Abstract
The development of urbanisation is linked to qualitative and quantitative changes in the landscape and its components aimed at strengthening economic, administrative and cultural-social functions, which are associated with ever-increasing pressures on ecosystems and their individual components. These pressures are subject to various factors—socio-economic, political, environ-mental, etc. In this paper, we present an evaluation of the environmental impacts of the development of urbanisation in Slovakia. Independent Slovakia belongs to the young European states. The communist period lasted from 1948 to 1989. The character of landscape, the quality of the environment and also the degree of anthropisation of territory were dependent on a centrally managed economy. Urbanisation changes began to manifest themselves rapidly after 2000, when the economy was transformed and Slovakia was preparing to join the European Union (Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004). The transformation from central planning into a market economy was the basis of the changes, which was conditioned following strong pressure of investors on the landscape, the construction of technological parks, shopping and logistics centres and transport infrastructure and the construction of residential complexes. According to the European Environment Agency’s study on urban sprawl between the mid-1950s and the end of the 1990s, industry, commercial and transport services have grown at a significant rate and the residential areas at a moderate rate in Slovakia. On the other hand, Slovakia has areas where urbanisation has the opposite trend. Rural settlements are abandoned as well as large areas of agricultural land. The character of land use has fundamentally changed over the past 20 years. These changes not only have a spatial dimension but are associated with the emergence of various environmental problems. The paper deals with the impacts of anthropisation and industrialisation of Slovakia after 2000. The anthropisation process in Slovakia was determined through data processed in GIS and also through the statistical data representing land use. Based on the ecological significance of land use elements, the degree of anthropisation in Slovakiawas calculated.
Highlights
The basis of the methodological procedure was the assessment of changes in land use due to the development of urbanisation and their negative impacts on the landscape and its individual landscape components
We focused on the spatial growth of urbanized spaces but we evaluated the occupation of individual land use elements for the development of urbanisation
The development of urbanisation in Slovakia after the transformation took place without effective control and planning, which caused the occurrence of several landscape, ecological and environmental issues
Summary
Independent Slovakia belongs to the young European states. The communist period lasted from 1948 to 1989 in the different political-administrative forms. The nature of the landscape was dependent on a centrally managed economy. The forms of land use were influenced mainly by activities related to collective agriculture and industry, as well as urbanisation processes. Until the process of transformation, urbanisation was centrally managed. The development of only certain settlements, the so-called central ones, were preferred which developed rapidly, and on the other hand, the remaining settlements were slowly declining. The construction of houses and flats was regulated centrally, with
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