Empirical literature in the field of regional resilience has most commonly concentrated on a unique economic shock. However, the existing studies have fallen short of comparing the resilience patterns across different crises. The purpose of this study is to investigate the geographical persistence of regional resilience across different recessionary shocks, namely: 1) the 2008–2010 Global Financial Crisis; 2) the 2011–2013 Sovereign Debt Crisis; 3) the 2019–2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The study covers 202 European Nuts II regions. It applied a range of empirical tools such as Markovian Transition Probability Matrices, Global Moran’s and Local Moran’s, Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, Kendal’s tau, and Spearman’s correlation coefficient, as well as illustrative maps. As an outcome, several important conclusions are reached. First, the spatial pattern of resilience is not stable/persistent over time, as the three recessions tend to hit different places at different crisis times. Second, in general, Southern European regions are the most consistently fragile/vulnerable regions. Third, spatial patterns of resilience are weakly correlated across the different recessions. From the policy standpoint, it is understood that dealing with employment resilience is more difficult than previously thought by the policymakers. Since the resilience pattern is not stable spatially, each crisis should be evaluated separately and no generic policy rules can be formulated to foster the resilience. Thus, one can understand that although the sources of the crises are different, there may be some geographies that are structurally suffering the recessions which necessitate a consideration of the reasons and the formulation of the related policies.

The article addresses the issue of urban citizenship discussed in the context of Ukrainian migration to Poland, which is important in the process of migrant integration. The scale and dominance of migration from Ukraine in Poland make this theme particularly important. The concept of urban citizenship presupposes certain conditions to be met for its implementation. They allow us to take into account the component of practices, social relations and local identity. We associate the latter with the sense of being a city dweller (identification with the local community). Referring to the results of the qualitative research (FGI) carried out in 2022 with the inhabitants of Wrocław who have Polish and Ukrainian state citizenship, we have presented the conditions (necessary) for being a citizen of the city – the initial values that should be fulfilled by the citizens of Wrocław (irrespective of their ethnic origin and state citizenship held). By comparing the criteria for Poles with those for Ukrainians, we were able to identify a battery of objective and subjective, inclusive and exclusive indicators, as well as those that are more or less important for representatives of a given national category due to their realizing in the local community (and thanks to it) autotelic and instrumental needs.

This paper attempts to diagnose the attitudes of municipal office employees toward civic participation and assess selected outcomes of participatory budgeting (PB) in the six largest Polish cities between 2014 and 2023. The analysis is based on empirical research, including surveys, in-depth interviews, and secondary data analysis. The findings reveal an institutional perspective and indicate the presence of two dominant approaches among public officials, namely an affirmative and a critical one. The article also discusses both the direct and indirect effects of PB – educational, social, political, and redistributive. In cities where the affirmative approach prevails (Poznań, Wrocław, Gdańsk, and Łódź), higher educational and political outcomes were more frequently observed. In contrast, in Warsaw and Kraków, where the critical approach dominates, lower educational and political outcomes were more commonly noted, along with relatively stronger redistributive effects. The results further suggest that participatory budgeting can serve as an effective tool for municipal administrations in identifying residents’ needs, although its capacity to meet those needs remains limited.

The article presents statistical data on ‘rookie councillors’ of the provincial assemblies [Pol. sejmiki] of the seventh term (2024–2029). The authors, by means of a statistical analysis of the election results, point to the factors enabling one to win a seat as a regional assembly councillor for the first time. Three groups of councillors were analysed: promoted debutantes, demoted debutantes and debutantes with no political experience. The analysis shows the scale of the phenomenon of debutant councillors and their situation on electoral lists as well as the preferences of the electorate directed towards the group under scrutiny.

The ability to achieve the assumed waste recycling targets depends on the efficiency of waste management systems. Poland, as a member of the EU, has committed to achieving the recycling levels gradually i.e. at the level of 55% in 2025, 60% in 2030 and 65% in 2035 but whether it will meet the targets depends, among other things, on the efficiency of the waste collection system. The aim of the study is to check the cost efficiency of selective waste collection in the group of Polish voivodeship cities in the years 2020–2023. The study used a set of indicators for the assessment, including those proposed by the authors, calculated on the basis of reports on the implementation of city budgets and data from the Central Statistical Office. The analysis shows that cost efficiency is very diverse in the cities under scrutiny, and local governments are looking for the optimisation of municipal waste management systems, i.e. the best ratio of revenues from fees to costs. Based on the obtained results, it can be assumed that achieving the assumed waste recycling levels will be a significant challenge – or even an impossible task – for all voivodeship cities in Poland, which can constitute a source of actions to improve this state of affairs for local government authorities in Poland.

The study investigates spatial development patterns in areas surrounding different types of transport investments in the largest Polish cities between 2005 and 2015. The analysis, based on comparative case studies using BDOT10k data and orthophotos in a GIS environment, shows that neighbourhoods adjacent to new transport infrastructure exhibit strong growth in building numbers. The intensity and character of this development both depend on the scale of the investment, its position within the urban fabric and local topographic conditions. The findings also highlight clear differences in the spatial development trajectories observed around road versus rail infrastructure.