Geographical Aspects of the Territorial-Administrative Division of Slovakia
Authors: Ivanička Koloman 
Published: August 2023

The author deals in this paper with an actual theoretical question about the relation of objectively existing geographical territorial wholes to the political-administrative division. Interesting deductions give the analysis of the stability of territorial division of Slovakia. During the last 100 years there was realized a number of fundamental changes and a number of smaller modifications. There were changed the boundaries of Slovakia, the number of hierarchical grades and town-centers of administrative regions. Some centers of the highest hierarchial grades as e. g. Ružomberok and Trnava were a centre of comitats only for a short time. Others as e. g. Levoča and Zlaté Moravce have lost not only the position of the capitals of comitats, but also the position of district centres. In Middle Slovakia have exchanged their role as centres of comitats Trenčín, Žilina, Ružomberok and Banská Bystrica, in East-Slovakia, Prešov and Košice. Only Bratislava proved stability during all this periods as an incontestable centre of West-Slovakian provincie, however had a long time to struggle very hard for the attainment of the statute of the capital of Slovakia. From the hierarchical grades prove a great tenacity the grade of comitat and the regional grade. The traditional district units which as areas of influence of a smaller hinterland have fixed since middle ages legally the relations of local centres to environs, were by the modifications of 1960 unsetted and nearly 2/3 of the former local town-centers lost its administrative function. In the contemporary period we can see the territorial division from the following aspects: a) Standing of the present regions and districts, but to improve by reform the existing net, by establishing some new districts. b) Diminution of the great regions and forming of new regional units, minimally in a double of number in comparison with the reform of 1960; it would, preserve the function of the mezoarea with its task to surmount the aspects of macroareas and their transformation into microareas as well as the mediation of the information-stream from the microarea to center. c) The introduction of a two-stage administrative division in which the national government of Slovakia and Bohemia with Moravia could directly rule the districts. It would reques an increase of the self-government of small districts, including smaller municipalities, if you like towns and greater municipalities. The geography as a science about the geosphere proceeds by the critical examination of the usefulness of the administrative division firstly foom the territory. Theoretically it is possible to divide every territory proceeding from the municipalities into cadastral territories of municipalities, into spheres of the municipalities of gravitation, into spheres of local centers, into spheres of middle size places, into provinces and into national or if you like, state wholes. The bondaries of this wholes we can define on the basis of the theory of the nodal regions, picking out to foreoround mainly the following principles: economical-market gravitation, gravitation of patterns of the nets of communication, and the way of forming patterns of communication nets, internal relations of the territorial-productive complexes and the organizational force of the human collectives and their formal institutions. It is natural, that such a multistage system in the administrative division can not be applied, because it would be exceedingly expensive and also from the stand-point of the optimalization of control unnecessary. The task of geography is to find the nuclei and boundaries of the hierarchical stages of regions, but the administrative division alone chooses from this objectively existing system certain degrees and categories which are needed for the position of power of the state and its maintenance of power, or which simultaneously enables in a best way to realize the measure of decentralization and democratization of the given social-political pattern. Therefore the act of administrative division inself is already a matter of state institutions which are using the scientific analysis of the mentioned scientific branches. The geography has at its disposal certain elements of prognosis resulting mainly from the conception of the space development trend and from the comparative method. Some elements of prognosis follow from the general tendencies of the effectivity of economic activity and from the urbanization in the world. This tendencies show a trend towards the greater economic and urbanistic concentrations. The greatest dynamism is noted in the metropolitan national areas and in the town-metropolis in it. From this results the fact, that the future administrative model of Slovakia should strengthen the growth of great towns as Bratislava, Košice as well as the growth of the middle-size towns i. e. 12 nuclei of urbanized areas which were enumerated in the study below. In this nuclei exists and further will develop nuclei-forming forces which are able to guarantee the growth of the human activity. From the evaluation of stability of some administrative divisions follows that the stability on our territory show forth only the nuclear-regional areas. This trend in accord with the theory of regional growth should exclude the key-position of small administrative units, because by the contemporary trend and economical competence of the national committees and their commissions, they would stand in contrast with the higher areal activity of the contemporary and the future civilization. In accordance with generally working tendencies in the future it would come to a size-differenciation of towns and to a perspective concentration of population, to a concentration of communication lines and to the concentration of economical as well as cultural activity into some economical areas. The administrative function is one of the most important factors by which it is possible to influence the future model of the settlement and the infrastructure of Slovakia, because in accordance with the dynamic balance depend on it also other activities which call forth in the regional structure permanent consequences.