Sustainable territorial development and concepts of polycentricity in Slovak territorial development
This paper presents the situation and potentials for the development of polycentric structures within the Slovak settlement system in the context of spatial development in Central Europe. The trajectories in the development of the morphological and relational features of settlement structures are compared with official conceptual documents at the national and regional levels. The limits and potentials concerning the development of spatial structures at different hierarchical levels, resulting from the specific situation in Slovakia, are examined with a particular focus on trans-border development perspectives, including the appearance of new spatial–temporal patterns. The concepts brought forward in the ESPON analyses are critically discussed with an attempt to provide a more contextualized view of the nature of polycentric organization in the current phase of development of integration and transformation processes in Slovakia.
Land use changes and effects on heat islands in the city
Because of ongoing climate change cities need to take into account also temperature rise issues during projects preparation and in general planning, in order to mitigate heat stress problems. This paper shows the possibilities of applying the Urban Climate model in connection with the evaluation of temperature islands when changing land use-land cover. The example of Masaryk Square in Hodonin shows that small technical solutions can improve the thermal stress islands in urban areas. In the second part of the paper, the results of assessing usability of the model’s application in the form of the Climate-fit.city service using the cost benefit analysis are outlined. In conclusion, the opinions of the representatives of the town of Hodonin for which this service was created are summarized.
Translating Legal Language and Comparative Law
Legal texts are in the focus of both lawyers and translators. This paper discusses the binary opposition of these two views especially in the light of contract law. There is one crucial epistemic difference between the point of view of the translator and the lawyer when it comes to the interpretation of legal texts. In the translator’s view legal text is traditionally conceived as static as to its nature; something that already exists in the form of text. Traditionally, the translator is interested in the text itself as it was written down in a document, i.e. the translator needs to go back to the frozen moment when a legal document was constructed and finalised. The lawyer, in contrast, is very much interested not only in the text of the legal document but also in the contextual surroundings of the text. In fact, for legal interpretation, sometimes the key-elements for the interpretation come from outside of the text itself. This paper concludes that legal translation is in many cases closer to transcreation than it is to traditionally understood translation.