engleski

Impact of the Regional Structure on Croatia's Regional Development

The regional structure, based on nodal-functional regions, is an essential determinant of regional development. Contemporary regional development in Croatia is characterised by a marked dichotomy between core regions and peripheral regions. This discrepancy is reflected at two levels of spatial analysis: at the county level (planning regions) and at the level of functional macro-regions. Historical-geographic development and socio-geographic processes under such polarised conditions have led to the emergence of the City of Zagreb, or rather the Zagreb urban region, as the national core region, and of the Zagreb functional macro-region at the macro-regional level. On the other hand, the least favourable regional development characterises the peripheral regions, such as Croatia’ s middle hilly-mountainous zone, Western Slavonia and most of the zone along the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina. This dichotomy in regional development is to a large measure the result of the previous political-territorial organisation based on municipalities, which led to the predominance of relatively small settlements in Croatia’ s urban system. The current political-territorial structure based on counties as regional territorial units will modify the existing spatial structure and processes and, in this vein, the urban system and regional development. The pending implementation of the European Union’ s nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) will additionally contribute to Croatia’ s more balanced regional development.

Croatia; political and territorial organization; municipalities; counties; urban system; regional development

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