Stakeholders’ perceptions of urban regeneration: the case of Kis-Pongrác in Budapest

Urban regeneration has been seen as the saving grace for cities, bringing hopes of rejuvenating their social environment, renovating their dilapidated buildings and revitalising local urban economies. To implement urban regeneration programs, governments have collaborated with various stakeholders for area-based initiatives. The paper aims to investigate the participatory, integrated approach in Hungary from the perspective of the key stakeholders directly and indirectly involved in a localised case study. Thus, the main objective is to identify the challenges within urban governance of a post-socialist which hindered the development of an integrated and participatory stakeholder engagement approach. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders that were then subject to thematic analysis. In the case study, findings provided critical insights into the interaction between stakeholders’ engagement and these projects. The findings also included the challenges that stakeholders experienced with the project and the need for long-term stakeholder collaboration between the residents, civil society and the government. It is hoped that the findings of this study are not only of interest to urban planners and how beneficial it is for the long-term to include local people in all the different stages of the program, but also to local academia to realise the significant role they can play in contributing towards the success of urban regeneration in their local communities plus in other regions through the sharing of their local urban regeneration outcomes to other academics.


Introduction
The construction of municipally-owned social housing estates in Europe surged after 1945 to address the enormous housing shortage caused by World War II. Although these estates were similar both in their construction methods and in the resulting urban design, showing more emphasis on quantity rather than quality in the flats, moving into such estates was often an upgrade for those living in the deteriorating inner cities (Bolt 2018). Large-scale housing estates had been perceived as 'modernist urban and social utopias' (Hess et al 2018), but the construction of newly built housing on the fringes of the cities meant that these estates were relegated to the bottom of the housing hierarchy. As a result, low-income families were allocated into the now deteriorating housing estates. These estates became associated with a range of socio-physical issues, such as prostitution, drug abuse, crime, massive unemployment and poverty. These problems, which are associated with obsolescence and degradation, prompted three responses, in particular, from states: demolition and reconstruction, privatisation and regeneration. The present paper explores the latter response: the regeneration pathway.
Both urban regeneration and urban restructuring are geographical processes used to prevent or halt the socio-economic decline and the physical degradation of buildings. The increase in urban regeneration projects (URP), although has numerous benefits, these projects have also caused several social issues across the communities, such as social injustice, displacement and loss of neighbourhood culture (Egedy 2010, Sánchez and Broudehoux 2013, Boros et al 2016, Nzimande and Fabula 2020. These problems were primarily due to the exclusion of stakeholders that may understand the needs of the communities. Thus, there has been a shift from the physical renovation of buildings towards a more complex, socially sustainable and integrated process, thereby entailing a partnership among different stakeholders to implement a type of urban regeneration that combines the economic, physical and social needs of the local community (Droste et al 2008). Incorporating social sustainability into URP stresses the empowerment of community members, enabling them to access goods and services while encouraging active participation in decision-making processes Ginsburg (1999). In other words, social regeneration goes beyond the physical and economic regeneration of an area by improving the quality of life and access to opportunities in disadvantaged communities.
To reduce the negative impact of URP on communities, there has been a shift from government to governance, where the state plays the role of the enabler (Bevir and Rhodes 2003). This involves a move from a hierarchical structure of government towards a more collaborative approach that encourages participation from civil society, the residents and the private sector. Having been dubbed as the 'new paradigm of planning', collaborative planning is especially sought after by multilateral development organisations to reduce state power while promoting transparency and consensus Mcilwaine (2009). This type of governance process mainly concerns achieving a common goal by various stakeholders through a consensus decision-making process. According to Healey (2006), the collaborative planning process involves a combination of soft and hard infrastructure. The former is focused on strategy-making collaboration with stakeholders through social learning, and the latter on legal and physical processes. Furthermore, including stakeholders in URP enables a sharing of resources, capital and skills to respond to the social and physical needs of the communities.
As observed by Healey (1997), these partnerships call for an inclusionary argumentation where participatory discursive democracy is realised. Through the invitation of multicultural stakeholders into URP, there has been a surge of partnerships in the implementation of these projects. Several publications have investigated the benefits of stakeholder engagement in different regeneration projects (e.g. Ferilli et al 2017, Erfani and Roe 2020). The question, then, is if these partnerships in participatory planning have actually bear the fruits they have intended? To answer this question requires a focus on stakeholders' perceptions in the implementation of URP, as stakeholder engagement is paramount for the success of URP for two main reasons. First, stakeholder perceptions of realised URP could offer valuable experience and knowledge for further planned projects and thereafter provide recent and relevant tasks that worked before. Secondly, though there does not exist a recorded direct relationship between stakeholders' perceptions and engagement, understanding the multidimensionality of these perceptions is a critical component in decreasing conflict and increasing collaborative governance in URP.
Thus, following calls for investigations on stakeholders' experiences in collaborative urban planning (see Barnes 2008, Siyongwana and Mayekiso 2011, Xie et al 2021, publications on this topic have risen almost exponentially. This particularly holds for non-westernised countries, such as South Africa (Das 2020), Saudi Arabia (Nassar 2021), Turkey (Rahbariayazd 2017) and Chile (Caimanque 2023), which have made concerted attempts to advance urban regeneration even though these programs have been implemented in western countries. However, contrary to western cities making stakeholder engagement a sine qua non of housing-led urban regeneration programs, Central and East European (CEE) post-socialist cities still seem to find this integrative approach challenging, which may be due to the short tradition of urban regeneration in this region. Although the 1970s witnessed construction of high-rise housing estates in CEE due to the increased level of public-private partnerships, these were not urban regeneration programs but urban rehabilitation, which focused on the large-scale process of reinstating old, pre-existing buildings back into their former glory. Though several Hungarian scholars argue that urban rehabilitation is the key urban policy tool in the country after the accession of Hungary into the European Union in 2004, hence some of these EU-funded integrated projects being termed 'social urban rehabilitation', following the work of Robert's (2000) definitional diversity of the evolution of urban policy where he historised the origin and progress of these concepts (urban reconstruction, revitalisation, renewal, redevelopment, rehabilitation, and regeneration) and to align the current research with existing literature, the current work opts for the term urban regeneration rather than urban rehabilitation.
Although a growing body of research has investigated urban regeneration in post-socialist cities, the perceptions of the stakeholders involved in these developments remain unclear in the region. Therefore, this research seeks to contribute to the literature by zooming into a Budapest (Hungary) in-depth case study as it is interesting due to Budapest being the only two-tier self-government system in the country. This decentralisation system allows local municipalities to plan and create their own development strategies while still aligning these to the national policy. Though it is not the intention of this paper to critically reflect on this self-government system, the reader is advised to keep in mind that since the authoritarian turn in 2010, these development strategies have mostly focused on marginalised districts in the city, on which Hungarian authors have argued for these to be 'an element of the post-crisis polarizing politics of the right-wing regime' (Jelinek 2017: 4). Furthermore, the Kis-Pongrác housing estate was explicitly selected due to the political, economic and social issues that surrounded it during its entire program phase. As no academic assessment of this program has been conducted, plus the lack of research that aims to assess stakeholder engagement in post-socialist cities using a qualitative, case study approach is dEarth in CEE, the author was presented with a rare opportunity to assess the perceptions held by key stakeholders on a housing-led social regeneration.
The current external perception, largely from non-western countries, that EU countries are ambassadors/ crusaders of urban regeneration due to the urban policies that their employ plus the support of EU seems misguided and inconsistent with the challenges surrounding stakeholder engagement in sustainable urban development due to the financing of the URP, imbalances between the economic, physical and social needs of the URP and the overall unique privatisation of housing after the socialist era. This clearly suggests a gap in what those outside of the EU know, understand and may assume about URP in post-socialist EU, cities and thus requires a deeper analysis of this phenomenon using a localised case study.
Bearing in mind that the URP are context-specific, which means that there are often several social, political, economic and spatial factors at play that influence the extent or success of URP, the paper aims to investigate the participatory, integrated approach in Hungary from the perspective of the key stakeholders directly and indirectly involved in a localised case study. In this research, the main objective is to identify the challenges within urban governance of a post-socialist which hindered the development of an integrated and participatory stakeholder engagement approach. Finally, the study findings suggest that stakeholder engagement is not a panacea for URP as public-private partnerships within this context are multifaceted and complex. Thus, Hungarian cities should not invite other stakeholders into projects for the sole purpose of ticking a box but to identify the need for collaborative governance to increase resources and meet the public needs through bottomup engagements.
Finally, this research and the findings mentioned remains relevant as urban regeneration has been hailed as one of the few urban policy tools that when used correctly, can significantly improve the lives of the local people through safe and clean housing for the public, lively social and environment spaces and generally improved quality of life. By the main stakeholders bringing other stakeholders into the 'fold of things', locals can benefit from the expertise of several organisations. This aside, there exists a gap in which local higher education institutions and academia can play in URP, particularly as most of these organisations have a third pillar of community engagement. This is where one would find academics as promoters of social outcomes (Fernández-Esquinas and Pinto 2014), as these institutions have the human, financial and physical capital to study dilapidated cities and hopefully pave the way for the successful launch of URP within those cities. It is hoped that the findings of this study are not only of interest to urban planners and how beneficial it is for the long-term to include local people in all the different stages of the program but also to local academia to realise the significant role they can play in contributing towards the success of urban regeneration in their local communities plus in other regions through the sharing of their local urban regeneration outcomes to other academics. And lastly, the discipline of geography has always been concerned with how place has been created and produced across space and time. Hence, studying the perceptions of urban regeneration by the key stakeholders involved in the programs and projects would assist urban geographers in identifying and hopefully finding solutions to the root causes of spatial and social uneven development across urban spaces. Thus, this research hopes to contribute to the discipline by anticipating possible future issues with URP and finding ways to help national and local governments target the most socially and physically dilapidated urban spaces.
Following this introduction, the remainder of this paper is organised into five sections. The following section presents a literature review on stakeholder engagement and urban regeneration. Subsequently, practical perceptions in and of social regeneration are presented, with section Three providing the methods used. Section Four presents the main results and is followed by a discussion in section Five. Finally, section 6 synthesises the main findings and offers recommendations for ways in which urban regeneration can be used to support and promote urban sustainability through stakeholder engagement.

Literature review
Stakeholder engagement One of the earliest and most commonly used definitions of a stakeholder was proposed by Freeman (2010, p. 46), who asserted that it was 'any individual or group who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation's objectives'. Since then, other definitions have been suggested (see Clarkson 1995, Bryson 2004. The stakeholder theory, as with the definition of a stakeholder, goes back to the work of Freeman (2010), who posits that companies can benefit in more than one way from positive relationships with different stakeholders. The involvement of stakeholders brings a competitive advantage to companies through the ensuing innovation and reputation Rodriguez et al (2002).
Central to stakeholder theory is stakeholder engagement, which is a process whereby actors continually work together to achieve the successful outcome of a project. Stakeholder engagement may be a mechanism that can help achieve cooperation, encourage participation and involvement, form corporate governance and build and improve trust (Bellantuono et al 2016, Iazzi et al (2020. The process of stakeholder engagement involves five key steps: (i) identifying key stakeholders and significant issues, (ii) analysing and planning; (iii) strengthening engagement capacities, (iv) designing processes and engagement and (v) acting, reviewing and reporting (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2008). Furthermore, the stakeholder engagement process is underlined by two main principles. First, operational principles directly refer to engaging with stakeholders through communication, transparency, collaboration, inclusiveness and integrity. Similarly, the principles that enhance governance criteria are legitimacy, accountability, representation, responsibility and transparency (Soma et al 2018), as relying on power (financial or political) is insufficient in successful contributing towards inter-organisational collaboration. Second, strategic principles are concerned with understanding the structure of the engagement process, which involves significance, completeness and responsiveness.
Drawing on Arnstein's (1969) idea of the ladder of participation and Sequeira and Warner's (2007) stakeholder engagement measures, the levels and methods of stakeholder engagement may vary depending on the scope and structure of the project. The engagement process involves informing the stakeholders, consulting with them to receive feedback, directly working with the stakeholders in the involvement stage, continuously collaborating with them, and empowering them to make the final decisions. It is important to note that these measures vary with the influence and interest of the stakeholder. However, the application of a stakeholder engagement process in a more collaborative form of planning is not without its drawbacks. First, reaching a full stakeholder engagement requires more time, resources and funds, ultimately delaying service delivery (Bovaird 2005). Second, although multiple stakeholders offer diverse solutions to issues that people face, the more stakeholders involved in a project, the more complex it comes due to the multiple viewpoints. Third, invitations of different parties into a project, whether through tender or investment opportunities, create certain stakeholders' expectations, which may be challenging to manage (Steen and Nauta 2020). Another issue is the lengthy process of establishing and maintaining trust between stakeholders (Kort and Klijn 2013). Finally, scholars have pointed to the issue of long-term implementation projects. For instance, Jamal and Stronza (2009) investigated issues involved in collaborations' long-term structuring and outcomes. Despite this, projects could be successfully realised through joint efforts and the resources of the stakeholders.
Several CEE studies have utilised the stakeholder engagement process as a tool to plan, identify and implement programs through the active collaboration of numerous stakeholders. In investigating the involvement of stakeholders in the decarbonisation process in Northern Hungary, Bujdosó et al (2022) postulated that there had been a high stakeholder engagement in the process of just transition. The authors further argue that using the stakeholder engagement tool had several benefits such as introducing environmentally safe, local energy production and encouraging the energy transition to renewable energy sources. In contrast, using Hungary as a case study in evaluating the importance of health technology assessment (HTA), Csanádi et al (2019) found that despite the HTA department fulfilling its duties as outlined in the legislation, the lack of stakeholder engagement meant limited transparency and openness. In this ever-changing environment, key planners of projects must be able to be flexible and address contemporary issues, thus in understanding that participatory planning practices in Serbia are often lackluster, Čolić and Dželebdžić (2018) suggest alternative methods of participation under the levels of informing, consulting, active participation and the two-way feedback informing that have yielded positive results in specific situations.

Social regeneration and stakeholder engagement in Hungary
Since the 1990s, western Europe countries have incorporated the social dimension of sustainability into the economic and physical URP (Colantonio and Dixon 2011). Unlike previous focus on urban policy such as rehabilitation and renewal, urban regeneration aims to address multiple issues to improve the overall quality of life, hence the integrated approach to urban regeneration. Most importantly, emphasis is on public-private partnerships (Roberts 2000). Regional urban policies, such as the EU regional policy, have recognised the need for holistic approaches to urban regeneration and provide funding opportunities such as ERDF to tackle social ills, environmentaldegradation, and economic problems in urban areas. Although several cities have recorded successful outcomes of URP (cf Alpopi and Manole 2013), URP have been criticised for lack of long-term, collaborative urban strategies (Hannan andSutherland 2015, Xie et al 2021).
Following the incorporation of the goals of social sustainability into urban policy and practice, stakeholder engagement has not been limited to typical stakeholders, such as urban planners, contractors, funders, project managers and representatives of local government, but has come to include other stakeholders, including community groups, faith-based organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), owing to the belief 'that stakeholders hold different types of knowledge, which are complementary to science and public management, and which is critically important for context-specific solutions that can enhance sustainability' (Soma et al 2018, p. 439). Combining such stakeholders forms a unique network that pursues collaboration through their various interests and participation in URP while preventing piecemeal projects. Furthermore, efforts towards urban sustainability governance are often initiated and steered by the local municipality to increase service delivery while decreasing expenditures (Smith and Wiek 2012). Although interdependence and cooperation among the key stakeholders contribute to the project's success, these stakeholders need not be on equal footing (Phillips et al 2003) as stakeholder engagement does not focus on stakeholder management but rather on the relationship between these actors.
In Hungary, within the funding period of 2007-2013, a total of 71 social regeneration projects has been implemented 1 . These projects have largely been implemented within housing interventions and often include a mix of environmental, economic and social interventions such as providing training courses to increase the employability of residents, installation of security cameras and energy-efficient windows, creation of green spaces, and encouraging residents to participate in decision-making processes. One of these urban rehabilitation programs was in the Győr Municipality, where Fekete and Laczkovits-Takács (2019) conducted a comparative study of before and after the rehabilitation process using seven indicators (number of flats, number of businesses, level of convenience, surface area of the flats, rent prices, and applicants receiving regular support). Overall findings suggest that the program had a positive influence on the municipality, and this has also been confirmed in Debrecen where inner-city residents expressed satisfaction with the changes the urban renewal processes have bought to their neighbourhoods (Kecskés and Kozma 2020). However, unsurprisingly, the rent prices were found to have tripled since the start of the project, though this was still lower than the market value. Similarly, it is interesting that when asked about the different aspects of urban regeneration that Hungary practices, fostering social mixing was the only aspect that these programs often do not address. This is evident when Fekete and Laczkovits-Takác (2019) postulate that the regeneration of the city of Győr showed a change in the social composition-studies in other European cities have shown that this has primarily meant the displacement of the Roma people (Schoon 2015). Specifically, the state-led urban renewal program in the 8th district in Budapest saw the displacement of several Roma families after the local municipality demolished these dilapidated homes found in the outskirts (Czirfusz et al 2015).
Noteworthy, these interventions are all interrelated and require the communities to be placed at the centre of the development, though this is not always the case. Furthermore, stakeholder engagement in URP is not constant nor linear. In Hungary, URP (specifically funded by ERDF) often include inclusionary argumentation partnerships where decision-making processes are not autonomous. Local municipalities often have majority power due to being consortium leader stakeholders. The participation of these parties depends on the stage of engagement, the degree of the stakeholder's responsibility in the project and the stakeholder's own main goal, according to which they partake in the project and have a positive or negative impact on the decision-making and implementation processes. Stakeholder perceptions of urban regeneration projects may vary from one stakeholder to another because of project complexity.

Methodology Study area
The study area is located in the 10th District of Budapest, Kőbánya (see figure 1). Previously an industrial zone, Kőbánya now has approximately 70,000 inhabitants. This area features a mixture of old and new housing estates. The Kis-Pongrác housing estate was constructed in the late 1930s with the intention of alleviating housing problems in the capital city of Budapest. In total, 888 apartments of 37-45 square metres were built by the municipality and rented out at modest rates to low-income families. The deterioration of the estate started in the 1940s and was exacerbated in the late 1980s as a result of the high unemployment rate and privatisation (see, URBACT 2011).
To prevent a further deterioration of the estate, the local municipality partnered up with the Regional Governance of Sustainable Integrated Development of Deprived Urban Areas (RegGov URBACT) in 2009 to apply for the Central Hungary Operational Programme: a co-financed program developed to support integrated social urban rehabilitation in the country. In combination with funding from the municipality, the residents and the European Union (EU), the total funds were approximately 4.2 million EUR (URBACT 2011). Although the project's main goal was to renovate both the private (co-financed by the residents) and the public housing stock, several other investments were also adopted, including a small project fund to which NGOs could apply to conduct small-scale bottom-up projects (table 1).

Data collection
The dataset for this current research was extracted from a bigger study that looked multiple housing projects in Budapest (Nzimande 2022). Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted, through a mixture of oral and e-mail, with key stakeholders involved in the Kis-Pongrác social urban regeneration program. The selected interviewees were specifically chosen due to their role and knowledge about the overall program and specific projects. The interviewees were selected to ensure representativeness as, for instance, it was more important to interview the NGO project leaders than the owner of the NGO as the former was more active in the different program activities and could offer localised information. Although there was a language barrier, it did not overly  affect the research as the key stakeholders that were of interest to the project were predominately proficient in the English language (with the exception of 3 where translation services were used). Similar to previous similar studies (e.g. Haksever and Çitak 2019), interviews were chosen as the ideal tool due to its ability to collect in-depth, qualitative and open-ended information that may not have been easily realised through the use of other techniques. Initial contact was made via an e-mail message that included a brief introduction to the researcher and to the planned research, including a description of the interview. All interviewees were sent the interview schedule (supporting information 1) before the commencement of the interview to prepare for the types of questions that the interview would cover and allow the interviewees to raise issues that they considered important. Codes have been assigned to the participants to preserve their anonymity (table 2). As the author's doctoral institute lacks a human research ethics committee, the study received approval from the General Data Protection Regulation office of the author's university. All the stakeholders interviewed were, directly and indirectly, involved in the different phases of the Kis-Pongrác project. Ten of the interviews were conducted entirely in English, three were wholly conducted in Hungarian, three were conducted in both English and Hungarian. Ten of the interviews were audio-recorded with the participants' verbal consent and then manually transcribed verbatim by the researcher, while two were conducted via an e-mail interview with the last four interviews permission not granted to record. For the interviews conducted partly or entirely in Hungarian, translation services were utilised because the researcher could not converse in Hungarian. After the sixth interview, no new information was revealed to the researcher, nonetheless, ten more interviews were conducted beyond the point of saturation.

Data analysis
Whether subjective or objective, the epistemological position governs the entire research process, so it is imperative that the method used for the analysis of the dataset is compatible with the epistemological position (Willig 2013). Thus, thematic analysis was used. This is a tool used to identify, analyse and elucidate themes that are found within a dataset. Braun and Clarke (2006) postulated that thematic analysis should be a foundational tool for qualitative researchers to learn as part of their identification of meaningful themes and among the few shared methods of qualitative research. This method was chosen because it allowed the researcher to examine stakeholders' perspectives and generate novel perceptions.
The analytical process of qualitative research is complex and iterative. In the initial coding phase, all the transcripts, which formed the analytical corpus, were loaded into Tanguette (Rampin et al 2020). Several concepts and phrases were noted and recorded by repeatedly reading the interview transcriptions and notes. These concepts were subsequently coded, with a focus on both their semantic and latent meanings. The collation and organisation of all 103 codes was performed manually using Microsoft Excel. Similar codes were grouped into subthemes. The subthemes were then thoroughly inspected to identify patterns of meaning across the dataset. During the theme-development stage, it was observed that the participants produced similar instances of language, but these instances were from different perspectives and therefore related to different themes. Additionally, some excerpts matched more than one theme because the themes were interlinked. Notably, the themes within the dataset were identified through an inductive thematic analysis in which the identified themes may not be closely related to the interviews. Therefore, to avoid drawing conclusions based on the researcher's own preconceptions, the literature review was conducted only after the finalisation of the data analysis. For this purpose, after the completion of the analysis, key themes were then linked to the theoretical literature. Nevertheless, researchers necessarily have their own analytic preconceptions before beginning research and 'cannot free themselves of their theoretical and epistemological commitments' (Braun and Clarke 2006, p. 12).
The following section reports the story of the Kis-Pongrác social urban regenetation program in Kőbánya from a narratological point of view, supported by an examination of the themes and subthemes.

Results
The recommendation of Nikitas et al (2019) guided the writing-up phase of the research, which was carried out by identifying structures within the data that have an explanatory capacity instead of merely accumulating textual wealth. Two themes were conceptualised from the dataset. These were the conceptualisation of Kis-Pongrác and that of stakeholders' perceptions. The former included three subthemes, while the latter had four. This section discusses these themes with the use of verbatim excerpts to support the identification important issues and findings.

Theme 1: Conceptualisation of Kis-Pongrác
Perceptions All the respondents, except the three residents (RIP1, RIP2, RIP3), greatly emphasised how the conceptualisation of the Kis-Pongrác project was largely unique as compared to other projects that have been implemented not only in Budapest, but also in the entire country (with the Magdolna Quarter urban regeneration project being the exception). To achieve the goals of the project, stakeholder engagement together with public participation from the residents was stressed. When asked about the specific selection of the area, the respondents (NaEm, ExPS, RES2, PS2, PS1, LOCNEWS, BREP1, BREP2) pointed the social and morphological exclusion faced by the residents. Most especially, PS1, who was a staff member in the Architect's Office, highlighted that: [PS1] it's kind of in between other industrial areas, railway areas so it's a good area physically and it used to be an old type of housing estate for workers and it was a very nice area in the pre-war era in the 1930sK. but later because of its location situation it's not so much close to the city centre and it became, well the situation got worse and worse and the housing stock was not in a very good condition and the types of people who were living there and the prices of the apartments became lower and lower and it became more problematic The analogy between 'us' and 'them' As housing in Budapest became less affordable, the analogy between 'us' and 'them' echoed through the narratives, including mentions of homelessness in the Kőbánya district as well. Kis-Pongrác is approximately 500 metres from the notorious Hős Street (utca in Hungarian), which is the most controversial neighbourhood in Budapest: the municipality is currently demolishing the dilapidated flats, of which it owns 50%, with the other 50% being privately owned. Hős Street is associated with grime and crime, although Kis-Pongrác was also painted with the same brush before the social regeneration project, many residents now draw a distinction between 'us' (those who are working and living in Kis-Pongrác) and 'them' (those living in Bihári and Hős Street).
[PS2] Hős utca, as we know, is really one of the ghetto parts.
[RES1] And it was interesting that it looked almost as if Kis-Pongrác was about to hide Hős utca's problems. During one of the interviews that RES1conducted with the local residents as part of the social map in the initial stages of the project, their found the following: [RES1] What these people told me is that their neighbourhood is an island of peace, but those people from two blocks away were the problem. So this is another issue with K or a 'not in my backyard' sentiment.
Owing to the increased patrolling in Hős utca, the head of the community centre argued that drug users were coming to Kis-Pongrác for drugs. The term 'Zombieland' came to be used to describe these users.
[PS2] Parents even bring us needles that they find at the playground. The regeneration that occurred in Kis-Pongrác implied a demarcation between the residents of Kis-Pongrác and those of Bihári and Hős utca. The displacement of the tenants from the municipally owned housing flats from Hős utca to Kis-Pongrác is reported to have caused outrage within the Kis-Pongrác community. Both RIP1 and RIP2 noted that with the moving in of the Hós street residents, the social composition within the housing estate changed: [RIP1] Lots of people change, and so new people came which are not nice. They drink and cause chaosKHós utca people now live here and it is not good because those people thinking and have different neds like drugs Majority of the respondents also shared the same sentiments with the exception of RIP3 and CCL who argued that the relocation of families, pushing them from one problematic street to another, cannot serve as a long-term strategy. Instead, it is important for the community to become integrated owing to the discomfort that residents feel toward displaced residents, who differ in terms of socio-economic status and ethnicity (such as Roma or Magyar), which are tied to cultural differences.
[PS2] Hős Street is more of a Roma population, let's not forget it, and the Roma also have their traditional culture. I don't think they need to change because now they have joined this community A need for long-term strategies Challenging the entire status-quo of social regeneration projects, some respondents (PS2, PE, LOCNEWS, BREP2, RIP1, RIP2, RIP3, NGO1, NaEm, RES2, RES1) argued that such projects are largely aimed at doing the least amount of housing renovation and do not truly take the needs of the residents into consideration.
[PS2] I think that if we start development in an area and if they don't have a timetable to go through all the areas around it, then there's the danger that this area will be highlighted, people will come over here, so it would be harder to work with.
Good policies and good practices go hand in hand. The lack of a unified social housing policy in Hungary is glaring, and it means that municipalities have no unified point of reference or financial support from the central government. As such, the inequality of the housing distribution that was caused by the privatisation stage is still shaping housing poverty in Hungary. The policy evaluator summed up her years of experience in housing affordability research and evaluated the EU funding for programme intervention using vernacular language.
[PE] The housing policy is the national state member's responsibility. They have this open coordination system, which was stronger years ago and not so much now. They fight the EU programming, they want to have more members in the social housing policy and they have funding in the ERDF, and the aims of that is for the funding to be used only for funding better housing for the poor. The member states do not have the mechanisms to do thisK.. There is a need for integrated projects that follow a 'more people-based urban housing approach that will address this urban problem and social problems'.
Furthermore, based on the collaborative outcomes of the Kis-Pongrác, other recommendations were offered by the heterogeneous, interviewed respondents. First, a general agreement was reached among all the respondents, with the exception of LOCNEWS, RIP1. RIP2, RIP3, NGO1, in that local residents should not be involved in all the stages of the project, from planning to post-evaluation due to varied differences in the residents opinions. In contrast, the opposing respondents argued that because they were only involved in the final stages of the planning and early stages of the implementation processes, there were several issues that arose that could have been mitigated have they been involved. Second, the invitation of NGOs and community leaders into the project was praised by RIP3, LOCNEWS, NGO1, PS2, ExPS as the organisations were vital in promoting the project within the community. Lastly, all the residents interviewed together with the BREP1, LOCNEWS, RES1 and BREP2 believed that if the government were to be more transparent with the financial happenings of the project, it will provide residents assurance that financial investing in the urban regeneration projects would be good for them also.

Theme 2: Stakeholders' perceptions
The second theme relates to the perceptions of the stakeholders during the phases of the programme. Four subthemes were associated with the stakeholders' perceptions: the role of the stakeholders, public participation in legislation, locals' attitudes and the challenges encountered.

Role of the stakeholders
The Kis-Pongrác project was the result of a partnership between stakeholders in the private sector, NGOs and the public sector.
[PS1] In this housing district, we had a good partnership with the private owners because the street got a face lift to look better and be more inviting in a way in parallel to this, but, also encouraged by this renovation, the houses, the committees in this condominium also decided to renovate the facades with the money. Some of them got extra funding, most of them were funded by the owners to repaint the facades or to make the insolation, for a couple of years, there was a government programme of providing funding for energy savingK we did work with these organisations that were closely connected to the local government: childcare and family centres.
Numerous soft programmes were put into place in Kis-Pongrác and managed by the district municipality. The project of the longest standing was that of the local community, which was officially opened in 2014. The community centre leader was interviewed by the local community association about her ideas and visions on the new community centre.
[PS2] I emphasised that I would first like to discuss with them their experience-how they see the situation. I told them I wanted to be here from morning to night for the next few weeks and get to know as many people as possible. We held a lot of forums for the community to come in and get to know each other, and they could get to know me. We had a newspaper called Vagyunk, 'We Are', written by the association, and we printed it out.
One soft programme was related to teaching the residents about energy efficiency and household budgeting. Initially, the workshops did not relate to discussions of debt or debt management. However, families did request this type of workshop and advice when they were unable to pay off their debt. Most interestingly, the workshops had only a few attendees even though they were open to all residents.
[NGO1] We had leaflets, so every household got a leaflet. Sometimes we would just walk around in the playground/park with people.
Interestingly, a participant reported that, as with other programmes that they had carried out in other areas, women were more active than their male counterparts, moreover, seniors were minimally interested in the workshop.
[NGO1] Women were the ones taking care of the household, which meant women were the goddesses of the budget. So most of the participants were women because they were interested in how they could save and manage the household money even though most of the income came from men.

Public participation legislation
All the stakeholders were asked if they were familiar with public participation legislation in Hungary, and the following consensus was found.
[NGO1] K there is something in the law that you have to place information K like a notice or a paper for public consultation, and people can say their views. But, sometimes, they just pin a paper to the notice wall in the municipality house, at the first floor, on the right wall next to the toilet/corridor, after the mayor's toilet-where nobody can see it at that. But there is an obligation, so they can say they did it. Sometimes, they put it on the website. But I am quite sure that there are no details on how the municipality should go about advertising this. But I have noticed that once we are close to elections, there are a lot more notices.
[NGO2] The role exists because it is part of the EU process, but they should introduce more clear transparency and better implementation.
One of the stakeholders referenced Arnstein's ladder of participation to explain Hungary's public participation process. This was similar to the thoughts of RIP1, RIP2, RIP3 in that although they participated in condominiums meetings and requested certain things such as the little children playing ground, little of what they asked for was delivered.
[RES1] K we are in the first set: basically, people can take the information, maybe on the second step, people can decide about minor issues, and I think they can decide if there are new pavements and what colour stones should they use. They can't even say that the pavements are fine, they do not need a new painting, instead, give us something else. But they can only say if it is going to be a yellow stoneK.

Local attitudes
At the beginning of the project, the stakeholders had different views regarding the local people. Some participants reported that the locals were sceptical of the project, which was mainly owing to the lack of prior participation from the municipality while other participants argued that it was a good idea not to involve the residents the planning phases of the projects.
[ExPS] Of course, in the meantime, we received a lot of criticism; we were often disappointed because nothing was good for the people, for the people who lived there.
[BREP1] There are those who are happy about change, about new things. But there are those who write about everything they are not used to and make a sound of it. Many people think they understand everything and need to be involved in work processes because their money is in it too.
A few stakeholders described the residents as inactive and noted that the residents only became vocal in relation to the conversation around the removal of trees (to make space for newer ones to be planted). It was explained that, often, when the organisation enters a new residential environment, the locals are not familiar with them and vice versa. Similarly, the community development association was invited to participate in the project because it was observed that the residents were not using the community centre after it had been built. The association conducted more than 130 interviews with the locals concerning the future and how future projects could unfold.
[NGO2] During this phase, our aim was to provide tools and mentors for the community members and to develop the skills of the local people and to encourage participation of the locals. So, after this programme, they became community development workers because of the skills we provided them with.
However, to explain and understand the lack of participation among the locals, some participants looked to the authoritarian domination that Hungarians have historically experienced.
[NGO1] Hungary was a socialist country for quite long, and nobody consulted anybody. Nobody wanted to be consulted, so sometimes people are really afraid to speak out. So it is not in the culture, and they also think that if I go to a meeting and tell them what we want, it won't affect the decision K which is usually true.
After the initial stage of attempting to involve the local residents, the level of participation increased, with the locals becoming actively involved in different tasks. However, owing to the inflexibility of the process of acquiring funds for the needs of the community, changes are not usually welcomed by the funders.
[PS1] It was one of those things that take time: sometimes, the situation will change, in the meanwhile, these processes are not always flexible, so when we talked to the people in the beginning, 'okay, what is important, they say the cameras are fairly important', but maybe later they would say something else K it's in the list of what we promised to do, what we got the funding for-and if you say, 'oh no, the camera was a bad idea', we can't really change it, so, yeah, it is a problem.
Because participation involved different age groups, such as children and the elderly, owing to the lengthy planning phase, the locals began becoming impatient with the results. Furthermore, it was argued by [RIP1, RIP2, RIP3] that although they had participated in meetings with condominiums representatives, they felt that several requests were unmet, despite the promises made to deliver. Each housing block includes a plot of green space that was also rejuvenated during the project, when the project was complete, the locals were asked to either pay for upkeep or maintain the green space themselves, and the residents chose the latter. However, according to RIP1, RIP2 and RIP3, although most residents have initially opted to maintain the green space themselves, they did not factor in the amount of time it will take to upkeep the space nor the energy it will take to continuously engage with other residents to maintain it.

Challenges encountered
The stakeholders were asked to discuss the challenges that they faced during the planning, implementation and closure phases of the programme. These were subsequently grouped into financial, institutional and administrative challenges.

Financial
Owing to the nature of the project, the NGOs that applied and won the tenders to implement the soft elements programme in Kis-Pongrác argued that if they had received more funds, more groups of people could have been invited.
[NGO1] It was 1.5 million, which is about 4, 000 EUR so it was not that big of an amount of money for a project that we had to stretch for more than a year.

Institutional
Public-private partnerships in urban regeneration projects have numerous benefits, , however, because of the nature and complexity of this project, problems were bound to arise.
[NGO1] I know that working with different kinds of organisations is always a kind of trouble because NGOs have their own way of working and thinking and rules. So if you come together and have to work together, it can lead to miSunderstandings, communication problems and stuff.
Several stakeholders agreed that there was a healthy working relationship between the partners; however, the representative of the NGO1 felt that it had not received adequate information concerning the progress or plans of the project, which had made them feel unprofessional when they received questions on such subjects from residents.
[NGO1] I had not seen the bigger picture because we were a small part of the programme. We did not have too much information on what was happening in the area or even what would happen. I think that was the only thing I missed from the side of the municipality.
Nevertheless, the municipality and the housing representatives maintained open communication with the residents in that the residents could ask questions of or provide complaints and suggestions to their local representative.

Administrative
Because this was the first project that the district had implemented, one challenge that related to public participation was understanding the different forms of communication that were appropriate for different age groups. Some participants discussed the length of time required by the planning phase, and some mentioned that the dishonesty of some workers left a bitter taste in their mouth.
[PS1] It took so long to get the preparation phase done-then the funding-and then we got the funding, then, we had to set up a management group to get everything done, and then they had to find the builders who took the job of the renovations itself and stuff. It took quite a long time to get everything done.
[NGO2] The main problem of the project is that they take too long to finish K it was too little time to create a real, responsible development process, and financial resources were stopped; then, the project was stoppedafter that, the social services of the area started to continue the process.
[LOCNEWS] But I think some workers of the project made it worse during the renovation. So some workers did less work than the project planned. The money was corrupted, and many residents have a worse memory of the project.
[BREP2] Given that these were not empty buildings, the biggest challenge in organizing the work was to make the renovation as unobtrusive as possible for the residents, their daily lives. The contractor had to be adjusted to the house policy, observing the rest periods. This had and could be solved with great care, location, communication. Even so, there were conflicts, frictions.

Discussion
To the best of the researcher's knowledge, this is the first study to explore stakeholders' perceptions and experiences of social urban regeneration projects in Hungary. The study focuses on bottom-up initiatives. This research investigated Hungary's participatory, integrated approach from the perspective of the key stakeholders directly and indirectly involved in a localised case study. Thus, the main objective was to identify the challenges within urban governance of a post-socialist which hindered the development of an integrated and participatory stakeholder engagement approach. This subsection will be organised through the two main principles of the stakeholder engagement process: (1) operational principles and (2) strategic principles

Operational principles Communication
Communication is the most important feature in ensuring a successful URP as through effective communication tools, projects can reach different stakeholders, thus ensuring a collaborative process. Urban regeneration requires innovative, communicative tools to foster accountability and transparency while minimising conflicts between the stakeholders (see Sepe 2014). The stakeholders' power and role largely influence their participatory actions as stakeholders with more resources often have stronger bargaining power than their counterparts. When stakeholders feel involved in the process, they are more likely to involve themselves and expend more energy on the project. However, if the communication flow is broken, mistrust may arise Romero (2017), alternatively, the stakeholders may feel that they are simply doing the work for the work's own sake. In Hungary, as with several other countries, organisations are legally bound to hold public consultations in such programs, however, few countries actually put the effort in ensuring the public is aware of these consultations. For instance, in assessing the level of public participation in seveveral URPs implemented in 20 Polish towns, Czupich (2018) found low effectiveness of social participation processes with residents preferring surveys for fear of their lack of knowledge being known. In constrast, going beyond the minimum legal obligation of public enquiry and in a quest for urban planners to gain local Serbian communities' trust, residents had a choice to opt-in for telephonic feedback after the consultation phase. Hence, information and communication technologies provide innovative opportunities to target and engage different stakeholders (Neto and Serrano 2011). For instance, in Kis-Pongrác, a local newspaper and various Facebook groups were used to share collaborative intelligence to create awareness and local spatial knowledge about the project. Regarding the risks associated with stakeholder communication, Crane and Livesey (2017) state that there are risks associated with all types of communication tools, especially relating to the maintenance of this dialogue.

Transparency
Having a clear and democratic process in URP often allows a continuous feedback process which allows the sharing of trust and knowledge. Several factors may affect transparency, such as a lack of reporting changes (accountability), not having a two-way feedback process and not accurately articulating the specific objectives and outcomes of the projects (see Buijze 2013). In studies of local urban governance, trust is closely linked to stakeholder participation. The absence of trust between residents and key stakeholders and between residents and other residents within a community has been suggested as the main hindrance to the reciprocal relationship between stakeholder engagement and trust (Hibbitt et al 2001). As observed by stakeholders in the public sector, being open and honest allowed for their actions (project's objectives and stakeholders responsibilities in the project) to be placed under a microscope by residents and to be openly critiqued. With the exception of the residents, the rest of the consortium partners shared a 'oneness' with each other, while the organisations who had applied for tenders felt excluded from this 'openness'. This is somewhat supported by Vandenbussche (2018), who found that urban collaborative processes in URP are shifting from a private towards a transparent hybrid relation. However, drawing from the relational dialectics theory and tracking a longitudinal case study in Katendrecht (Netherlands), Vandenbussche (2018) reveals that transparency in stakeholder engagement URP had a sort of 'cyclic alternation' where based on the stakeholder's dynamics, there would be struggles of openness and transparency versus privacy.

Collaboration
Throughout the world, governments are conducting participatory planning models in collaboration with community members to achieve bottom-up planning practices. This collaboration differs from traditional, topdown practices where governments and other key stakeholders impose their ideas onto the community but rather have community workers/leaders doing grassroots initiatives. The shift from dictator-like planning to more collaborative planning has meant that municipalities hardly play the leading role but rather a more meditator role. Although there is no community planning legislation in Hungary, social urban regeneration projects have started inviting NGOs to partake in the project by carrying out smaller programs with the community members. Even with other partners such as the EU and national governments, this collaboration means the sharing of resources that may not necessarily be financial, but institutional intelligence. With that in mind, involving several stakeholders significantly increases the interest between these actors, thus making the decision-making process more complex (Nzimande and Fabula 2020). Analysing stakeholders' expectations on urban renewal projects in Chongqing (China), Zhuang et al (2017) identified 18 vastly different economic, environmental and social factors that interested the key stakeholders. These differences may pose challenges on achieving deliverables as different stakeholders would put different emphasises on the environment, economic, social and housing aspects.

Inclusiveness and integrity
Part of the communication participatory planning includes the inclusiveness and promotion of stakeholder opinion and engagement.In this, inclusiveness may mean that certain stakeholders are included from the beginning of the projects whilst others are invited at a later stage. In the current research, the majority of the stakeholders felt that the engagement process was adequate despite the residents initially being sceptical and distrustful of the project until they saw that their demands were being met. In contrast, residents argued that their opinions were scantly paid attention to, which led to disinterest in the entire program. These results concur with those of Nzimande and Fabula (2020) who argued that the Magdolna Quarter Program, in Budapest, excluded both the homeless and the Roma people from the planning stages of the Teleki Square. This was not the first time that the issue of excluding and neglecting vulnerable groups from participating in URP has been recorded (e.g. Keresztély andScott 2012, Uysal 2012). For instance, low-income residents in Maboneng (South Africa) were involuntarily relocated after the URP, causing them to lose vital social and economic support systems while those who adapted to this new environment experienced 'regenerational turbulence' (Mudzunga 2022).
Stakeholder engagement in decision-making offers a unique approach towards collaborative planning to transform a dilapidated social and physical environment into a sustainable community. To tackle urban problems, the active engagement of various stakeholders is required. Although certain stakeholders felt that they had not been informed of the larger picture, this did not seem to reduce their willingness to participate. This is not to say that they would not have appreciated a greater degree of open communication between them and the municipality. Similarly, the residents did not understand the lengthy process of the planning phase of the project and merely assumed that their suggestions had not been incorporated into the decision-making process. Noteworthy, consensus-building efforts by the different stakeholders is vital, and though some stages of the project may not require a certain group, transparency and honesty are often the better route rather than all groups promised invitation to all the project stages.

Strategic principles
Managing the distribution of power between stakeholders, maintaining collaboration, coordinating advocacy and implementing a long-term project are among the challenges that stakeholders encounter in urban regeneration collaborative projects. These projects have been accused of taking a short-term perspective, including the termination of various projects as soon as the project can be said to be completed (see Naseri and Safari 2018). However, it is essential to note that such projects are not merely ends in themselves but means to other ends. Many regeneration projects have been found to have the ability to transform a residential environment physically and socially; although these projects cannot solve all the problems in an area, they can provide a push and encourage local residents to take pride in their community. Half a decade after the closure of the project, novel developments have taken place in Kis-Pongrác: a seniors' club was built in 2020; in addition, two other buildings were renovated, and another is currently being built. Moreover, a dog park was constructed, and the residents are still taking care of their own green spaces in front of their apartments. Evidently, urban regeneration projects can create self-reliant communities and foster stakeholder collaboration even after the closure of a project.
There is a need to restructure the concept of sustainable development and its principles, as the present lack of a blueprint and suitable guidelines means that 'its practical meaning will necessarily have to emerge out of an interactive process of social dialogue and reflection' (Jordan 2008, p. 18-19). The inclusion of the social perspective in URP has called for the adoption of new types of governance structures for understanding the relationship between sustainable development and governance in the local context. Organisations that are interested in bottom-up initiatives should recognise that, despite the general assumption that trust-building decreases participation, trust must be a two-way process and that inadequate trust may reduce project effectiveness. Furthermore, a one-size-fits-all participatory process will simply not work; it is essential to understand that communities are not homogenous and require different methods of engagement. Finally, topdown approaches to urban regeneration should not dominate. This is not to say that such approaches should be entirely excluded from urban regeneration projects; rather, these approaches should be harmonised with bottom-up initiatives that aim to revitalise communities by increasing stakeholder participation. Without a power shift, stakeholder participation is fairly meaningless. Both local and national governments should put administrative systems in place to support and facilitate stakeholder engagement, strengthen governance processes, and empower and increase stakeholder participation.

Added value of study
It is already known that stakeholder engagement is not a panacea for urban regeneration projects; that is, the mere participation of these stakeholders does not equate to a successful project. Also, public-private partnerships within this context are multifaceted and complex thus, previous studies have argued for the need for collaborative governance that increases resources while reducing the completion time of projects. Apart from practical value, study findings have theoretical contributions that may be of interest to the broader academic debate on urban regeneration. For instance, the majority of similar research has been largely focused on Western Europe and North America, with little published work on Central Eastern Europe countries. Furthermore, the research findings contributed to the growing body of knowledge through (i) understanding the micro-level interactions between the different stakeholders and (ii) perspectives on long-term solutions to ensure successful implementation of social regeneration projects. Thus, the study fills this void through contributing knowledge from a post-socialist city experience.

Limitations of study
There are two significant limitations of this study. Firstly, the micro-perspective of the study and the limited sample of interviewees may be argued to set significant limitations for generalisations. However, it is essential to note that qualitative data provides rich, in-depth knowledge of studied research that may not otherwise be known through quantitative data. Despite a lack of studies investigating stakeholder perceptions in these programs in Hungary, great caution should be observed when generalising due to the methodology choice. Secondly, although great care was made in collecting literature on urban regeneration in Hungary, the language barrier was still a major challenge for the author as they are not proficient in the Hungarian language. This meant that the majority of the research published in Hungarian was excluded from the research, causing the researcher's to possibly miss important details regarding these programs. Linked to this, although the study interviewees ensured representativeness across the key stakeholders, other stakeholders could not be interviewed due to language challenges. Although the use of translation services was used for some of the interviews, this method was not favoured due to issues related to back-translations.

Future research directions and conclusion
Future research is encouraged to investigate the socio-economic impact of the project quantitatively and qualitatively on residents and identify the participatory processes that were used. This should not be done to validate the stakeholders' perceptions but to better understand the project from the perspectives of the residents. The current study was limited to Budapest; thus, further studies could take on a more comparative study with another country of similar socio-political features so that the discussed stakeholder engagement process and principles can become more generic.
This study investigated the perceptions of stakeholders in the social urban regeneration program of Kis-Pongrác in Hungary. As with other EU regeneration projects, this approach was developed through stakeholder collaborations between the municipality, residents and civil society. Stakeholder engagement contributed diverse kinds of knowledge to sustainable urban development. First, residents were initially distrustful of the project owing to the lack of previous stakeholder collaboration in previous projects. Moreover, the displacement of the residents from a neighbouring ghetto into Kis-Pongrác was first, as expected, unwelcome because of stigma, but despite the work by non-governmental organisations, years after the completion of the project, residents are still largely hostile towards the newer residents from the estates. Second, owing to the challenges experienced by the stakeholders, administrative and financial issues were raised that might have interfered with the project's development. Finally, a long-term strategy for urban regeneration is recommended for urban policy to enable the development of trust between stakeholders and residents, among residents and stakeholders. Thus, governments should consider a more integrated approach to urban regeneration, merging bottom-up and top-down approaches to encourage stakeholder participation and partnership. Moreover, this study is timely because of how countries are including urban regeneration as their main urban policy instrument in driving socio-spatial change and how they are looking for ways to increase their partnerships with private stakeholders as to increase the deliverables of the program. This study hopes to contribute to the slowly growing literature in post-socialist cities related to urban regeneration and stakeholder engagement through an in-depth qualitative method.