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The Pauperisation and Suburbanisation of the Countryside: Two Aspects of Spatially Differentiated Post-communist Development in Slovakia

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Three Decades of Transformation in the East-Central European Countryside

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Abstract

The “Velvet Revolution” of 1989, the symbol of the collapse of socialism in former Czechoslovakia, evoked gigantic, unexpected and ambiguously perceived post-communist transformation. Dramatic changes in the spheres of politics (division of the state), economy (establishment of a market economy) and social system (polarisation of society) decisively influenced the development trajectories of rural areas in contemporary Slovakia. The aim of the present study is twofold. First, it attempts to describe and analyse the dynamism of the spatial labour market in the context of the unemployment, poverty and pauperisation of socially excluded rural inhabitants from marginalised areas of Eastern Slovakia. Second, it briefly presents the development of the largest suburb in Slovakia (Chorvátsky Grob, near Bratislava), not only as a visible sign of change in the post-communist countryside, but also as a controversional outcome of the chaotic, unplanned suburbanisation process.

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Acknowledgements

This article was prepared as part of the Project No. 2/0095/18 “Evolution of localities and regions: new theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding of spatial development paradigms” funded by the Slovak VEGA Grant Agency. The author thanks to the Slovak VEGA Grant Agency for its financial support.

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  1. Institute of Geography, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Štefánikova 49, 814 73, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Vladimír Székely

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  1. Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Warsaw, Poland

    Jerzy Bański

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Székely, V. (2019). The Pauperisation and Suburbanisation of the Countryside: Two Aspects of Spatially Differentiated Post-communist Development in Slovakia. In: Bański, J. (eds) Three Decades of Transformation in the East-Central European Countryside. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21237-7_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21237-7_12

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