Changes of Regional Linkages in the Suburban Epoch

Abstract

Regional linkages are permanently in progress thanks to the processes that are very often contradictory. The East and Middle Europe is presently going through the epoch that was typical for the West Europe and the North America few decades ago – epoch of suburbanization. This process affects urban environment as well as the rural one. The suburbanization is very well described as well as its development and impacts by many project proceedings, books and science papers. But the same regional processes could be seen as a natural continuation of urbanization processes where the extensive urbanization was replaced with the intensive form of urbanization. The physical relocation of population was replaced with increasing number of linkages and strengthened relations between regional cores and their hinterland. It has impacts into many aspects of rural life including adoption of the urban life style by the inhabitants of many formerly rural villages. The aim of this paper is to identify changes in the regional linkages between the cores of selected regions in the Czech Republic and their hinterland. For that purpose there were analyzed several indicators that could show increase or decrease of the core´s regional power.