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

3. The settlement structure of Slovakia

The settlement structure of Slovakia

1961, the cold rolling mill came into use in 1964, and the first blast furnace in 1965 (Benedekné 1969).

Urban development determined by directives also meant that there would be even less support for the development of settlements, mostly villages, that were not categorized. Villages were looked upon as settlements that first of all provided the population for towns, so that the population of the regions of towns should be as high as possible and the goal set in the directives could be achieved as soon as possible. Therefore, the settlements in the vicinities of towns were administratively attached to the towns, often even if the distance between the town and the settlement attached to it was considerable. Consequently, the number of villages in Slovakia decreased at a high rate.

Očovský (1979) points out the absurdities that resulted from the directives approved by the government in 1977. The development of marked-out town axes involves the danger of the disadvantages of certain areas and regions and the lack of towns becoming permanent, which could also make the settlements in their gravitation area stagnate. He gives the environs of Senica, and the broad zones between Nitra and Lučenec and between Lučenec and Košice as examples. In his opinion, the Šahy-Dudince region, in which there are no towns, is also a problem, because it proves that the drawbacks of the secondary axes have not been dealt with. Levice, Krupina and Veľký Krtľš will never be strong centres. Očovský emphasized the increasingly backward situation of borderland regions.

Table 24. Changes in the number and proportion of the population according to the different censuses in Slovakia

1921

1930

1950

1961

1970

1980

1991

2001

people-4,999

2,376,380

2,577,208

2,539,448

2,932,767

2,859,585

2,487,969

2,316,814

2,389,245

5,000-621,859

753,677

902,864

1,241,283

1,677,700

2,510,199

2,957,521

2,990,210

Total population

2,998,239

3,330,885

3,442,312

4,174.050

4,537,285

4,998,168

5,274,335

5,379,455

%-4,999

79.3

TIA

73.8

70.3

63.0

49.8

43.9

44.4

5,000-20.7

22.6

26.2

29.7

37.0

50.2

56.1

55.6

Source: Štatisticky úrad SR, Bratislava

Examining the implementation of the 1977 plans of the Czechoslovak government, we may state that the first victory could be confirmed as early as at the time of the 1980 census, since urban development achieved a level where 54% of the population lived in settlements with

80