Zelená kostra Dunaja: Předpoklady a limity plošného růstu Vídně a Bratislavy

The Danube, a 2,850-kilometre-long river, forms the country's natural waterway, connecting Europe's four capitals. The course of the river divides each of these cities into two parts, forming specific urban areas in contact with the river. The area of interest for this paper is the capital cities of Vienna and Bratislava. In this area of the two geographically closest capitals in Europe, the Danube is the transport route between them and the fundamental carrier of the landscape skeleton of floodplain forests that connects the cities. This habitat is now an endangered type of waterscape due to strict historical regulations and thus the lack of natural flooding. Historically, several factors - cultural, social, historical, political, economic, geomorphological and others - have influenced the gradual expansion of the study towns into the landscape. This paper focuses on the geomorphological factors and compares the areas of the study towns. An obvious assumption is the fundamental influence of the location of the Danube and its arms, the adjacent forests and the terrain limits (constraints) that predetermined the direction of the city. The aim is to map and compare these assumptions and the representation of the current Danube blue-green infrastructure. The research includes the use of CORINE Land Cover maps to compare the percentage of land cover types (built-up areas, forests, fields, rivers and water bodies, etc.) in Vienna and Bratislava and to create summary analytical maps for further investigation.