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The paper assesses the relationships between the quality of business and social environments on the example of micro-regions (districts of municipalities with extended powers) and meso-regions (NUTS 3) of the Czech Republic. The applied approach develops the concept of the quality of life including the identification of system links to regional competitiveness and sustainability of development. In this context, the assessment of the business component of the regional environment that has been already carried out was supplemented with the assessment of the social component, when the regions were divided into progressive, standard and regressive. In both cases, it has been proved (in correspondence with core-periphery theories) that there is a tendency towards a decrease in the environment quality in the direction to regional borders. Subsequently, we evaluated the balance of the classification of regions (districts) within the individual components and based on this, the districts of municipalities with extended powers were divided into three types: business-oriented (type A), complex (B) and socially oriented (C). The proportion of the “balanced” type B is slightly lower than that of the two remaining “unbalanced” types. Naturally, the results of NUTS 3 evaluation correspond with this. A similar result was obtained in the case of the evaluation of regional harmony, which is understood as a qualitatively higher level of balance meeting socially desirable development standards. In correspondence, its level is defined by the proportion of type B regions (excluding the regions with business as well as social environment quality below average and also regions that are environmentally devastated) and type A regions (excluding the regions with social environment quality below average). The results show that from the perspective of the distribution of inhabitants, relatively harmonic relationship prevails, while from the purely territorial perspective, the prevailing relationship is disharmonic. The obtained knowledge corresponds with the hypothesis about a positive effect of the regional harmony of the business and social environments on the long-term sustainability of development (a bad quality of social environment significantly reduces not only residential but also investment attractiveness of regions).

Český maloobchod prochází obdobím největších změn v celé své historii. Na kapacitní i kvalitativní nedostatečnost odvětví z konce 80. let minulého století navázala v první polovině let devadesátých etapa atomizace, podpořená malou privatizací, kdy se počet maloobchodních jednotek za deset let zvýšil dvojnásobně na téměř 100 tisíc. Od 2. poloviny 90. let začaly ve větší míře pronikat na tuzemský trh zahraniční řetězce a český maloobchod se velmi rychle internacionalizoval. Vstup zahraničního kapitálu byl dominantní, domácí subjekty nebyly reálně konkurenceschopné. Pokračovala transformace maloobchodu, jehož sítová struktura se opírala o stále větší počet velkoplošných maloobchodních jednotek (super a hypermarkety, diskonty), objevila se první nákupní centra. Předložená publikace nabízí čtenářům hlavní výsledky projektu „Časoprostorová organizace denních urbánních systémů: analýza a hodnocení vybraných procesů“. Denní rytmus obyvatel zde není primárně vázán na pohyb za prací, ale je modifikován dojížďkou za službami a specificky za maloobchodem, resp. je dotvářen novými formami nákupního chování. V první části textu je představen teoretický základ nákupního chování jako sociálně-prostorového fenoménu, dále navazuje transformace českého maloobchodu a fenomén nákupních center. Druhá část práce je založena na výsledcích rozsáhlých šetření v modelových aglomeracích Brna a Olomouce. Czech retail trade has been undergoing a period of greatest changes in all of its history. The capacity and quality insufficiency of the sector at the end of the 1980s was followed in the early 1990s by a stage of atomization incited by small-business privatization; the number of retailing units grew twofold to almost 100,000 within this period. Foreign retail chains started to penetrate the domestic market in the second half of the 1990s and the Czech retail trade has rapidly become internationalized. Foreign capital entry was dominant; domestic companies and businesses were not actually able to compete. The retailing network transformation continued – its network structure was based on increasingly larger numbers of large-scale retailing units (super and hypermarkets, discount shops); the first shopping centers appeared.

In a large number of countries (including the Czech Republic), implementation of large projects of transport infrastructure is justified by a general reference to its broad economic benefits, which are, however, seldom further specified. One of important reasons for such an approach is the non-existence of an empirically verified model for complex assessment of the degree of necessity of the development of these projects. Therefore, the main objective of the paper is to present an original method for comparative assessment of motorway and expressway constructions. The method has been applied to eight cases of the most significant projects planned in the Czech Republic verifying that its use can provide the necessary information on their potential benefits (in spite of some simplifications). The methodology for the generalized assessment attempts to connect technical, economic, political, spatial and environmental aspects and includes five basic criteria: relevance (traffic intensity as the underlying factor determining the technical need for a project), usefulness (time saved in personal transport and haulage, due to the insecurity concerning future transport flows interpreted by relative values derived from design speeds), integration (strategic significance of the projects regarding the connection of the most significant residential areas and the connection with neighbouring countries), stimulation (economic impacts assessed based on a potential improvement of the factor of road and railway quality as an integral part of the regional quality of business environment), and sustainability (environmental impacts of the construction on more significant residential centres and selected protected areas, with emphasis on pollution and noise). The complex assessment of selected projects of motorways (D) and express ways (R) has been performed based on an aggregation of rankings of the projects within the defined criteria. The projects were then divided into three groups: projects where need for construction has been proven, has been found disputable or has not been proven. The first group contains R 55), D 3 and R 35. However, this does not mean that there are no drawbacks – e.g. R 35 has the lowest ranking within the sustainability criterion. The second group contains D 11 and R 49. The assessment of their construction has been negatively affected by their ranking within the usefulness and stimulation criteria (D 11), and relevance and integration criteria (R 49). The position of the projects in the third group, R 6, R 7 and R 43 follows from their bad ranking within most of the established criteria (R 6 and R 7 – three criteria; R 43 – all criteria except usefulness).

Compared to Western European or North American countries with developed market economies, the formation and acceptance of brownfields in post-socialist countries was delayed by approximately 30 years. For the Central European and partly Eastern European countries, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the transition after 1989 from a planned and state-controlled economy towards a market economy was unique for its time consistency. Yet, it was also specific for the distinct statuses of main sectors of national economy of individual countries, which got hugely manifested during the formation of spatial and functional connections concerning the problems of brownfields of all types (post-industrial, post-agricultural, post-military etc.). In the Czech Republic, there is a long history of industry; from the middle of the 19th century (the boom of the Industrial Revolution), it was regarded the most industrially developed country of Central and Eastern Europe. The massive deindustrialization of the 1990s caused increased concentrations of brownfield localities, with the local people and public administration becoming more familiar with them, and it also led to initial efforts for their systematic regeneration. The cities of Brno and Ostrava (Czech Republic), as well as other big cities in the Central European area, are typical examples for their finished intensive process of deindustrialization. Yet, regarding their economic preferences, and thus the existence of brownfields, they are highly distinct – in Brno there are more textile and engineering companies together with military and agricultural facilities; in Ostrava abandoned coal mining and metallurgical industry sites prevail. From the perspective of humangeographical methods and approaches, this contribution deals both with the functional-spatial consequences of brownfield existence in urban space, as well as with the results of research focused on the perception of the given issues by the residents of Brno and Ostrava. The research itself tries to demonstrate how the groups of selected respondents perceive and evaluate the brownfield problems from the perspective of their everyday experience.

The diploma thesis deals with geographical aspect of an origin of ice hockey players in selected countries (Czechia, Finland, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland) The aim of the thesis is to find out how succesful is the training of professional players in these countries on municipal and club level and a consecutive identification of ice hockey hotbeds. The thesis is divided to the theoretical and the practical part. The theoretical part is focused on the geography of sport and the issue of ice hockey, its history, organization and spreading. The figures of the players, trained in the above mentioned countries, their wages in the NHL, the number of starts at the Olympics and points and the number of the highest league titles are the basis of the analytic part. The figures were used for correlation analysis and comparison. The results show that a territorial diversification of ice hockey players production appears in the most of the countries and the traditional hotbeds prevails, but new ones are developed.