Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
4. Towns in Slovakia after 1993
Towns in Slovakia after 1993 In 1991 there were 136 towns in Slovakia with 2,993,234 inhabitants, but in 2001 Krásno nad Kysucou and Šaštín-Stráže were also declared towns and the former Starý Smokovec became a larger town called Vysoké Tatry after some settlements in its environs had been attached to it. In this way, at the time of the 2001 census there were 138 settlements of town rank in the country. For the sake of comparison, Table 29 also includes the 1991 figures regarding the two new towns. After the collapse of the one-party system, the inhabitants of settlements and those of towns faced new conditions, one of them being a wider scope of free decision-making. However, one restricting factor of independent action was that market conditions had become universal. This began to exert an influence on the life of individuals to the highest degree and in a completely new way through rapid changes in real estate prices, job opportunities and incomes. A highly-qualified and well-paid employee who was able to choose between several market offers could achieve conditions quite different from those of a not-so-well-educated person who was rather unwilling to move to towns and was not used to making decisions of his own. From then on, individuals started to belong to new patterns of stratification with different lifestyles and habits and this also modified their attitude to their homes and to the settlement where they lived. Table 29. Changes in the population of cities and towns, 1991-2001 Population density (km2) Population 1991 Population 2001% Bratislava 1,159 442,197 428,672 96.94 Košice 966 235,160 236,093 100.40 Prešov 1,302 87,765 92,786 105.72 Nitra 844 89,969 87,285 97.02 Žilina 1,068 83,911 85,400 101.77 Banská Bystrica 781 85,030 83,056 97.68 Trnava 957 71,783 70,286 97.91 Martin 871 58,393 60,133 102.98 Trenčín 692 56,828 57,854 101.81 Poprad 874 52,914 56,157 106.13 Prievidza 1,189 53,424 53,097 99.39 Zvolen 436 41,984 43,789 104.30 Považská Bystrica 464 40,083 42,773 106.71 Nové Zámky 567 42,923 42,262 98.46 Michalovce 755 38,823 39,948 102.90 Spišská Nová Ves 575 39,218 39,193 99.94 Komárno 353 37,346 37,366 100.05 88
