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Czechoslovakia Urbanization and Migration
The urban tradition in the Czech lands dates from
approximately the ninth century A.D., and the growth of towns
centered on princely castles and bishops' seats. Artisan and
trading activities were a subsidiary part of these urban
settlements. Trading, in fact, defined the spread of secondary
towns across the countryside, each roughly a day's journey from
the next along major trade routes. Prague grew up around Hradcany
Castle, having the dual advantage of being both bishopric and
princely seat from about the ninth century. By the fourteenth
century, it was a major continental city with 40,000 to 50,000
inhabitants, a university (Charles University, one of Europe's
first), and an administrative seat of the Holy Roman Empire.
After the defeat of the Bohemian nobles in the Battle of White
Mountain in 1620, Prague and the other cities of the Czech lands
languished until the nineteenth century. Slovakia, as a result of
its agrarian nature and Hungarian rule, remained a region of
small towns scattered amid farming villages and Hungarian
estates.
During the nineteenth century, there was a surge of migration
and urbanization in both the Czech lands and Slovakia. Much of
this was linked to nineteenth-century Europe's tremendous
population increase and the spread of the railroads. Czech and
Slovak urbanization proceeded apace; the proportion of the
population living in towns of more than 2,000 grew from 18
percent to 45 percent between 1843 and 1910. The rate of increase
in major industrial centers was spectacular: between 1828 and
1910, Prague's population grew by a factor of nearly seven,
Plzen's by over thirteen. In 1910 Ostrava had 167 times the
population it had a century before. This pattern of urbanization
persisted through the First Republic, although at a lower rate.
Urbanization and migration patterns have altered
significantly in the socialist era. A desire to balance
population and industrial distribution dictated urban policy from
the 1950s through the 1980s. Since World War II, such
historically predominant urban centers as Prague and Brno have
not been the official, preferred choices for continued growth.
Despite consistent efforts to relocate citybound workers away
from the traditional destinations of rural emigrants, in the
1980s the six largest cities (all major urban centers in the
early twentieth century) nevertheless accounted for over 40
percent of the population living in cities of over 20,000. Beyond
this, however, there was relatively little concentration; 50
percent of the population lived in settlements of fewer than
10,000. The landscape was one of small, dispersed settlements,
small cities, scattered towns, and cooperative farm centers (see
table 3, Appendix A).
Rural-urban migration decreased in the 1970s, apparently less
because of balanced population distribution than because
commuting matched workers with industrial employment. Excluding
intracity commuting, between one-third and one-half of all
workers commuted during the 1980s. A substantial portion of these
were long-distance, weekly, or monthly commuters. In the
planner's view, commuting had replaced migration; it had the
considerable advantage of lessening the burdens of expanding
industrialization on urban services. From the worker's
perspective, however, commuting was most often a matter of
involuntarily deferred migration. Scarce urban housing was the
principal constraint on the potential migrant, though one year's
rural commuter could still become the next year's city dweller.
Commuting has placed heavy demands on the commuter's time and on
public transit, which has meant a substantial outlay for both
railroad and roadway passenger service. One can gauge the effect
of commuting on the working populace by considering that most
Czechoslovak factories begin operation at 6:00 A.M. and most
offices between 7:00 and 8:00 A.M.
Data as of August 1987
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