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

3. The settlement structure of Slovakia

Town planning in (Czecho)Slovakia

over 5,000 inhabitants. This proportion had not been achieved before 1980; however, it had exceeded the threshold of 50%. By the time of the next census in 1991, this ambition had been realized most successfully, because the proportion had increased to 56.1%, although it was after the collapse of the communist rule (Table 24).

The curves in Figure 10 show that the considerable increase in the population, typical of Slovakia’s total population, took place in the settlements with over 5,000 inhabitants, i.e. it was cities and towns that absorbed the increasing number of people.

The threshold of 5,000 people was important because this was the condition regarding the population that a settlement had to meet if it wished to get the status of a town. Nevertheless, this condition was not taken seriously. There were several villages in the country where the population was higher and even more towns where the population was lower than this threshold.

Figure 10. Changes in the number and proportion of the population according to the different censuses in Slovakia

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