URBAN DEVELOPMENT OF BRATISLAVA: SUBURBANIZATION IN YEARS 1995-2009 Vladimir Toth MSc. Department of Regional Geography, Planning and Environment Faculty of Natural Sciences Comenius University in Bratislava Mlynska Dolina CH1 842 15 Bratislava, Slovakia e mail: tothv@fns.uniba.sk UDK: 911.37:711.582 COBISS: 1.01 Abstract Urban development of Bratislava: suburbanization in years 1995-2009 This paper deals with 14 years of urban development in Bratislava, especially aimed at the suburbanization processes. The main subject of this paper is to find the spatial shape of suburbanization in that case, the intensity of suburbanization and the regularities suburbanization occurs under. Furthermore, the main goal of this paper supposes suburbanization to be dynamic and changing throughout the derived time framework. Confirmation of this has to be done together by theoretical and empirical knowledge. All above mentioned assumptions have been confirmed. Keywords Bratislava, migrations, suburbanization, stages, urban development 1. Introduction Modern suburbanization has become the one of the popular phenomenons in growing cities in the second half of 19th century. During 20th century, this turned to be the object of several sciences such as architecture, spatial science, geography, economy, sociology or ecology. Therefore, there is a lot of points of view to this process and thus lot of definitions what suburbanization is and what not. It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze or introduce all of these definitions, but in respect to the mostly geographic-related papers, we can aggregate the relevant definitions into three groups by the way how they consider such process. The first meaning of suburbanization may be understood as a part of the conception of the stages of urban development introduced by Klaassen (Van den Berg and Klaassen 1986). According to this model, suburbanization is the second stage in city growth and occurs after the urbanization phase. Regarding to demographic changes in city and its surrounding, authors have distinguished two sub-stages: (a) relative decentralization when the population of city surroundings is growing faster than in city itself and (b) absolute decentralization when the city suffers from population decline whereas the surroundings population is increasing. This model has been discussed in detail and strongly criticized by some authors due to incredibility of its cyclical and some other features (Champion 2001, Storper and Manville 2006, Fishman 2005). In the second meaning, suburbanization is considered as a sociologic issue in case the urban population is moved to the rural environment while the urban way of life is being infiltrated along with (Boyer 2001). Sometimes, suburbanization is treated as a paradox process of seeking a lost community and individualization as well. Bauman (2004) considers the actors of suburbanization tired of anonymity and uniformity in city, so they are looking for new unordinary environment, which will finally find in the city surroundings. This seems to be the most typical especially for young families (Rerat 2012). The third environmental meaning treats suburbanization as the one of the most important factors responsible for the land cover change (Antrop 2004). Suburbanization is often the most profitable activity to be located in the closest city surroundings without taking the environment into account. For the purpose of our work, the first meaning of suburbanization is the most important. In spite of proclaimed incredibility, we perceive the Klaassen model as a good tool to determine the stage of city's development omitting its cyclical feature and disurbanization stage (which occurs when the population of entire urban region made up by core city and ring is affected by population decline). Hence, we understand the stage of suburbanization in case, when the population in urban ring is increasing faster than as in the city. 2. The Position of Bratislava Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia located in Central Europe, went through different governing systems throughout its history. This has been reflected in some features such as in spatial form, stages of population growth, administrative boundaries, etc. Equally, the environmental conditions affected the city's development as well. It seems to be beyond the scope of this short paper to introduce the basic environmental conditions and modern history in brief, but we perceive that as a basis to understand the suburbanization processes in case of Bratislava. The city itself is located on the confluence between Danube and Morava River, both representing a significant spatial barrier, especially in the past, when the technical development was not on the current level. Likewise, but less intensively, the Little Carpathians mountain range also works as a barrier. The strength of these rivers as a barrier has been increased, since they have become boundary rivers. Morava was a river separating the Cisleithania from Transleithania in Austro-Hungarian Kingdom till the end of World War I in 1918. Afterwards, in interwar period, the rivers became a boundary among Czechoslovakia and Austria and Hungary respectively. In postwar period until 1989, sections of these rivers located within Slovakia were part of the well known "Iron Curtain" which made Bratislava impossible to expand towards nowhere but north and east. Therefore, the ring representing the suggested city influence is not circle-shaped, but crescent-shaped. However, the suburbanization was considered as the "pure capitalistic phenomenon" and had not been developed during the socialist period due to three major circumstances: 1. Building restriction in so called "non-central municipalities1", what resulted in broken demographic balance because ageing inhabitants had not enough resources to recover their old houses, whereas young inhabitants was forced to live in the industrial cities (Basovsky 1995) 2. Low difference of real estates' prices in cities and surrounding rural areas, so living in city was cheaper regarding to the transportation costs (Musil 2001). Cities have been usually better equipped than rural communes, especially in terms of apartment amenities (e.g. central heating, hot water, flushing restroom, etc.). 3. "Lame urbanization" (W^clawowicz 1998) - process typical for socialist countries, where urbanization had been driven directly by government without taking the negative externalities (society, geographical conditions, ethnical structure) into account. Some socio-pathogenic phenomena's such as countrymen locked in pre-fabricated apartment houses, different social classes living together on one store, etc. have appeared. Meanwhile after the fall of socialism and since Slovakia has joined EU and Schengen Area, the situation has become different and the influence of Bratislava is expanding even towards Hungary (e.g. Bezenye, Dunakiliti, Hegyeshalom, Rajka municipalities) and Austria (e.g. Berg, Hainburg an der Donau, Kitsee, Wolfsthal municipalities). First significant indications of suburbanization beyond the territory of Slovakia have appeared just few years ago and are not the object of this paper due to expected difficulties with obtaining proper comparable data. 3. Current research state in case of Bratislava Being the capital and largest city, Bratislava and its surrounding have become the most used example of suburbanization in Slovak scientific literature. Furthermore, 1 In former socialist Czecho-Slovakia, some more populated municipalities (except cities and towns), similar to small towns had been selected as "central municipalities" (CM) (in Slovak language "strediskove obce"). Along with cities and towns, only CMs were supposed to being developed. Therefore, other non-central municipalities (in Slovak nestrediskove obce) were under the building closure. the suburbanization processes in its hinterland are the most essential. Therefore, there are a lot of papers devoted to suburbanization in Bratislava, basically, following the classification mentioned above. Regarding to demographical approach, Bratislava has been studied individually (Slavik and Kurta 2007) or by comparing to other cities (Bezak 2011; Vigašova and Novotny 2010; Novotny 2011; Hudec and Toth 2012). Apart from this first approach, the sociologic research of Bratislava and its hinterland involving the areas beyond the territory of Slovakia has been also made (Zubriczky 2010). Due to fact that Bratislava is located within the area of very, perhaps the most fertile soils, the research devoted to land cover changes caused by suburbanization has also proved to be very important (Šveda 2010, Šveda and Vigašova 2010) in respect to the environment. Besides all of these mentioned works, there is still a lack of papers focusing on individual development of the suburbanization in different time sections. Although some definitions stressing the time aspect has been written in Czecho-Slovakian conditions (Sykora 2001, Matlovič and Sedlakova 2004), the time is often underestimated in papers related to individual suburbanization. The last two mentioned works (Sykora 2001, Maltovič and Sedlakova 2004) imply the existence of phases in terms of suburbanization, probably based on so called trade-off theory, which has been introduced in Slovakia (Buček 2006) as well. According to this, suburbanization is often driven by two major factors: 1. Transportation costs including the price of the transportation whatever it is related to public transport or individual transport. In terms of suburbanization, the theory assumes increasing transportation costs by increasing distance from the center of the core city. 2. And land rents meaning the average price of real estates. Due to market mechanism, lack of space in city which obviously generates greater demand for accommodation or commercial activities increases the living costs. In terms of suburbanization, the theory assumes decreasing prices of real estates by increasing distance from the center of the core city. The sum of these two factors is called overall costs and is different in every distance from the core city. We may assume the best place for suburbanization to be in the distance with the lowest overall costs because it can attract a lot of suburbanization actors. Nevertheless, as the territory along the distance with best conditions for suburbanization has some territorial limitations or alternatively, any local government decisions leading to construction attenuation may appear, we may expect the most intense suburbanization to shift into different distances. Spatial saturation and thus, the lack of space caused by suburbanization might be the significant factor responsible for land rents and hence overall cost increase. The main goal of this paper is to point out how the suburbanization changes its spatial form in different time periods and which municipalities could be marked as suburban leaders on the example of particular urban region of Bratislava. 4. Methodology and data In order to fulfill the main goal of this paper, it is necessary to identify the suburbanization in the spatial and time framework. It may be identified by empirical field research or by studying the statistical data provided by Statistical office of Slovak republic. We have decided to combine both of these two approaches: first to identify the suburbanization by provided statistical data and then to verify it by field research. Some additional questions have appeared as we applied such methodology: 1. What should be the spatial framework of this study? 2. How can be the stage since the suburbanization phase has started identified? 3. Which spatial units should be used? 4. What methodology to use in order to mark studied spatial units as suburban? In previously mentioned Klaassen's model and its other derivations, the term "urban region" has been noted. Usually, urban region is made up by two sub-regions of internal structure: the urban core and the urban ring. Since the urban core is the part of urban region consisting from the important core city or cities respectively, which can be treated as population source areas according to the suburbanization, the remaining predominantly rural areas can be considered as the region, where suburbanization may occur. Therefore, in respect to this paper, urban ring is equal to spatial framework of our work. In Slovakia, the system of functional urban regions based on the daily commuting has been introduced and modified by prof. Bezak (1990, 2000) and unlike the official administrative divisions, it is perceived to be the proper and suitable regional system used in different geographical studies (Bezak 2011; Novotny 2011; Hudec and Toth 2012). Since the internal structure of functional urban regions in Slovakia has not yet been delimited (Bezak 2012), we will treat the administrative territory of Bratislava as the urban core even though its administrative boundaries are often considered as so called overbounded (Ouredmcek 2004). Furthermore, we have decided to omit the intraurban suburbanization due to difficulties with data obtaining. Location of functional urban region of Bratislava within Central Europe is illustrated in Fig. 1. In order to avoid processing of useless data, it is necessary to define the credible time framework to cover the whole suburbanization process in case of Bratislava. Considering that, determination of year when the suburbanization in Bratislava has started seems to be the very important step. As we have defined above, the beginning of the suburbanization stage should be assigned to year, when the population of core city started to decline while the population of urban ring is increasing. According to the table 1, the suburbanization in Bratislava has started in 1996. In order to involve the pre-suburbanization period, we have chosen to extend the time framework to period 1995-2009. Regarding to the methodology, the data after 2009 are not necessary. The next step is to define the spatial units. As we have noted before, the administrative divisions of Slovakia are not considered as credible according to the geographical aspect of population activities. However, municipalities (in Slovak obce), the smallest spatial units the annual statistical data are issued for, seems to be the best way in order to study suburbanization at most highest fidelity. Fig. 1: Location of functional urban region of Bratislava within Central Europe. m 455 g 450 f 445 I 440 12 435 CO •- 430 ro 425 4M w 420 ~ 415 o ¡5 410 -Q £ 5 ID r-v oo 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 2 3 0 0 2 4 0 0 2 5 0 0 2 ID 0 0 2 r-v 0 0 2 00 0 0 2 0 0 2 Bratislava [major axis] year Ring [minor axis] 245 o 240 o o