Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 5. (Budapest, 2010)

Recenziók

Abstracts

517

change in the town’s population caused by a continuous influx from the rural neighbourhood, and the actual achievements of socialist modernisation. These can explain how the short-term consequences of this socialist modernisation (better houses and outbuildings, town centre housing estates, etc.) obscured the disastrous long-term urban development consequences.

ISTVÁN GAUCSÍK

The influence of industrialisation on the transformation of Safa. An example of socialist urban planning in southern Slovakia

This study is aimed at demonstrating the influence of socialist economic development and urban policy in southern Slovakia after 1948. It uses the example of the industrial city of Sal’a (Vágsellye in Hungarian), with particular heed to urban planning and its realisation, and the consequences for the built and residential environment. In 1958, Sal’a, which had until then mainly served commercial and administrative functions, was chosen as the location for one of the biggest chemical factories in Slovakia, Duslo Sal’a. By 1962, this development had transformed a small town into Slovakia’s most important socialist industrial city. In addition to its economic and social consequences, the development of this new centre of the chemical-industry had substantial urban, demographic, ethnic and cultural effects.

It starts with an overview of Slovak industrialisation, particularly the chemical industry. Slovak economic planning intended industrialisation to raise the country out of its economic backwardness and improve national income and living standards. The city planning conceptions between 1958 and 1980 are set out, with particular emphasis on the planning of Safa’s first housing estate and of the central square. The historical buildings of the square, built mainly in the 2nd half of the 19th century, single-storey business and residential buildings, were deemed unsanitary and fit only for demolition (with little consideration for their status as historic buildings).

For the ideological criteria of city planning, the historic square was too small and too densely built. The higher modes of expression constituted by housing estates and architectural interventions (hotels, shops, later the Town Hall) in the main square and its environs broke up the historical structure of the square.