ABSTRACT
The Czech urban policies have long been characterized, in particular, by tensions between municipalities of different population sizes and financial strength. While large cities and the metropolitan areas around them can usually be classified as relatively prosperous European regions, municipalities with less than a thousand inhabitants, accounting for more than 80% of the total number of about 6,150 municipalities in Czechia, lack the human and financial resources for their development. At the same time, the strength of the Czech municipal self-government has been weakened in the long term by its forced involvement in a number of state administration activities in the model of the so-called mixed administration. The chapter focuses on how Czech municipalities have coped with the challenges of the pandemic, including whether one observes significant differences in the performance of municipalities with respect to their population sizes and financial strength. A similar question is asked in relation to the recovery period.
