The development of the socio-spatial situation of Slovak society and its differentiation at different spatial levels were formed histori -cally by a series of factors. The conditions for the development of society were long associated mainly with the growth of industry, which was developed in Slovakia in stages of varying intensity, bringing with it the development of various territories or
settle-1We will analyse the question at several levels, where knowledge is needed on Slovakia’s territorial and administrative organisation, we will present some basic information on this subject. Slovakia is divided into 4 areas (NUTS II): the Bratislava region, western, central and eastern Slovakia. At NUTS III level, it has 8 regions; at NUTS IV it has 79 districts. (Map 2)The structure of population centres in Slovakia can be characterised as very fragmented with a large pro-portion of small rural municipalities. Slovakia has 2,890 municipalities, of which 138 are towns; the majority are small towns with a population of up to 20,000. Towns are distributed relatively equally across the whole of Slovakia, but larger towns are mainly concentrated in its western part. Slovakia is charac -terised by a dense settlement structure; the average distance between munici-palities is around 3.5 km. The population density is 110 inhabitants/ km2.
ments. From the 12thcentury to the end of the 15thcentury, Slovakia saw a large growth in mining and metallurgy. Important mining centres were founded: Banská Štiavnica, Kremnica, Banská Bystrica, Spišská Nová Ves, Smolník and others. Towns were also founded where crafts formed an important basis: Nitra, Bratislava, Trnava, Zvolen, Krupina, Košice, Levoča and others. Guilds were created, and the craft and commercial functions of towns were brought together. In the 16thto 18thcenturies, many glass works, sawmills and paper mills were founded in the mountainous areas of central and eastern Slovakia. During the course of the 17thand 18thcenturies, the territory of Slovakia was the craft and industrial base for the whole of Hungary. Favourable conditions for its own industrial revolution were only created in the second half of the 19th century, which was much later compared to developed European countries. The expected transformation of crafts and manufactures into factory production in the 18thcentury and the beginning of the 19thcentury did not, however, take place.
In the 19thcentury, industrial development did exist in Slovakia;
however, it was greatly differentiated in terms of branches and ter-ritories and consisted of small plants and businesses. Slovakia’s socio-spatial openness to modernisation processes was compli-cated at the turn of the 20th century. Slovakia’s late and slow industrialisation in the 19thcentury stood out for the signif icant fragmentation of industry and for its agrarian, backward areas; it took place within a dispersed network of population centres, even though the latter was already marked at the time by a certain amount of inter-municipal contacts and commuting to work from villages to the small towns of the period. The urbanisation of Slovakia in the 19thcentury was only partial, due to unfavourable conditions for industry.
The situation did not change greatly even during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918 to 1938). The majority of Slovak towns were only centres for the surrounding villages; few of them were industrial and commercial centres. Slovakia found itself in the position of being Bohemia’s agrarian hinterland, and there was no interest in its industrial development. On the contrary, some industrial sectors were closed down (metal-working, the chemical and textile industries and glassworks in particular). The dismantling of industry particularly affected the little-industri-alised lands of eastern Slovakia and the southern part of central
Slovakia, thus deepening the existing territorial imbalance in the distribution of industry, which was ref lected in a differentiated social structure in different regions of Slovakia.
During the First Czechoslovak Republic, no signif icant econo mic base was created for a more rapid urbanisation. There was a cer-tain awakening in the 1930s, particularly in the heavy metal-work-ing and chemical industries. The structure of settlements itself did not change very much during the First Czechoslovak Republic, and from 1930 to 1940 around 20% of the population lived in towns;
in 1950 it was around 26% of Slovakia’s population, which only goes to prove that the low level of urbanisation of society matched the low economic level.
Slovakia’s main wave of industrialisation began after World War II and took place under the conditions of a planned, com-mand economy, focusing mainly on building heavy and chemical industries, and armaments manufacturing. Slovakia’s industrial backwardness was supposed to be solved by the removal of part of the industrial base from the Czech border regions. Around 245 companies were transferred, out of the 269 planned, and only 33 of them went to eastern Slovakia. This situation was characteristic not only for eastern Slovakia, but also for other, previously back-ward industrial areas (Kysuce, Orava, southern Slovakia). The rea-son was the fact that these areas were not ready in terms of infra-structure, transport and technology. This is why industry was con-centrated into already existing industrial centres; existing factories were expanded, and new businesses were created to a lesser extent in Slovakia.
After February 1948, there was a sharp growth in industrial production, leading to changes in its sectoral structure and terri-torial distribution. The reason was the attempt to balance out economic growth and the standard of living between individual regions in Slovakia. Industry, often one single industrial factory, became the basis for the development of individual towns or regions. These factories helped the growth in each town’s popu-lation, and industrialisation as such was an important factor in Slovakia’s urbanisation.
The level of industrialisation and urbanisation only began to grow more intensively in Slovakia in the 1950s. At the beginning of the 1950s, Slovak society had a specif ic socio-demographic, cul-tural, economic, civilisation and urbanisation base. It was
charac-terised by its agrarian nature, and marked differences between regions in their economic, cultural and social levels. Slovakia had unfavourable economic conditions for accelerating industrialisa-tion and urbanisaindustrialisa-tion, whether in terms of unequally distributed job opportunities across its territory, the development of transport and roads, the range of job optransportunities on offer in indust ry or in services, and the system of higher education was not deve -loped either. Slovakia’s settlement structure was characterised by a low level of population concentration in towns, and overall a rela tively undeveloped town settlement structure, which matched the nature of economic development, as well as the high density of settlements and the easy access to economic centres.
The period from 1950 to 1970 is characterised by a marked acce leration in the process of industrialisation and urbanisation.
During this stage, development began with the postwar reconst -ruction of the economy and population centres. In the 1950s, towns began to grow as a consequence of the development of industrialisation and the collectivisation of agriculture. In this peri-od, industrialisation was very spread out in spatial terms; it was trying to address the question of the development of backward areas, governed by the principle of the equal distribution of pro-ductive forces. The development of industry in many cases led to the de-concentration of the population. The main criterion when deciding on the localisation of industrial works was the available sources of labour, which were made up to a great extent of the workforce released from agriculture, as well as a natural growth in the working-age population. The working potential was under-stood mainly in extensive terms. In this sense, it was positively inf luenced in each period by a favourable demographic structure and a relatively high implication of the working-age population in the work process. The rapid process of urbanisation only appeared in the 1960s, and most of all in the subsequent period (1970 to 1980). In 1970, three quarters of the urban population lived in towns with a population of over 10,000, although only one third of the urban population lived in towns with a population of over 50,000.
Even though industrialisation did not achieve all the expected effects, its exceptional benef it to Slovakia’s general socio-cultural and regional development must be acknowledged. It aided the growth of individual towns and regions and increased the level of
modernisation and urbanisation of Slovak society. It also helped increase the population’s level of education and standard of living, and improved the quality of life in all types of population centres.
It created suitable conditions for the new social mobility of inhabi -tants of different ages and social categories. On the other hand, the differential tendencies in the development of individual regions and types of population centres in Slovakia were already strengthened during the period of industrialisation, and became fully apparent at the beginning of the 1990s with the beginning of the transformation of society. Although the change of Slovak soci-ety to an industrial socisoci-ety took place essentially at the turn of the 1970s, the predominantly rural character of its society remained.
Secondary (indirect) urbanisation, however, was very active during this period. The transformation of society into a predominantly urban society only culminated in the 1980s (in 1980 the propor-tion of people living in towns exceeded 50%).
From 1970 to 1985 the most signif icant urban growth takes place, which is gradually absorbed more and more not by indust -ry, but by signif icant growth in the tertiary sector. During this peri-od Slovakia achieved its highest rate of growth in the numbers of urban population out of the whole period to date. As a result, it can be described as a “velocity acceleration” of the concentrated movement of the population into towns (accelerated urbanisa-tion). After 1970, the development of 77 central towns – centres of local importance (district towns) – was preferred, where pro-duction, facilities and the population were concentrated.
In 1991, 72.8% of job opportunities (1.8 million in absolute terms) were concentrated in these 77 towns. From the point of view of the distribution of industry, socialist industrialisation had several particular features. The localisation of factories near the eastern border was given priority. Many industrial centres became the basis for the economy of a whole region, which meant this region was very vulnerable with a low potential for adaptation. In this way, interregional disparities were successful-ly reduced in many cases, and employment was increased, but gradually the negative consequences of this strategy became apparent, such as the low performance of economy, the low quality of production, the relative lagging behind of pensions, an environment without innovation, technological backwardness and environmental pollution.
The consequence of this was that during the 1970s the planned and directed rural-urban migration intensif ied greatly, in particu-lar towards medium-sized and particu-large towns, and newly-created industrial centres. This in turn created the need for intensive housing construction carried out mainly in the form of concrete panel housing estates on the outskirts of towns, where these new urban immigrants settled. From 1971 to 1985, 625,000 housing units were built, creating a large space for concentrating the popu lation in towns. This was ref lected in the rapid territorial and demographic growth of towns, which were not usually ready in terms of social, infrastructural and cultural facilities to deal with this inf lux of people. The quantitative “accumulation” of the town population (meeting the quantitative plans of urbanisa-tion) did take place, it is true, on the one hand, but usually this happened without the adequate development of a social and technical infrastructure, and thus the socio-cultural effects of urbanisation were only partial, particularly in terms of the style and quality of life.
Source: Gajdoš, P., Pašiak, J.: Development of socio-ecological situation of Slovak society. Bratislava, VEDA 1995.
Table 3: Share of urban and rural population in Slovakia in period 1869−1990 (%) Population
Urban Rural
1869 11,9 88,1
1880 12,7 87,3
1890 13,6 86,5
1900 16,0 84,5
1910 18,3 81,7
1920 18,0 82,0
1930 22,6 77,4
1940 24,5 75,5
1950 26,2 73,8
1960 29,8 70,2
1970 37,0 63,0
1980 50,2 49,8
1990 56,1 43,9
The end of the 1980s (1985 to 1990) was a relatively short peri-od of some sort of urbanisation “lull”, a mperi-oderation in urban growth. It was a period when so-called demographic urbanisa-tion came to a standstill. A further increase in populaurbanisa-tion came to appear unrealistic given the fall in the rural population, its source, and also due to the increasing problems in trying to satis -fy the housing needs of new immigrants in towns. The territorial link between production and population centres became more f luid, enabling new approaches to their spatial organisation to be chosen. Industrial urbanisation of a concentrated/centralising type came to an end, when it exhausted its opportunities for development.
The f inal phase before the pre-transformation period (1980s) was specif ic in that the social, economic and political conse-quences of the industrial urbanisation and simple modernisation of the end-phase socialist period began to become apparent. The impact of factors from the nascent post-industrial and globalisa-tion period could also be seen; these reached into all parts of Slovakia’s socio-spatial situation and presented a whole range of problems and obstacles to development within the context of the demands made by these processes, as a result of the defects of social planning, including the “mortif ication of growth” in areas where urbanisation was more developed, the absence of metro -poli sation, dis-urbanisation as well as suburbanisation. This direc-tion taken by Slovakia’s settlement structure was also supported in the 1970s and 1980s by the strict application of the system of strategic population centres. The backbone of strategic popula-tion centres was supposed to be the hierarchy of so-called strate-gic population centres, which were supposed to be the focal points of territorial growth, were to provide services to the popu-lation of their catchment area and were also to be the target of investments. This meant the division of population centres into those to be developed and those not to be developed, which had an unfavourable, even destructive effect on restricting the deve lopment of mainly small rural population centres or their admi -nist rative merger with larger villages or towns.
As well as positive effects which brought about an undoubtedly marked shift towards modernisation and increased the quality of life and cultural level of Slovak society, the consequences of the development of regions and settlements during the
pre-transfor-mation period included, however, the widening and deepening of sociodemographic, economic and cultural infrastructure diffe -rences between regions and individual types of settlements, and the growth of the number of regions and settlements with unfavou r able conditions for further development. Inequalities became apparent in one pole of population centres with the crisis of villages and small towns, and in another pole with the crisis of larger towns. In the rural pole, this was seen in the loss of popula-tion in villages, the rapid ageing of their populapopula-tion, the lack of an elite in their social environment, a lack of technology and social infrastructure, in the threat to the very existence of small villages where the demog raphic situation brought about a complicated situation for the reproduction of the local community.
The stagnation in population centres also affected small towns with the loss of their demographic vitality, economic and service facilities and the overall decline of their position in the structure of settlements. In the pole of larger towns with an intensive popula-tion concentrapopula-tion, the social and technical infrastructure was under-dimensioned, the environment devastated, the housing stock dilapidated and services littledeveloped. As a result of in -ten sive growth, these towns saw a decline in their spatial com-pactness and the disruption of their inner socio-spatial stability as a consequence of the foundation of large-scale concrete panel housing estates on the edges of the towns. In the inner town, the population aged rapidly and almost the entire natural growth was concentrated in the town’s housing estates.
The differentiation and polarisation of regional and population centre growth was the result of many factors (economic, social, political, territorial…). The concentration of economic activities (and subsequently of the population) was very selective in spatial terms. Industrial regions and larger towns were those that gained the most. Regions were thus polarised, mainly according to their position along the main urbanisation axes and zones. Non-urbanised areas of regions were marginalised, and in particular the border districts in southern and northern Slovakia, as well as certain dist ricts of eastern Slovakia; the spatial periphery became gradually associated with social and economic problems.
The specif ic characteristic of Slovakia’s post-war development was large population growth. During the period from 1950 to 1985, Slovakia’s population grew by 1.7 million people (from
3.464 million in 1950 to 5.162 million in 1985). The bulk of this growth came from the natural population increase. In 1950, the natural population increase was 60,053 people and in 1956 it rose to 66,652, falling to 44,521 people in 1980. (Statistical office of the SR)Intensive population growth required both new job opportu-nities, and housing facilities etc. A longer-term comparison shows that among districts with the largest population growth from 1930 to 1991, or from 1930 to 2001, there are many districts with later large town centres, as well as many eastern Slovak districts (eastern Slovakia had the highest birth rate). The population in the Bratislava region grew the fastest; it doubled, mainly due to migration. For eastern Slovakia, just a slightly lower growth was characteristic, as a result of a high birth rate. In western and cen -t ral Slovakia, -the popula-tion was mul-tiplied by 1.5. We can see, however, marginalised territories from the southern, ethnically mixed zone in particular among the territories with a falling popu -lation. A signif icant milestone in the intensity of population growth of regional groups was the 1970s. The polarised position of the northern border area, which became the area in Slovakia with the most dynamic population growth, became even stronger in comparison with the southern border area, whose backward-ness compared to other areas deepened further in the course of the following period.
The beginning of intensive industrialisation after World Was II meant for the majority of Slovak towns the period of greatest eco-nomic, population and territorial growth, together with the sig-nif icant extra impact of urbanisation. This is documented by the situ ation of the ten largest towns in Slovakia (according to their situation in 2010) which in 1950 had a population of between 10 and 23 thousand, with the exception of Bratislava (almost 200,000 inhabitants) and Košice (around 63,000 inhabitants).
From 1950 to 1970, and particularly during the most intensive period of urbanisation (1970 to 1980), their populations increased several fold. Today, Bratislava has a population of around 450,000, Košice around 240,000 and the others between 50 and 100 thousand inhabitants. This situation was inf luenced to a signif icant extent by the high population growth in Slovakia from 1950 to 1970.
The period from the 1950s to the 1980s, combined with the intensive, centralised processes of industrialisation and
urbanisa-tion were associated with an extensive migratory movement
urbanisa-tion were associated with an extensive migratory movement