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

3. The settlement structure of Slovakia

The settlement structure of Slovakia

of the country to the gravitation centres in the north, rather than those for towns whose gravitation areas stretched over the border.

The examination of the population increase of towns is made rather difficult by the changing town status. The former town status that could be traced back to historical reasons was replaced by new criteria in (Czecho)Slovakia and both statistics and politics used different town concepts. The statistical office considered every settlement that had a regional or district role to be a town, as well as settlements with over 5,000 inhabitants. Besides, factors such as population density, the existence of certain services, or the urban character of the buildings were taken into consideration. Exceptions were e.g. spas or towns with great historical past, which did not need to meet any of the above requirements.

In the 1960s a regulation regarding the town status came into force. According to this, the town rank could only be granted by the Ministry of the Interior, so settlements could only become towns with the permission of the ministry. Prior to this, the number of settlements with a town rank by law had always been lower than in the reports of the statistical office. By way of illustration, in 1980 there were 123 legally recorded towns, whereas the statistical office took 146 settlements into account as towns. The difference between the two records was solved at the time of the 1991 census (Očovský-Bezák-Podolák 1996).

Probably due to the high number of settlements, the communist party did not intend to build new towns in its country- and town-building plans, which was the trend in other Eastern European countries. These were the so-called ‘made’ towns. Indeed, during the forty years of dictatorship there were only two new towns. Čierna nad Tisou was founded in 1957 from areas torn off from the neighbouring settlements. This was necessary because the Soviet Union took Sub-Carpathia from Czechoslovakia, so the two neighbouring countries had to reorganize the railway connection after 1945. The eastern-type broad gauge railway trains had to be transferred onto European narrow gauge rails. The new town was built next to the new railway junction. The other new town was Nová Dubnica, which was built for the workers of the heavy industrial factories in Dubnica nad Váhom. The construction work started in 1951 and the developing settlement, whose main function was to provide housing and services for the families, was detached from Dubnica nad Váhom and Trenčianske Teplice in an administrative sense in 1957. This was when it got the name Nová Dubnica. In 1960 it was granted town status.

86