Notes on the Czechoslovak Settlement Structure
Authors: Střída Miroslav 
Published: November 2023

The territory of Czechoslovakia was populated quite densely already in the fourteenth century. There were many towns, specially in Bohemia and Moravia. A typical feature of the settlement structure was the dispersed pattern of the settlements. Apart from the network of agricultural villages, marketing boroughs and trading towns, mining settlements grew in mountain and forest areas. In the period of the development of industry, roads and railways, two new types were added to the existing variety of settlements; large industrial cities, and country settlements of industrial workers. The dispersion of settlements has been supported also by the variety of natural conditions. The number of settlements, delimited from the geographic point of view has not yet been ascertained in Czechoslovakia; but it can be substituted by the number of the smallest administrative units, which numbered 19,353 in 1955. What the number of communities is concerned, there are 10,733 of them in 1965. As the mean density of population in Czechoslovakia is 107 per sq.km, and the specific density 170, the number of settlements appears to be too great. 96 p. c. of the settlements are small localities with population under 2,000, in which 42 p. c. of the country's population live. The excessive dispersion and quantity of settlements does not make possible a sufficient municipal and technical equipment of the communities. The task of levelling the standard of living and providing the same condition of work, housing, culture and recreation, could not be carried on without a substantial structure is concerned, the recently existing types could be found convenient after having given to them a certain functional precision in the regions, and after having reduction of the number of settlements, especially the small ones. What the settlement been chosen the settlements good for further development. In Czechoslovakia, the solving of the problems of settlement structure has been helped by geographical works which can be divided roughly into two groups. The first group comprises works on settlement geography and demography, studies on geography of towns, and typology and history of country settlements. The studies on agglomeration have brought considerable effect. The second group concerns the works on economic regionalization, centrality, and functional classification of settlements. At the same time, areas in the sphere of influence of the centres have been studied. The research in country settlements for the whole territory of Czechoslovakia has not yet been realized sufficiently. Since 1960, this complicated task has been carried on by the Research Institute of Building and Architecture, in collaboration with other institutions, including the Geographical Institutes of the Czechoslovak and Slovak Academies of Sciences. Detailed analysis of the economic classification proves that the majority of the population in most of our villages do not work any more in agriculture but in local or regional industries and services; this fact makes possible the solving of settlement structure problems, in certain circumstances, even before fixing the most convenient size of future agricultural establishements. Recent urbanistic and geographical analyses show the following decisive factors of settlement structure, looked upon from the point of view of centrality: (1) the number and structure of the population; (2) the volume and structure of industry; (3) the providing of the settlements with services; (4) and the transport relations. In the settlement network, four or six size groups use to be distinguished. It would be desirable that the geographic and urbanistic research works on the settlement structure of Czechoslovakia might go on in a way which would make possible a mutual coordination and exploitation of the results. These are expected to contribute to the taking of practical measures for the levelling of the living conditions of the population of villages and towns in different parts of the country, in the near future.