Annett STEINFÜHRER
The Urban Transition of Inner-City Areas Reconsidered (A German-Czech Comparison)..
The cities of Central Europe have now experienced fifteen years of post-socialist transition. In many respects, they started with similar structural patterns, but they have developed rather differently during this period. Thus, both the predictions formulated at the beginning of the transition and the assumption of only one model of the post-socialist city, needed revision in the course of the process. After reviewing major prognoses of the outcomes of urban transition from the beginning of the 1990s, the focus of this paper will be on the development of neighbourhoods in the inner-city areas of Leipzig (Germany) and Brno (Czech Republic). In both towns, these neighbourhoods constitute a significant part of the urban fabric and built local heritage. It is argued that despite similar structural patterns still evident in the 1990s (physical dilapidation, population losses and ageing, restitution of property), the transition pathways have since departed from each other. Differences have emerged concerning tenure structures, the situation of the rental market and housing mobility patterns, all of which will make the two paths even more dissimilar in the future. From a theoretical point of view, it is maintained that the simple category of change is not sufficient to understand and explain the multi-faceted processes of urban transition. Therefore, a broader typology of change, revitalisation, continuity and persistency is suggested.

Dejan CIGALE, Barbara LAMPIČ, Matej OGRIN, Dušan PLUT, Dejan REBERNIK, Metka ŠPES, Katja VINTAR MALLY, Stanislav CETKOVSKÝ, Eva KALLABOVÁ, Oldřich MIKULÍK, Antonín VAISHAR, Jana ZAPLETALOVÁ
Sustainable Development of Small Towns a Slovenian – Moravian Comparative Methodological Approach.
The sector of small towns plays an important role in both Slovenian and Moravian settlement systems. Its sustainability is the subject of the study. Subject to evaluation was a theoretical background. There were 15 Slovenian and 50 Moravian small towns with 5 – 15 thousand inhabitants chosen for the comparison. A typology of small towns was developed. A set of 12 indicators (economic, social and environmental) was defined.

Josef KUNC
Bosch Diesel – Not only an Industrial Phenomenon in the Vysočina Region (Czech Republic).
The aim of the presentation is to depict the history and genesis of Bosch Diesel Company in the Czech Republic and the main corporate activities in the Vysočina Region and in Jihlava. Bosch Diesel is an industrial entity backed by German Capital active in machine industry and electrical engineering. The German corporation of Robert Bosch entered a joint venture with Motorpal Jihlava in the mid-1990s to become entirely independent in several years. At the present time, the Corporation employs more than 6 thousand people and is a dominating and driving industrial power in the Vysočina Region its significance having long ago exceeded the boundary of economic prosperity, becoming socially powerful and prestigious. Current economic performance of Bosch Diesel has no comparable equivalent in the Czech Republic during the transformation era.

Pavel VRANKA, Hana SVATOŇOVÁ
Continuous Soil Lost Modelling In The Haraska Watershed (SE Moravia) – an application of 4d digital landscape Model.
Most of the geographical information systems and digital landscape model applications are two- or three-dimensional, but it is possible to add a fourth dimension – time. We introduce an application of the continuous erosion model AnnAGNPS, as an example of 4-D digital landscape models. The amount of data needed for the building of a digital landscape model is strongly dependant on the areal extent and variability of the landscapes. The landscapes of Central Europe are highly variable, as both environmental conditions and land-use dramatically change in relatively small areas. Therefore, we decided to work within the relatively small area of the Haraska watershed (Southeast Moravia region): to be able to construct valid models of selected processes, and to prevent the effects of over-generalization and an associated loss of information. Initial erosion depends on a complex collection of environmental parameters and agricultural operations, and the distribution of pollution (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) is not uniform over the area and the pollution sources are mostly non-point.The spatial database of the Haraska watershed digital landscape model integrates elevation data with environmental, land-use and land-cover information at a high resolution. Spatial analyses and the AnnAGNPS Pollution Loading Model allowed us to create a continuous simulation of erosion processes, to determinate problematic areas, and to estimate the influence of agricultural pollution on the water quality of the Haraska Stream.