Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)

4. Towns in Slovakia after 1993

Administration as a means of organizing the town network

phy, i.e. for the winners. This was how the new administrative centres were marked out and the new administrative officials were appointed, and this was why the settlements and people in opposition were pushed into the background. Trenčín is usually taken as an example, because, although it had not been involved in the former state and the party political plans, now it was established as a new political regional unit at the cost of neighbouring regions. This was a reward (and political interest) as the most voters for the Mečiar-led HZDS (Movement for a Democratic Slovakia) came from those districts.

This happened in 2000 again, when Viktor Nižňanský, who was in charge of the state reform, submitted his proposal for the establishment of 12 counties. These counties would roughly have followed the traditional boundaries of the old Hungarian county system. The areas and names of the counties Zemplín [Zemplén], Šariš [Sáros] and Spiš [Szepes] were most similar to the former counties, but the unified Liptov [Liptó], Orava [Árva] and Turiec [Turóc], as well as the merged counties Gemer- Novohrad [Gömör-Nógrád] were also more or less similar to the form of the formerly separate counties. The areas and the boundaries of the western counties showed more marked differences from the traditional Hungarian county system, which had not included counties like Trnava, Žilina or the county Along the River Hron. Besides, though in new areas, there were Bratislava, Trenčín and Nitra Counties, too. Reviving centuries-old traditions disturbed Slovak public opinion, and this move was also strongly opposed by politicians, but only when the government party Hungarian Coalition Party expressed its claim for the independent Komárno County. This must have been the alarm bell that woke the otherwise equally nationalist forces on both sides of the Slovak political palette and they all rejected this plan. In their opinion, this form of regionalization would have endangered the realization of the unified national state.

This was a crucial decision also as far as the number of towns is concerned, because returning to the 1996 division into eight regions meant that Martin, Poprad, Lučenec and Michalovce were not county towns any more. This is a problem first of all for the underdeveloped eastern counties, because there are far fewer large cities there than in the western section. With this division, the position of Bratislava, the capital city, and the other regional centres, Trnava, Nitra, Trenčín, Žilina, Banská Bystrica, Prešov and Košice strengthened. Only the latter two are located in the eastern section of the country.

105