Abstract

This paper focuses on population deconcentration in the Czech Republic during the post-socialist transformation period. The shift in migration flows from rural-to-urban to urban-to-rural, which has been important feature of settlement systems in the West since 1970s, became evident in many post-socialist countries during the last 20 years. The differences in development of CEE countries showed us that there have been many different paths (dependencies) of post-socialist transformation after 1989 which have of course also certain commonalities.

The population deconcentration in the Czech Republic is mainly described as suburbanization, suburban development or formation of metropolitan areas. Some theoretical consideration and also empirical investigation suggested that newly established post-socialist migration patterns in the Czech Republic (and other CEE countries) are much more complex and cannot be appropriately grasped with simple labels as we know from urban life-cycle theory. Although suburbanisation is the major process in the post-socialist urban Europe, we argue that there is „more than suburbanization“ in the Czech settlement system. The paper deals with the process of counter-urbanization and recognizes two types of this process: western counterurbanisation and its post-socialist counterpart. Different ways of studying and approaching to the phenomenon will be provided. In the final part we attempt to present empirical evidence of counter-urbanization in the Czech Republic. The possible relations to other CEE countries could be regarded as inspirational for further research.