Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
3. The settlement structure of Slovakia
Town planning in (Czecho)Slovakia The political leaders of the time decided to make changes in the settlement structure not only because of the disadvantageous traditions of the town network, but also because of the surviving effect of those traditions. As a result of the inherited traditions, the settlements of the country began to increase in an inexpedient way, therefore their course of development had to be shaped, or else an unreasonable settlement structure would have emerged. Political interventions also led to changes in the functions of agricultural regions. Since the production became concentrated in certain towns, the settlements themselves also played a different role. Lifestyles and the needs of the population in terms of services changed, as well. The decision-makers thought that the main direction of the transformation of the settlement structure should be towards concentration. While planning the population increase of the towns, they calculated with a population increase to six million by the year 2000 and thought that towns should be able to absorb them. The failure of the communist political system, the Czechoslovak crisis of 1968, and the ‘correction’ following the crisis motivated planning; the political power started at last to satisfy partially the needs of the population, e.g. by the construction of housing estates which started in the 1970s. Till that time, the crowds of people ‘liberated’ from agriculture and chased from their fields to industry had had to commute to their new places of work. The number of commuters started to decrease when new urban housing estates began to be built. Settlements were classified into different categories, forming sporadic settlements and small settlements into larger administrative units. It was determined where it was forbidden to build new houses. This was the first step on the way to the degradation and abolition of these settlements. New military drillgrounds were planned and, to improve the energy supply, new reservoirs were to be built. Therefore it had to be decided which settlements should be wiped out, so a list of the settlements was made to show where construction of housing estates could begin (Očovský 1919). The government approved the plan for urban development in Slovakia in 1977. This determined the following directives (Očovský 1979): • By 2000 urban development in Slovakia should reach a level where 54% of the population could live in settlements with more than 5,000 inhabitants. • The natural increase of the population should be concentrated in the central settlements specified in the directives. 77
