Infrastructure facilities as a potential for development in Slovakia

Abstract

Infrastructural facilities of municipalities in the Slovak territory can be characterized by their higher rate of spatial variability. This can be used as a tool for the evaluation of the potential of regional development in the studied region. Based on the consequential potential, we can easily evaluate how propulsive or how attractive is the character of the studied region. The potential of infrastructural facilities can be studied in various ways. In this paper, the spatial demogeographical approach is proposed and demonstrated. We have considered the studied region as the set of municipalities located in Bratislava and Košice functional urban regions (FUR), as a region based on daily commuting. Input data has been provided by the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic (data related to 31 December 2009). In addition to the infrastructural facilities, we also considered the accessibility of the region centres - the cities of Bratislava and Košice - using route distance; accessibility by private transport and accessibility by public transport (morning mid-week). The resulting value for each municipality can be interpreted as a potential.

Keywords

• technical infrastructure
• social infrastructure
• accessibility
• functional urban region
• potential