Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
3. The settlement structure of Slovakia
The settlement structure of Slovakia • The development of certain specified areas, especially residential and industrial areas, as well as relaxation zones, agricultural and water management zones, should be ensured. • Urban development should be carried out along longitudinal and transversal axes, by developing the specified centres. • By 2000, urban development should meet the following goals:- 6 settlements of Slovakia should have a population of over 100,000 people (Bratislava, Košice, Banská Bystrica, Nitra, Žilina, Prešov)- A further 6 gravitation areas should have 100,000 inhabitants with 40,000-50,000 people living in the centres.- Over 30 towns should have more than 20,000 inhabitants. • Urban development should be carried out in the 13 approved regions. The directives defined a town axis as an area where intensive urban development should be carried out (town region) with highly centralized dwelling functions (housing, production, traffic, services). Besides, the secondary axes were also marked out between the Small Hungarian Plain and the Košice Basin. After the 1960 administration reform, the 1968 federal state modified the Slovak administrative division. Bratislava became an independent region (kraj), and together with the five districts that had been established, Košice, as a large city, also gained the rank of an independent district. In this way the number of the districts (okres) increased to 37. In accordance with the governmental decision, 13 regions of urban development were marked out, and one town in each was given priority in development. Besides these, district centres were to have chances of development within the so-called economic and residential zones, in the suburbs, in this way preparing the further concentration of administrative units. The population of the 13 town regions accounted for 50.2% of the population of the whole country in the 1970s. According to the directive, by the year 2000, 72.2% of the population, i.e. 4.3 million people, were expected to live there. Apart from the regions of urban development and economic and residential zones, the third type included 27 so-called ‘point towns', which had no actual links with the neighbouring settlements, as well as 14 further towns with special functions (preferred settlements with town rank, health and holiday resorts). It was also a consequence of this categorization that 78
