Banská Bystrica a České Budějovice v transformačnom období - závery z komparácie

Abstract

The paper presents main results of the comparative study of eské Bud jovice and Banská Bystrica (cities in the Czech and Slovak Republics, regional capitals with a similar population size, administrative rank and third and quarter sector orientation of city economy) from the perspective of urban geography. The author summarizes outcomes from the comparison of changes in inner spatial structure of researched cities during the transitional, postsocialist period (from 1991). As a point of departure, the author observes differences in all spatial structures of the cities that are outcomes of uneven historical development before 1918 and their different geopolitical position. On the other hand, the author establishes common features of the development of eské Bud jovice and Banská Bystrica, mainly those connected with the socialist period (1948 – 1989), which brought convergency in many areas, such as appearance and operation of cities. Therefore researched cities got over the period of transition with lot of common and a few specific problems. eské Bud jovice entered the transitional period in better position which was reflected also in a socioeconomic position of its inhabitants. The reason was that changes in intraurban structures of eské Bud jovice in the socialist period were not as extensive as were fundamental changes in the city organism of Banská Bystrica that was much less developed in the capitalist period (before the Second World War) as eské Bud jovice. The result of these facts was reflected especially in shifts and an extent of the postsocialist transformation of spatial structures in the researched cities. These shifts we can summarize as a combination of: 1. the time shift (2-4 years); 2. the shift in extent; 3. the shift in quality … in the process of postsocialist transformation in eské Bud jovice and Banská Bystrica. These shifts represent the backwardness of the development of the postsocialist transition in Banská Bystrica opposite to eské Bud jovice, which was induced by modified conditions of the postsocialist transition. The author illustrates these modified features on the examples of four case studies (the transformation of retail; the housing construction; the residential suburbanization; the situation of homeless people in both cities). The last part of the paper is dedicated to an assessment of comparative studies of the (postsocialist) cities, their strengths and problems (e.g. the problem of data comparability). It is possible to stress that comparative studies of (postsocialist) cities bring many important findings and impulses, which stay unknown if we study cities only individually.