces influence our behaviour? Maurice Halbwachs’ answer is yes, and in this respect, he argued that architecture can integrate actors and even provide a certain degree of stability for members of society during a time of rapid changes in social norms [48].

Researchers in architectural sociology also strongly emphasise the power dimension in the formation of architectural space. The urban fabric, including schools, is not shaped by society as a whole but by a relatively narrow decision-making and professional elite. This was the case in historical times, but the fact is that in the 20th century, the ‘laic’ (ordinary) people who use architecture and the professionals creating it are more separated than in any previous era. So, when looking at townscapes and, in particular, at social institutions such as schools, we are in effect seeing the preferences and tastes of decision-makers [49].

Based on the above theoretical assumptions, the backbone of this empirical study was a field observation and thick description of the schools in the two cities, focusing on the role of the school in the urban fabric of the city (

Table 1. Research design.

Question	Source	Method
schools in the urban space	historical and current maps	street structure analysis
the school building’s relationship with the surrounding urban fabric	site visits and historical and contemporary pictures	ratio, building structures, connections, complementary characters, and relationships
school design	historical and contemporary pictures	semiotic analysis of the design

). For this purpose, we used archived and contemporary maps, Google Earth images, and site visits to investigate the location of the school within the street grid, as well as the relationship between public spaces and principal buildings to the school. In the first step, we assessed whether the position of the school reflected its social status, i.e., whether it was located in a central square or on a side street. In the second step, we investigated the photographic material taken in the neighbourhood to determine how the scale, style, and age of the surrounding buildings related to the school’s design. We determined if the school was positioned between public or private buildings, if it exposed any architectural communication with the surrounding structures, and if the scale and style of the school fit in with its immediate surroundings. Finally, in the third step, the building itself was documented, again using photographs taken at its location. While investigating the architectural design of the school, particular attention was paid to the shape of the entrance situation, the use of materials, and the treatment of the building block. We were curious to know how and in what way the school building expresses the social mission of the educational institution.

Naturally, the sociological study of architecture has its limitations. One of the main reasons for this is that it is not always possible to reconstruct the sequence of decisions in the process of building. Thus, a thick description of a visual analysis cannot answer the questions of whether alternative sites were considered, who decided the final location and why, what the architect’s intentions were, and what provisions and financial limitations the architect had to take into account during the design. At the same time, the sociological analysis of architecture is based on the assumption that these factors—although not known in detail—are all summed up in the final appearance of the building itself and thus faithfully express the actions defined by the particular social values and norms.

To overcome these shortcomings of the visual analysis, we also tried to recover the construction process using local history, where possible. Since we reviewed partly contemporary processes, we also considered school websites, architectural journals, and portals describing the construction of schools, especially those built during recent years, as important sources. At the same time, we accepted that the literature on local history, including pages written by the schools themselves, paid little or no attention to the actual details of the construction. For example, in the case of more than one significant building, the name of the architect is not even quoted [50,51].

Finally, there is an important practical point to be made. Not all types of schools were examined: special education institutions and primary schools (providing education for students between 6 and 14 years old) were excluded. This is because, from the point of view of our subject—suburban campuses—secondary schools (providing education for students between 14 and 18 years old) are of higher significance; they represent a new phenomenon compared to primary schools that were established long before. On the other hand, secondary schools at a higher level in the educational hierarchy usually create a more distinctive architectural corpus than primary schools and thus tend to emphasise our narrative. However, designation of the secondary school level also required a certain flexibility, as many school buildings have historically served multiple functions, with frequent moves and mergers. Finally, the list of schools which were investigated includes Vác: Váci Madách Imre Gimnázium, Piarista Gimnázium és Kollégium, Boronkay György Műszaki Középiskola és Gimnázium, and Dunakeszi: Dunakeszi Radnóti Miklós Gimnázium. Although we concentrated on grammar schools (gymnasiums), we also took into consideration some primary schools, especially during the historical analysis of Dunakeszi (today, 8 historical elementary schools operate here, and 11 operate in Vác) and the campus in Dunakeszi, which is currently being built (Campus, Figure 1).

3.2. Study of the Area

To understand the contemporary school design in the urban fabric, we compare two very different middle-sized towns. The two settlements are situated north of Budapest (Figure 2). The first one is a traditional school town where, at least in the historic urban core, school building practices from the 19th century are interpretable as a control phenomenon. The other is a typical contemporary suburban small town, which is still experiencing a significant school building boom and, as such, can be considered a ‘textbook’ example of how the integration of schooling into the fabric of contemporary urban sprawl is being achieved.

Being a highly significant historical town and episcopal seat, Vác was the destination of the country’s first railway line, which opened in 1846. Its transport status, however, has not been followed by urban expansion. In 1870, its population was only about 10,000, which—although doubled by the First World War—was still considered a small town by the standards at the time. A significant increase in population was brought about by the post-1950 local policy, primarily centred around the cement factory. By 1990, the city had reached a population of around 40,000, but then it was doomed to stagnation. One reason for this is that Vác was not integrated into the suburban settlements of Budapest. In addition, people leaving the capital would mostly avoid Vác because the cement factory had previously caused so much pollution that in fact no one wanted it as a “rural home”.

There may have been other, morphological reasons for this phenomenon as well. Vác, with its typical small-town layout, was less suited to the romanticism of those who moved out in search of a rural idyll. The nucleus of the settlement dates back to the Baroque period, with its two-storey, tightly built houses and church buildings of regional and even national importance. This was joined by rural suburbs. Between the two world wars, the so-called Deákváros, a zone of detached houses, began to develop beyond the railway line, and the population explosion after 1950 happened partly here and partly on the site of demolished former village-like streets. Public services were exceptionally good, supplying not only the town but also the surrounding villages. This area functioned as a school centre.

Dunakeszi is in sharp contrast to this historical small-town structure, it has only been an official town since 1977. The town directly borders the capital and is practically integrated into it. Its suburban development was characterised by an initial population of less than three thousand at the beginning of the 20th century. Its autochthonous population lived almost entirely off of agriculture, with relatively favourable market opportunities due to the railway passing through it. The village consisted of two streets running roughly parallel to each other. During the 20th century, two major new settlements developed in its area, mainly due to external influences. The first was Alag (once an independent settlement but now part of Dunakeszi), where a horse racing track and a large residential area of villas and other, more modest detached houses emerged. The other is the State Railway factory, which built high-rise apartment blocks for its workers. The real breakthrough, however, came with the post-World War II wave of urbanisation. In two decades, the population grew from 11,000 to 25,000, and major housing estates and detached houses were raised. Thus, t basis of the present urban landscape was formed: the old village, the housing estate, and the intensively dispersing zones of detached houses in the areas bordering the former highways. The former village centre proved too small to accommodate for such rapid growth, and although a symbolic town square was created in the housing estate, the settlement layout became rather amorphous, shaped mostly by transport links (railway stations, access roads). The next major growth period started in the early 2000s and is still ongoing. Thanks to emigration from Budapest, the population soon exceeded 40,000, creating a medium-sized city by Hungarian standards. Structurally, however, it has not kept pace with the rapid growth, creating an almost uninterrupted fabric of detached houses. Contemporary schooling efforts were thus aimed not only at meeting the dramatic increase in educational needs but also at creating public spaces in the urban fabric.

4. Results

4.1. Vác, the Historic School Town

As stated above, in the Budapest metropolitan area, Vác has a special character with an autonomous urban character and with its own agglomeration. This is understandable because, if we look back in history, Vác was almost the only significant town (with the exception of Szentendre on the other side of the Danube) within a fifty-kilometre radius of Pest and Buda for centuries.

In the 18th century, Vác was of great importance not only for the region but for the entire Kingdom of Hungary. It was an episcopal seat and, of particular importance, a first-class educational centre [52]. The ecclesiastic policy of the 1700s did not only establish churches but also important public educational institutions, such as the Piarist grammar school, the school of the Anglican nuns, and the seminary for priests. The school buildings in Vác were an integral part of the Baroque urban fabric. The new educational institutions were built in the Baroque-style main square, attached to and framing the main block of the cathedral. The struggle typical of the period—a competition for public education between the church and the state—initially further expanded the number of significant educational institutions. The Teresianum, which provided education for the nobility, was located in a privileged location on the banks of the Danube, at the northern end of the then city, physically quite far from the ecclesiastical inner town.

The absolutist ambitions of the late 18th century put an end to this development. Church schools were closed, and although some of them were reopened later, we concluded that the city’s education system could not recover from the break. Moreover, the state also exited the town. In 1805, the Teresianum also closed down, and decades later, a state prison was opened in its place. Vác experienced great educational reform at the end of the 19th century, after which it was no longer a school town of national importance but a modest regional centre. However, in contrast to the national trend, public education in Vác remained uniquely church-owned until World War II.

At the turn of the century, the existing school buildings were gradually extended, creating a true school town around the city’s ecclesiastic main square (Schuster Konstantin Square). Although the city also witnessed the construction of a Hungarian-style Art Nouveau school (the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb), church-financed projects were carried out in the neoclassical and neo-Baroque style. This suited the inherited atmosphere of Schuster Konstantin Square and also the conservative taste of the church. The square experienced an extension of the Piarist Gymnasium, and the seminary received corner risalits that strengthened its palace-like character. Opposite the building, a girls’ school was built with a neoclassical main entrance. A little further away, but still well visible from the square, a new building for the boys’ school was erected in a smaller square, on which a church used to stand (St Nicholas Square—Miklós tér). Between World War I and World War II, additional school buildings were built in the spirit of modern architecture [53].

Along with the city’s population, which doubled at a relatively steady pace from the early 1900s, reaching 20,000 by 1945, the local supply of educational institutions also grew in Vác [54]. After World War II, as part of the industrialisation policy, the population of Vác doubled in two decades and then essentially stagnated from the 1970s to the present time. The properties of “clerical Vác”, including school buildings were nationalised. Relatively frequent relocations characterised these decades, followed by the construction of a few new schools in the 1960s. The school district around the main square continued to expand with a vocational school and a music school. The socialist school policy wanted to give Vác a special role in the education of skilled workers, responding to the labour needs of the industrial factories that were located around the town. The new buildings erected in the 1960s in the nationalised school district further concentrated its educational functions, although the style of the buildings—in the spirit of the times—sharply contrasted with historic traditions.

Vác survived the change in the political regime as a small regional industrial town, with a range of vocational schools serving local industry and absorbing the population of the surrounding villages. In the last thirty years, Vác has not become part of the Budapest agglomeration. Its population has steadily declined, and construction volumes have remained low. Its function as a school town has not diminished but rather increased with the reopening of Catholic institutions. The properties around the cathedral were returned to the church, and a teacher training college moved into the former seminary building. As a result of this process, the secular schools remained without a building but did not cease to exist. They moved to the so-called “Szérűskert”, an urban area of former military barracks near the town. An educational campus of schools and sports grounds was created on the plot of the former barracks near the railway station in Kisvác (Little Vác), largely by chance, in response to actual challenges. To this day, the area is still separate from the life of Vác, with no residential buildings around it. Architects have tried to create closed urban townscapes, but these façade s are all living distinct lives. The campus in Szérűskert was created by chance: the institutions that moved in did not form a common administrative unit, as is reflected in the differences in their architectural design. The main square is an empty space; with no real function, it is used at most for parking and outdoor physical education classes (a similar use can be observed in the square in front of the cathedral in Vác). In the Szérűskert, the individual buildings face inward and have their own gardens. A typical monofunctional themed park was also created with little effect on urbanisation [55].

4.2. Dunakeszi: The Schools in Suburban Urban Fabric Vác, the Historic School Town

The territory of Dunakeszi, located on the border of Újpest, which was self-governing until 1950, was more of a larger manor (in Hungarian, “puszta”) than a village in the 18th century. It had only a few hundred inhabitants and belonged to the nearby manor of Gödöllő. However, in the 19th century, the rapid development in Budapest soon drew Dunakeszi along. Here, farmers produced (mainly tomatoes) for the markets in a still independent Újpest. Although producers mainly used wooden carts, the railway that passed through also become a significant factor in the development of the settlement. In the nearby Manor village of Alagpuszta, large-scale real estate developments were launched, and Hungary’s largest horse-riding arena was built. It is important to note that this growth did not affect the village’s rural atmosphere. The peasantry earned their living primarily from agriculture, workers received wages from the nearby factories, and the villa parks that emerged in Alag were clearly part of the social life of Budapest. Accordingly, only some primary schools were built. Until the 1960s, no secondary school operated in the municipality, and even after that, secondary schools only operated within the existing primary schools. The first high school was built only in the decades after the change in the political regime (1989).

The school map of Dunakeszi reflects the segmented nature of the municipality. The three historic schools (all primary schools) were located in three different parts of the municipality. The Catholic school in the old village, which was in operation since the 18th century and occupied the site of a former cemetery, was initially a one-storey building that was later renewed with an additional upper floor. The building stood out from its environment for its imposing dimensions, taking into consideration that it was a village at that time. Other public institutions in the settlement, such as the village hall or the doctor’s surgery, only had a ground floor. Despite its large size, the Catholic school could not affect morphological change in its neighbourhood. The school is relatively far from the main square, the village hall, and even the catholic church. It is far away and on the outskirts of the contemporary settlement.

Another elementary school was built in Alag, which was leading a both socially and structurally separate life from Dunakeszi. Finally, a third historic school served the inhabitants of the railway company. Factory workers lived in a separate settlement, with high-rise model houses, a church, and a school for its inhabitants’ children. The school was built in the Neo-Baroque style of the 1920s, being a well-conceived element of urban architecture. In front of the school, a semi-enclosed square was formed, which opened the perspective onto the factory entrance. The visual link between the school and the factory is a good indication of its function, which was to serve the needs of the city’s worker colony. And, although a church was also built on the site, it was located away from the school [56].

After World War II, several primary schools were erected, thanks to the intensive development of Dunakeszi, which officially became a town in 1977. During the construction of the housing estate in the late 1970s, the construction of the housing estate school (now the Körösi Csoma Sándor Elementary School) [57] was also started. Following the ideals of the era, a low, flat-roofed building, was designed between the surrounding tall houses. It is typical that the rather rigid construction block received a wooden, timpanon-roofed canopy after the regime change [58].

Similarly, a compound primary school and high school was built in a separate part of the city in the early 1980s (in 1983 and today called Fazekas Mihály Német Nyelvoktató Nemzetiségi Általános Iskola) [59] to serve the residents of the area of detached family houses expanding beyond the railway tracks. The school is the only community facility in an almost uninterrupted ‘carpet’ of bungalows (in addition to a kindergarten and a swimming pool used by students). This school is clearly a bearer of the suburban character of the Budapest area. Placed on a relatively narrow plot, it is a large building almost ‘randomly’ inserted between houses.

In 1990, the first distinct high school building was built directly in the town centre not far from the first Catholic school (Dunakeszi Radnóti Miklós Gimnázium [60]. This was the first time in the last hundred years in Dunakeszi that a new school building would not follow the logic of new migration in a growing city. It was instead placed “back” in the structure of the historical village. Until the 1980s, the land behind the church was used for gardens, with a few single ground-floor houses. It is on this inner ‘empty’ plot that the school was built, with its entrance facing the side of the church. The school was also constructed with towers and glass walls, in keeping with the post-modern taste of the time. The building sought to recapture the urbanity of the turn of the century and also aimed to adopt some elements of modern architecture. For example, there is no central axis, and the main entrance is a ‘negative’ element that pulls back the ground floor. The school—despite the classical school design—does not create any urban space or accent; rather, it blends into the axis of the street.

After the change in the political regime, the relationship between schools and the dynamically growing city also changed. While schools used to follow urban growth, typically serving the needs of a single neighbourhood, in recent years, a new suburban school model emerged.

The first indicator of this phenomenon was when St Stephen’s High School left the city centre in 2017 (the abandoned building, with a different institutional background, still operates as a Catholic school and has undergone a major renovation). Its new construction was placed on a site that was initially vacant due to its proximity to the airport and a horse stable. The school is virtually the only building that has been on the site. Its vacancy can be regarded as relative: it lies along Road 2 and is physically linked to the multi-family housing estate that was built in recent years on the settlements’ outskirts. Therefore, it is highly likely that this school will become as much a part of the urban fabric in the future as its predecessors and that it will turn into the engine of a new suburb in the coming decades.

The real change will be the student town that is currently under construction for around 1500 students [61]. This town will also be an important sports, swimming, and events centre, as the project proclaims it as the largest undergoing school project in Hungary (in comparison, the total number of students in the 1970s was just over 2000) [50,51]. A strip of woodland will be planted near the detached housing areas to segregate the residents from the future campus. The student city breaks with the current school concept, which promotes close links with residential areas. The investment underlines the importance of easy access, but it is clear that students and teachers will be required to travel to access the site, given the size of the city. This is also indicated by the fact that the access road is a single longitudinal parking lot, and the suspicion is that even this capacity will be inadequate for the expected traffic. The blocks of this double school (high school and vocational school) surround a huge courtyard. The central axis between the two U-shaped buildings serves as the main entrance, which is accentuated by the fact that it remains an open space. Only a ground floor reception area has been included. Sports facilities, on the other hand, are made of freestanding blocks that are even larger than the school. The scale of the new student town in Dunakeszi is unique not only in the Budapest agglomeration but also in Hungary. Here, a campus ideal is being realised by combining educational, sports, and leisure facilities in an emerging section of the urban fabric, built at the “edge” of a suburb beyond the boundaries of built areas.

5. Discussion

While comparing Vác and Dunakeszi, we initiated our argumentation from the fundamental thesis that the school was an integral part of the urban space in the 18th and 19th centuries. Relying mainly on the theses of H. Silver and W. Feinberg, we found that schools were privileged places. The practice of school architecture at the time reflected this status. With the democratisation processes of the 20th century, schools became more open. Experts from the mid-twentieth century, such as R. McClintock-J. McClintock and N. L. Engelhardt, strongly criticised the former practice. In accordance with the principles of modern architecture, they operated with glass surfaces, terraces, and solutions that negated hierarchy. This generation, following the principles of modern urban design, removed schools from the urban space and placed them in insular positions. However, this was still partly hindered by the inherited structural features of historic cities, which also provided space for schools.

A new situation was created when 21st-century urbanistic changes and, above all, suburbanisation reached Central Europe. As part of the “thematic park” phenomenon, as Sorokin puts it, educational units became detached from the urban fabric as a whole and were organised into separate systems.

These statements were partially proven in the present study. Nevertheless, we also highlighted that from the two phenomena of suburbanisation and theme parks, the latter is becoming gradually stronger. Campus-based schools (belonging to the theme-park type) also appeared in Vác around the year 2000, which is a town that has not been affected by suburbanisation.

Naturally, we arrived at the conclusion that the urban position of a school mainly depends on the time period it was built. As Á. Németh proved using an example from Vác [50,51], in the Baroque period, a school (at least from the higher, secondary education levels and upward) was absolutely a building type for urban elites. It is not given the same architectural morphology as a palace or church (since it is for a population lower down the social ladder than a palace or church simply because of the age group), yet it is organically linked to them. In the main square of Vác, the Piarist Gymnasium and the seminary are part of a unified architectural concept, an important message-carrying element of the piazza.

Our research has also underlined the institutional and spatial detachment of schools from the urban fabric as a whole in the 19th century. This is expressed precisely in the fact that the school building is no longer the background of the surrounding (more prestigious) buildings (church, palaces), but is given a distinctive façade, an independent architectural message, with risalits, accentuated main doors, towers, and domes. This change is of course not specific to schools, as we are aware that the eclectic era placed great emphasis on the individual character of each building in general. However, this does not detract from the fact that the detachment and repositioning of the school in the urban fabric took place during this period. In Vác, this process can also be observed in the simple increase in the number of schools. A school district was formed beside the former ecclesiastical square, where the surrounding side streets were occupied by educational buildings lined up within a few hundred metres of each other.

Following our discussion on Vác, our attention was directed to Dunakeszi, which reveals the characteristics of the Budapest agglomeration as described in detail by D. Ekler, P. Beluszky and I. Tosics, among others. In essence, they state that until the 1990s, the settlement was not receiving an outflow of people from Budapest itself but rather a rural population migrating towards the capital. Using the literature on the local history and our own morphological studies, we concluded that this kind of urban sprawl did not consequently create an urban institutional network, for example, it did not bring along high schools or other institutions representing the secondary level of education. On the other hand, our analysis showed that in Dunakeszi, it is also striking that the historical elementary school appears in the urban fabric as an independent element not next to the church, but far away from it—although, this was apparently a sheer coincidence, i.e., a vacant, available building site played a role in the story. Later, after World War I, the factory district school was no longer consciously united as one architectural structure with the church but rather with the main entrance to the factory.

The factory town school appears to be the first example of the suburban model. One of the important conclusions of our empirical research is that in Dunakeszi, no educational centre evolved, but instead, urban growth and (elementary) school buildings walked hand in hand. Raised schools typically serve a newly built neighbourhood, sometimes, as in the case of housing estates, they literally act as “service centers”. At this time, the suburban landscape is both a planned “satellite city” (housing estate with service centres) and a spontaneously expanding housing zone of spreading bungalows. In housing estates, although a school is part of a planned urban sub-centre, architectural restraint prevents it from becoming the centre of its surroundings. In the detached family home areas, the size, shape, and architectural language of schools contrast sharply with their surroundings. Despite this, schools face difficulty when becoming an urban fabric element in the architectural sense of the word. They are not typically surrounded by a vibrant sub-centre of shops and businesses, and they form monofunctional educational islands in monofunctional residential areas. Thus, we concluded that in Dunakeszi, a fragmented urban structure began to emerge as a result of suburbanisation.

This process was less noticeable in Vác before 1990. The school town around the main square was able to meet growing educational needs with significant new building extensions, and new (elementary) schools were planned and built in the new neighbourhoods. We saw, therefore, that until the change in the political regime, Vác did not follow the patterns typical of suburban areas. This situation changed after 1989, however. Former schools remained untouched at the institutional level, while church-led education returned to the city. In response to this, secular schools were squeezed out onto cheap, peri-urban plots of land, where a campus-like school centre developed. While in Vác, this decision was a half-baked solution that had to be chosen regardless of the circumstances, in Dunakeszi, the currently built student city is already creating a model of a city school. In summary, we saw that although the era provided similar responses to the challenges, Dunakeszi presents a case in which processes are significantly organised into a campus (Figure 3).

6. Conclusions

The question of whether there are any general trends behind the school-building concepts in the two cities after the millennium could be clarified using further comparative analysis. It is obvious that the large number of traditional school buildings in Vác discourages major investments, just as the stagnating population of the city does not require any new construction.

The further question is: will other suburban settlements like Dunakeszi follow the US model of suburban planning, developing monothematic parks concentrated in greenfield areas? For example, in the nearby Veresegyháza, which is also growing dynamically, there is a desire to create a vibrant urban centre, including educational institutions. Furthermore, it is not only in the urban structure concepts that we can identify differences in but also the morphology of architectural forms. In Veresegyháza, and a little further away in Biatorbágy, there is a strong tendency towards traditional or otherwise organic architectural forms. Schools are not simply new buildings, but they are also a replacement for missing urban–historical architecture. This is completed by bringing back the 19th-century space-organizing solutions, such as the hierarchical mass-formation of buildings, with a strong emphasis on the main entrance and adding towers. A further fascinating question is: what are the case-by-case decisions behind the differences in architectural forms? For example, it may be suggested that while church schools tend to follow an organic direction, vocational schools and technical schools, which have close links with industrial companies, are likely to operate with large glass surfaces and box-like blocks (reminiscent of modern factories), emphasising modernity. The case studies of Dunakeszi and Vác do not provide sufficient evidence to answer these questions, and thus larger-scale basic research on the agglomeration’s municipalities, including the decision-making mechanisms, is needed.

While comparing Vác and Dunakeszi, we initiated our argumentation using the fundamental thesis that while the school was an integral part of the urban space in the 18th and 19th centuries in the 20th and 21st centuries, the school became increasingly detached from the urban life as a whole and became an architecturally distinct “theme park” for education. As the case of Vác showed, this process can only be partially linked to suburbanisation. Vác, which developed relatively independently of the Budapest agglomeration, has seen some of its schools move to the outskirts over the last half century in the same way as Dunakeszi, which has been heavily affected by suburbanisation.

Consequently, we concluded that the relationship between the school and urban fabric is primarily dependent on the historical era. In the Baroque period, a school (at least from the higher secondary education levels and upward) was absolutely a building type for urban elites. It is not given the same architectural morphology as a palace or church (since it is for a population lower down the social ladder than a palace or church simply because of the age group), yet it is organically linked to them. In the main square of Vác, the Piarist Gymnasium and the seminary are part of a unified architectural concept, representing an important message-carrying element of the piazza.

Furthermore, in the 19th century, we saw the institutional and spatial detachment of schools from the urban fabric as a whole. This is expressed precisely in the fact that the school building was no longer the background of the surrounding (more prestigious) buildings (church, palaces), but was given a distinctive façade, an independent architectural message, with risalits, accentuated main doors, towers, and domes. This change is of course not specific to schools, as we are aware that the eclectic era placed great emphasis on the individual character of each building in general [50]. However, this does not detract from the fact that the detachment and repositioning of the school in the urban fabric took place during this period. In Vác, this process can also be observed in the simple increase in the number of schools. A school district was formed beside the former ecclesiastical square, where the surrounding side streets were occupied by educational buildings constructed within a few hundred metres of each other.

In Dunakeszi, it was also striking that the historical elementary school appeared in the urban fabric as an independent element not next to the church, but far away from it—although this was apparently a coincidence, i.e., a vacant, available building site played a role in the story. Later, after World War I, the factory district school was no longer consciously formed as one architectural structure with the church but rather with the main entrance to the factory.

The factory town school appears to be the first example of the suburban model. In the following decades, urban growth and (elementary) school building walked hand in hand. New schools typically served a newly built neighbourhood, and sometimes, as in the case of housing estates, they literally acted as “service centers”. At this time, the suburban landscape was both a planned “satellite city” (housing estate with service centers) and a spontaneously expanding housing zone of spreading bungalows. In housing estates, although a school is part of a planned urban sub-centre, its architectural restraint prevented it from becoming the centre of its surroundings. In the detached family home areas, the size, shape, and architectural language of schools contrast sharply with their surroundings. Despite this, schools face difficulty when becoming an urban fabric element in the architectural sense of the word. They are not typically surrounded by a vibrant sub-centre of shops and businesses, and they form monofunctional educational islands in monofunctional residential areas.

This situation changed after 1989, however. Former schools remained untouched at the institutional level, while church-led education returned to the city. In response to this, secular schools were squeezed out onto cheap, peri-urban plots of land, where a campus-like school centre developed. While in Vác, this decision was a half-baked solution that was chosen regardless of the circumstances, in Dunakeszi, the currently built student city is already creating a model of a city school. In summary, we saw that although the era provided similar responses to the challenges, Dunakeszi presents a case in which processes are significantly organised into a campus.