Demographic Aspects of Urban-Rural Polarization of Croatia

The movement and development of the population in Croatia in the period after the Second World War took place under general and specific conditions and circumstances that were mostly attributed to normal and spatially balanced demographic development. After that, it is necessary to start the demographic process in the Homeland War, in the early 1990s, Croatia found itself in a deep demographic crisis, with complex and numerous demographic, social and economic results. This scientific project starts from the fundamental fact that spatial population polarization is one of the most significant characteristics of contemporary demographic changes (demographic transformation) in Croatia. Indicators of demographic transformation (population density and distribution, overall population movement, demographic structure) point to the existence of increasingly pronounced demographic and socio-economic regionalization, with several prominent poles of development, depending on the spatial-functional level of observation, especially urban-rural polarization. Uneven spatial and demographic development is gradually assuming the role of the most important destabilizing factor in the sustainable regional development of the Croatian state. The main purpose of this research is to determine the reached level of contemporary demographic trends and changes in Croatia with regard to their settlement aspect. However, it is possible to use the structure of demographic and non-demographic indicators to determine the frequency of analysis and analyze the polarization of demographers before the first time (urban/rural). However, this is the result of the construction of urban and rural areas, at a time when the region is not yet in the function of the country’s development. The first method that is used is the use of the demographic and demogeographic (socio-geographic) determination method, which takes the form of a dynamic structure to determine the stability of the system. To begin with, with this demographic model, we can learn more about sociogeographic areas (city/urban, rural/rural, “mixed”).