Geografie 1962, 67, 325-340
Regional Development of Czechoslovak Towns
In Czechoslovakia, more than 30 years ago, objections were raised to the system of distinguishing towns only by the degree of "remoteness", i. e. by the distance from the margin of the habitation town-area to the first dwelling houses of the town. These rules have been applied to practice by the authorized town councils to delimitate more extensive town areas and are called "agglomerations". In articles dating from 1961 the author tried to persuade the authorities to profit to the full by the data - relevant to the delimitation of the town - as an economic-geographical whole, and suggested the application of a complex coefficient composed of 8-10 partial factors. For the retrospection of the development, he could - owing to the deficiency of the statistical data - make use only of the classification index composed of the following four coefficients: 1) share of non-agricultural population, 2) population density, 3) house population, 4) development in number of population. He divided the period into three sections (1918-35-50-57). He distinguished 6 degrees of administrative wholes according to individual villages which had been attached to towns. In this way the author found out that official changes in areals of inhabited areas of towns were applicable in 1918-57 to 65 towns out of the total number of 104 (with more than 10,000 inhabitants in 1957). Out of 450 cases of administrative conglomeration and deglomeration about 1/5 were only temporary ones (conditioned before all by administrative deglomeration of "Velke" Pardubice, Gottwaldov, Martin, etc.), dating mostly from 1945-55. The factual number of villages - which have grown to form new suburbs - became consequently considerably lower, about 340. In spite of such temporary conglomerations, the areas of Czechoslovak towns kept on enlarging in 1950-57 in harmony with the four coefficients, in contradistinction to 1918-1934. Table III. and IV. shows that in case of 45 towns and 116 villages, conglomerations took place which did not correspond to the above four coefficients. It is more than 1/3 of all conglomerated villages. Disproportions are in the ratio of 76: 40. The above-mentioned doctrine can be used in planning - especially on a nation-wide scale - as an auxiliary criterion only. A more exact view will be achieved after the results of the census - carried out in the spring of 1961 - have been published.
