Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
3. The settlement structure of Slovakia
Town planning in (Czecho)Slovakia Regarding the geographical location (Figures 8 and 9), we may say that according to the contemporary administrative division, there are an extremely high number of industrial towns in the western and central parts of the country. There are 12-13 important industrial towns in the western and central regions, while in the eastern region there are no more than five, even if we do not take the production value, or the role they play in the economy, into consideration. This means that starting from Bratislava, in the valleys of the rivers Váh and Hron a significant industrial area emerged, far away from which two isolated centres in the valley of the river Hornád, Košice and Prešov, have been developed as counterbalances. The gravitating effect that the two towns exert on their surroundings is inevitable, but they could not become a driving force for further development under the conditions present in the era. The geographical locations of the industrialized villages also show disproportion. The lack of such villages in the southern part of the western region, which is mostly inhabited by people of Hungarian ethnicity, is striking. The communist system forced on Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union justified the necessity of its existence, among other things, by emphasizing that it would provide equal development conditions for the two peoples living in one state. The means was the most popular solution: industrialization, even in the countries where natural conditions were not suitable for this purpose, e.g. due to the lack of raw materials. In spite of this, after the victory of the communist party in the ‘elections’, (mostly at the end of the 1940s), every country began to establish new industrial factories at a quick pace. This also meant higher employment rates, which were used to prove that the leading role of the working class had been achieved. This forced industrialization and urbanization had the purpose of reconciling the differences in economy and living standard between the Czech and the Slovak sections of the country. That this purpose had already been achieved, or at least approached, was mainly emphasized by party decisions, but the figures published by economists and statisticians were also used to prove this (Table 23). Table 23. The industrial production of Slovakia in proportion to the industrial production of the Czechoslovak Republic, % 1937 1948 1970 1976 1979 % 7.0 13.3 24.0 27.2 28.6 Source: Kazimour (1981) p. 133. 75
