Developmental or impoverishing urban cores? : the case of Slovakia

Slovakia has undergone such a notable economic progress in recent decades, that it made the country envied all over the world. Meanwhile, the intensifying core-periphery imbalances have been unquestionably apparent: the development is concentrated primarily on the capital city region and its surrounding areas in Western Slovakia. This half-sided progress made the country suitable for the examination of spread and backwash processes (enriching and impoverishing effects) in a global context. Within the academic literature on spread and backwash effects, many theories and empirical research address under what circumstances these sequels are to be expected more or less significant. Present study also explores the factors triggering spread and backwash effects, taking the example of Slovakia. The results indicate that the country is vulnerable to the self-reinforcing nature of backwash effects at a number of levels. This implies that Slovakia is an extreme but not isolated example of cumulative inequalities between the core and periphery; and that the cumulative nature of urban-rural disparities poses a risk to all Central European countries due to their post-socialist and post-Fordist economies, trends which are not so strongly present in the western part of the European Union.