Slovak housing estates and the accessibility of the key amenities. Case study Banská Bystrica

Abstract

Housing estates, which have emerged during the post-war mass housing development, became the significant part of an urban structure of many cities across the eastern bloc. In Slovak cities, they still represent the major part of residential complexes. Housing estates usually ignored the original urban structure and isolated themselves declaring their independence from the rest of the city. In an effort to a strict functional segregation housing estates paradoxically became dependent on the traditional urban structure. The original plans of the housing estates mostly proposed the local centers with a relatively broad spectrum of amenities; however, these were often greatly reduced or unfinished under the pressure of solving housing problems. Since the functional mixing with an emphasis on the walking accessibility of the key amenities from the place of a residence is one of the important aspects of livable and sustainable neighborhoods, the questions arises: To what extent do housing estates provide the key amenities necessary for the everyday life of their inhabitants? Are they in this respect truly self-sufficient or fail to fulfill their original ambition? Answering these questions is important not only in terms of the evaluation of their quality but also for setting strategies for the further development of housing estates (for example, intensification). The goal of the paper was to examine the current structure of Slovak housing estates in terms of accessibility of the key amenities and the evaluation of the results from the perspective of the future development of housing estates. The research was carried out within 18 selected housing estates of varying size, nature and location within the city of Banská Bystrica (county city in Central Slovakia). The key amenities and optimal walking distances (radius of accessibility) were defined based on a comparison of existing researches and recommendations. Within the territory of housing estates, the percentage of overall coverage by key amenities (percentage of the territory of the individual housing estate with access to all key amenities in walking distance), the average percentage of coverage of the key amenities and the percentage of coverage of the selected key amenities were assessed. The results of the research demonstrate a large diversity of housing estates in terms of accessibility of the key amenities and their relation to other features of housing estates.