The Tisza River of the Great Plain can be reached from the city within an hour, the northern mountains within one and a half.

The settlement was founded on the border of two smaller regions; east of Piac street  lies the Nyírség , west of it the loessy Hajdúhát. Being on the boundary of these two regions was beneficial for the improvement of the town. Those three or four small villages that formed the old centre of the town were situated on the edge of the sandy Nyírség . The flat land offered a good place for settling down; drinking water was not hard to find and the nearby forests provided wood for building and fire. And lands encroached from the woodlands yielded good harvests. The wet flood area of Tócó brook was favourable for livestock-farming, yet the emergence of medieval Debrecen was due to agriculture - the loessy soil of the Hajdúhát is the largest in the area west of Debrecen. Soon one of the richest fields of wheat ( later corn and beet ) were cultivated here ; therefore, the population started to grow vehemently.

Via Hajdúhát the city borders the famous plains of Hortobágy  and the once swampy area of the Sárrét on the south. Being wedged in between these various regions Debrecen soon became a resting place for wandering people and a meeting point of commercial roads. The road that connected Transylvania with Upper Hungary, Poland and western Europe also went through Debrecen. The first guilds emerged their heads nearly at the same time as in the rest of Europe and merchants came to the fairs from all around the world. Besides agriculture this was the main factor that contributed to the progress of the town -- trade had sown the seeds of emburgeoisement into the soil of feudalism, as in many regions of Europe from the Low Countries to Renaissance Northern-Italy. 

Its geographical situation marked the outlook of the town for long as it could not afford to order stone for the buildings. The people used what they found - loess, reeds, straw, and wood from the nearby oak forests. Thus, the town had preserved its village-like image for a long time and the numberless fires were also due to this fact. Because of the lack of stone fortresses could not be built, Vár (Castle) street only bears the memory of a castle.

The climate of the town is continental, thus quite extreme. The mean yearly temperature is 10 0C. Summers are hot and dry, only downpours and thunder-showers bring some rain. The 5-6000 mm mean yearly rainfall is just enough for agriculture although droughts are not rare, mainly in the Hortobágy . The climate is not unpleasant though, in summer the air is dry and the heat is made more tolerable by the wind, whereas winters are calm.

Debrecen is a city of sunshine, the sun shines 2060 hours a year.