In Master thesis we have addressed the question whether the construction of the highway network in Slovenia has an influence on the spatial development and the changes of the land use. We wanted to find out where do these influences occur the most and what is their extent. To this end, we have set up a working hypothesis assuming that the construction of the highway system results in a significant increase of the urban areas in the municipalities with the highway link, however at the expense of reducing the agricultural land and forest. We have used a methodological approach, which depended grealty on the data availability and its quality. For a hypothesis examination we have analyzed the spatial data changes in land use, house numbers, issued building permits and the number of population changes in the period from 2002 to 2014. The research was conducted on a sample of six Slovenian municipalities. Three of those are connected to the highway, whereas the other three are not. Based on the analysis of the land use in all of the six municipalities, we found a significant (27 %) increase of the planned building land in the three municipalities with the highway link. The analysis of the issued house numbers demonstrated similar results, while the analysis of the issued building permits did not show a clear connection to the increase in the construction in municipalities with the highway connection. Based on the results obtained and their interpretation we can confirm the working hypothesis for the present six municipalities to be correct, however to make a a generalization for the whole Slovenian area the additional analysis including higher number of municipalities would be required.
|