The aim of the article is to present the communication by public transport of the towns located within the boundaries of the Municipal Functional Area of Słupsk–Ustka (MOF S–U) with the core cities (Słupsk and Ustka) and to indicate the areas where the phenomenon of transport exclusion may occur. The public transportation network in the area does not meet the needs directed by the residents to local authority decision-makers, which may limit their ability to get around, especially on weekends. During the study, the literature on the subject, documents at local and regional levels, and data contained in timetables were analysed as well as the GIS visualisations were used. Insufficient communication with public transport in the area results in limited transport accessibility and, consequently, may lead to transport exclusion.
The paper presents the ways public space is socially used in three cities: Jastrzebie Zdroj, Tychy and Zory. The theoretical background is the culturalist perspective of urban sociology and the theory of public space. In the socialist era, the space in the researched cities was dominated by production and monofunctional housing estates. Public space did not exist. In the recent years, some unfinished structures may have been completed, but creating integrative urban public space is still a challenge. As a result, it is interesting to research and describe contemporary ways of using space in the “socialist” cities. The results of qualitative research show that inhabitants appreciate multifunctional market places and public squares wherever they exist. Such places constitute multifunctional public space. However, in cities lacking functional public space, shopping centres replace traditional city space. Unfortunately, they do not have the social integration function and do not promote social interactions. In every city, recreational areas are important for inhabitants.
The aim of the present research is to describe the role of the Warmia and Mazury University in the formation of the functional macroregion in the Olsztyn agglomeration. The main criterion used to delimitate the macroregion of Olsztyn is the range of educational services of the biggest university in Warmia and Mazury. The authors use data relating to the place of living of the candidates who registered during the recruitment process in 2011 and 2012. They also analyze the impact of selected factors on the size of the area of Olsztyn university’s spatial influence. The research results show that the functional macroregion of the Olsztyn agglomeration covers, apart from the Warmia and Mazury voivodship, also the neighbouring districts of the Podlaskie and the Mazowieckie voivodships.
In the last years, the knowledge economy approach has started to gain strength in the analysis of the economic and social reality. The author presents four fields that characterize the knowledge economy, namely: the acceleration of the knowledge production, intangible capital increase in the macroeconomic field, innovation as a dominant activity and revolution in the knowledge means. The main objective of this text is to find a relationship between two great phenomena knowledge economy and regional development landed on a concrete region (Central Region of Mexico). Essential to this analysis is the inclusion of the third great current phenomenon: globalization. Article presents also an overview of the conceptual framework of knowledge economy and its relationships with the Central Region of Mexico. The main hypothesis of this work consists of giving an answer for the question: Are there any possibilities for this region to join the knowledge-based economy, taking into consideration the existing elements of such an economy here? The last part of the article gives some data that describe the development level of the knowledge economy in the Central Region in three aspects: abilities, efforts and outcomes.
The paper is an overview of selected aspects of sustaining the development of Brussels. The mechanism of multi-level governance of the capital of Belgium and the nature of its problems resulted in the emergence of instruments that give local actors greater control over the urban processes. The paper describes two of such instruments, namely the neighbourhood contracts and the Regional Development Plan. Despite some criticism, both are considered valuable tools of urban policy. The way in which they have been adapted and the results they give confirm that Brussels’ sustainable development is achieved most effectively by the application of system solutions, specifically those used in the smallest administrative areas of the city – neighbourhoods.
The essay concerns “widely closed spaces” in today’s metropolises. By this term I understand territories that belong to private firms and syndicates and are predominantly situated in big office buildings. These places have certain features both of the public and the private space. They also co-create one of the zones in which the processes of fragmentation and appropriation of the urban space take place. It is so because they construct symbolic and literal barriers to access. The text provides an analysis of the functioning of “widely closed spaces” and their role in today’s metropolises.
Tourist sector belongs to most dynamic sectors able to absorb large and different human resources. Its chances to get developed depend not only on natural and cultural resources, but also increasingly on necessary infrastructure and appropriate development policy. While Polish natural resources were mostly overvalued, the cultural ones were seemed to be underestimated. In general most of the Polish territory does not have significant touristic resources and its chances to develop touristic sector depends to a large extent on ability to create touristic products and on involvement into networks with other, better equipped regions. The state policy should concentrate scarce development resources on 1. areas already touristically developed in order to improve their competitiveness and 2. support to diffusion processes and cooperation network creating.
Sustaining the development at the local level is associated with many different issues. One of the major ones is the urban growth policy. This can be justified by the importance of space as one of the most important environmental assets, which has to be treated as non-renewable one. At the same time it is necessary to remember that the shape of this policy is influenced by many factors, i.e. legal regulations and current paradigm of urban development. Along with introduction of the sustainable development concept this paradigm evolves. Currently as some of its most important components one should mention urban regeneration of the degraded areas and limiting urban growth to the areas already urbanized. As far as urban regeneration is discussed, it is possible to mention a number of issues that have to be taken into account. At the same time one can regard the inside growth of cities which means reusing degraded areas – as real alternative to the on-going suburbanization and encroachment of urban structures to the areas still remaining its agricultural or natural character.
The paper presents the spatial and socio-economic transformation of one of Warsaw’s large-scale housing estates – Sluzew nad Dolinka, especially after 1989. In spite of potential threat of physical and social degradation, the area has not converted into a city slum and still offers attractive living conditions for its inhabitants. Continuous and regular actions of the local housing association, city authorities, entrepreneurs and dwellers, as well as propitious circumstances of the Warsaw real estate market, protect the estate from physical and social decline.
This paper presents the urban space from the perspective of “memory traces” functioning in Warsaw and Krakow. The authors analyzed the nature of these traces and their elements – monuments and other places of historical meaning, and the roles they play in the cities and the social memory of their inhabitants – both in their material and symbolic meanings. The research concentrated on the themes of the “memory traces”, their elements and influence on the cities’ spaces.
The objective of the research was to analyze the patterns of behaviours in the urban space of the rich inhabitants of Warsaw. The targeted group can be classified as members of the rising metropolitan class. The research covered interviews with 132 inhabitants of the luxury apartments. The location of the apartments in Warsaw is in fact the result of the former socio-spatial structure of Warsaw and the subjective valorisation of urban space. The research revealed that one of the main motives for choosing the apartments as a place for living was the need of security. Another reason given by the interviewee was a sense of belonging to the own class – sense of being in a “peer group” and the prestige of the place. The inhabitants of the apartments create “a separate world” around themselves. It consists of well secured, protected, isolated houses, luxury consumption, top restaurants, malls, pubs, private schools and travels to exotic, foreign countries (for business purposes or just for vacations). The inhabitants of the apartments have spots of interests in the urban space and they travel between these isolated points of the city in their luxury cars. Thus, these members of rising metropolitan class have very limited contact with the “life on the ordinary streets”.
The text aims to analyse the patterns of immigrants’ settlement in Warsaw agglomeration, especially their settlement in the area of the city of Warsaw. The subject of the study is: the emergence of places where immigrants concentrate and a relation between their places of residence with other types of concentration; factors that determine the places of immigrants’ residence and how migrants operate in the urban environment, as well as a relation between the places of immigrants’ settlement and their economic activity and its localization, cultural characteristics and the adapted acculturation strategies. To study these problems the authors use the example of the population of the Vietnamese and Ukrainians possessing a permission for settlement in the Mazowieckie Province. The article discuses differences in the patterns of settlements of both groups and shows the emergence of small clusters in the case of the Vietnamese.
This article is devoted to socio-spatial transformation of Berlin and the attempts to reintegrate the city that remained divided for 50 years. Rearrangement of the Potsdamer Platz area was of crucial importance for this reintegration process, both for practical and symbolic reasons. To what extent was this project successful? The answer, or at least part of it, can be found in the article.
The paper presents the problem of measuring and evaluating human well-being and socioeconomic development. The goal of the paper is to introduce the term ‘life dignity’, to define it and specify its relation to such terms as living standards and quality of life, and, more importantly, to show the advantages of using life dignity as a benchmark for evaluating urban public space. The term ‘dignity’ is used in other fields of research that have already recommended directions for constructing the index and measuring methods.
A socialist city is mainly associated with the imperial architecture of Minsk or East Berlin, the functional division into districts, monumental public buildings, or housing developments. This article aims at restructuring the prospect of city development in the first post-war period, i.e. 1945-1949. Based on the example of Łódź – Poland’s biggest city in view of the demolished Warsaw as well as the working-class capital of textiles – I reconstruct modernisation discourses in press, showing that in the first period of the reconstruction, modest suggestions as to the city development were made, ones adjusted to the needs of its inhabitants and the comfort of everyday life. It was only with the aggravation of the political course after the year 1948 when these were replaced with more daring prospects of a socialist city, gigantic investments, and the construction of new districts for the working-class masses.
The question as to whether Warsaw is becoming a Third World city may be regarded as a metaphorical question, which expresses concern about whether the changes being wrought now are moving in the right direction and how the city’s spatial values are adhered to. Shaped as a traditional city, Warsaw lay in ruins in consequence of World War II. Imposed on it was an order of a total character, which, in chosen places, gave rise to forms dominating over the city huge areas which might be described as having a blurring and diluting effect. In the years of transformation, the spatial values leading to the expected balanced development, whose result would be the order of freedom with due regard for the sprit of the place, were not reasserted, and were not incorporated in the public dimension.
The article is based upon the results of National General Survey conducted in December 2002. It is focused on differences in professional activity and the levels of unemployment among various subregions in Poland. Considering this issue two subregions were pointed - the "Central" and the "West". They both vary in levels of economic activity of inhabitants. There are more ownership and self-employment in the "West" region, but nevertheless there is higher rate of unemployment. The reasons lay in character of enterprises - they are very small, vulnerable and unstable. They produce the streams of inflows and outflows from unemployment to job and vice versa.
This paper includes the general overview of the architectural and urban order issue in respect to Polish space. It focuses both on the problems of large cities as the peripheral and rural areas. Also the problems of rural areas losing their traditional character are discussed. Special attention was paid to the historical reasons staying behind the urbanization processes and their influence on the current situation. In this respect both the diagnosis of the current situation as well as the proposal for building the complex upgrade strategy were presented. Also the set of available implementation instruments were presented as a part of this proposal. Finally, the concept of urban regeneration was discussed. This concept can become the key element in the process of upgrading the condition of the Polish space. As a summary, a set of conclusions concerning the possible actions leading to desired change in the spatial order was presented.
The aim of the French territorial reform from December 2010 was to change the structure of the French local political and administrative system thanks to institutional solutions that would strengthen the biggest agglomerations and lead to their progressive metropolization. The announced changes were meant to adjust the model of territorial organization to the requirements of contemporary economy and to enhance national economic growth of the country in stagnation. The introduction in the law of metropolises as new local-government territorial units that took over the most important competences of municipalities and departments was meant as a “territorial revolution”. Unfortunately, it failed. Meanwhile, the regulations that would make it possible to create a rather loose form of interterritorial cooperation, a so-called Metropolitan Pole, that were inserted into the project at the last moment, gave results unexpected by the legislator. This situation shows the growing importance of flexible solutions regarding competences and territory, solutions that use multilevel governance as an effective tool for inter-territorial management in the situation of inertia of the classical territorial structure and obstacles to its reform.
The paper analyzes the sources of economic growth in the regions of Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) using a multi-dimensional approach that takes into account: a) disaggregation of the economic structure; b) the international and national contexts of regional development processes; and c) the main types of regions. The results corroborate the validity of such an approach, showing the interrelationships between the development dynamics of individual regions and the structural changes that are difficult or impossible to identify using an analysis of aggregated values. In particular, the analyses conducted as part of the study help identify the key constituents of metropolization processes taking place in the regions of major city centres, the progress of reindustrialisation processes occurring in transitional regions, and the mechanisms underpinning development of peripheral regions. Based on these differences, the author formulates some general recommendations for policies implemented in these types of regions.
The objective of this paper is to assess the advance of planning works in the area of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. The authors determined the degree to which districts were covered by local land development plans at the end of 2007. The assessment was done on the basis of plans which were carried out and those that still await implementation. In the assessment, we used one essential indicator of the demanded covering, which accounted for use intensity and the amount of existing functions.
The article presents a comparison of the dynamic for the increase in the number of enterprises as set against the population of working age in the private sector in the years 2001–2004 (the immediate pre-accession period) and 2004–2007 (the immediate post-accession period). The study was conducted with regard had to the main sectors of economic activity (agriculture, industry, lower-order services and higher-order services), as well as the functional diversity of gminas (urban and suburban categories, transportation corridors, tourism, etc. – in total 16 categories). The research points to decline, inertia, spatial polarization and a mosaic like spatial structure to the dynamic for the development of private enterprises.
Article presents resolutions concerning divisions of estates in Szczecin Metropolitan Area. Each metropolitan area is divided into the centre, i.e. the main town, and the outer zone consisting of communes directly adjacent to the main town or in any other way functionally linked to it. The realization of metropolitan functions in the outer zone of the metropolitan area significantly affects the developing capability of the area. Divisions of the estates could be very important instrument of local development.
The turn of the eighties and nineties was a particular moment for the natural environment in Poland. Two important factors occurred at that time. First was the post-communist transformation of the country, which affected all spheres of socio-economic life in Poland. On the other hand, new ideas of sustainable development taking into account both quality of human life and quality of natural environment have been spreading all around the world. Changes in the system of environmental protection in Poland which occurred after the year 1989, took into consideration the consequences of both processes. It seems therefore interesting to find out how the new instruments worked and what effects they have brought to Poland in the nineties. This article describes the changes in the quality of different components of natural environment in the areas of environmental risk in Poland between 1982 and 2000. Using the results and methodology of Rolewicz and Kassenberg (1985), the situation in 27 such areas was analyzed.
In the early 90’s public authorities in Poland considered all kinds of planning as a remaining of the socialist economy, unnecessary under the free-market rules. As a consequence, the chaos became a dominant characteristics of the Polish space at the beginning of the XXI century. This applies also to the situation in Warsaw Metropolitan Area, that exists as a real system of functional relations, but not as an administrative or planning unit. In effect, we observe the “wild urbanization” of the suburbs, and lack of development in the central part of the city. Recent centralization of local government in Warsaw has made the situation even worse, by blocking the investment and planning decisions. All these processes may lead to further marginalization of Warsaw as an European metropolis.
In the past twenty years, research on the measurement of social capital has been among the leading areas of interest in social sciences. The impact of ethnic diversity on the level of social capital is an interesting aspect of this research. According to Robert Putnam, in the U.S. context, ethnic diversity has a negative influence on the level of social capital. Various research initiatives implemented in Europe indicate, however, that ethnic diversity does not have a significantly negative correlation with social capital, and, that examples of its positive impact on social capital can be found. The article presents a quantitative analysis conducted in 20 municipalities of the Opolskie Voivodship (10 of them ethnically homogeneous, and 10 – ethnically diversified) in order to analyse this relationship. On the basis of the data collected in the analysis, it can be stated that in the surveyed region, ethnic diversity is not a factor with a negative impact on the level of social capital, and it is also highly probable that it is a factor that enhances social capital, at least its bonding dimension.
The article discusses the results of empirical research on the competitiveness of municipalities covered by the Natura 2000 network. Authors conducted a correlation analysis of the share of the Natura 2000 sites in the general area of a municipality and the indicators characterizing dimensions of competitiveness and development. Questionnaire surveys were conducted among local governments in Poland. On this basis conclusions on the socio-economic situation of municipalities with a large share of Natura 2000 areas and the impact of this form of conservation for local development were formulated. The article is also an attempt to answer the question whether Natura 2000 actually delivers sustainable development, or simply forces environmental protection without taking into account social and economic needs of local communities.
Polish farmers are hardly definable social group. It is a diversified population dominated (in numbers) by “quasi-farmers” – running small farms for own consumption, not selling their products at the market. This category has many negative, economic, social and psychological features. Their political choices are often to support the populist, agricultural parties. The author, referring to the concepts of “blocking development” and “moderating the changes”, describes the political mechanisms of slowing down the reforms applied by the (broadly considered) Polish farmers.
The paper analyzes the functional aspect of metropolitan processes in one of the most densely populated areas in Poland. The purpose of the article is to study metropolitan functions, as well as to analyze the intrinsic structure of the Upper-Silesian Metropolitan Area, which used to be an industrial conurbation that evolved into a polycentric settlement arrangement. The analysis is based on selected qualitative features of international and domestic standings, and uses the centrality indicator. The selected functional metropolitan area is formed by 15 municipalities, including 13 towns with county rights, and is inhabited by 1.9 million people. The functions are dispersed in different towns and seem polarized. The metropolitan centre of utmost importance and holding well-developed metropolitan functions is the city of Katowice, whereas Gliwice and Chorzow are first-class auxiliary centres. The remaining towns are centres of developing metropolitan functions.
One of the challenges for the contemporary Polish village is the transformation of its economic structure. It is necessary not only to create new jobs in the non-agricultural sector, but also to increase the competitiveness of enterprises. In their activities, entrepreneurs may use local resources in an innovative way. The author of the present article focuses on the following question: “What is the potential of entrepreneurs as far as the innovation based on local resources is concerned?”. Innovation is defined as a way of using local resources which emphasizes the specificity of an area. In her research (undertook in 2012), the author analyzed the local resources of the Pilica River Valley and the applications for support (from Rural Development Programme 2007–2013) submitted by the entrepreneurs to the local action group. The entrepreneurs (in their activity) do not use the resources which have been identified in the local development strategy. The additional funding allowed them to increase the competitiveness of their companies, but was not used to make their activities more innovative.
The development of Lithuania was deeply affected by the recent world economic crisis, which had a negative impact on most countries in Europe. However, the degree of impact was quite differentiated spatially, and various localities suffered from the crisis unevenly. The economic sectors that suffered the most in Lithuania, were concentrated in metropolitan areas, so the crisis damaged urban economy most seriously. How the economy of the capital city was affected at this time is a central question for researchers. Different areas and sectors of the urban economy were affected differently, so the impact on urban space was fragmented. Our analysis is mainly seeking to understand changes in the construction sector and housing market. The paper also tries to reveal the main features of the development of the whole Vilnius urban region, which occupies much wider territories than the city municipality. The capability to withstand economic threats depends both on urban economy and on the situation in the surrounding region or hinterland of the city. The process of the transformation of rural areas into urban regions is constantly taking place and in the case of metropolitan regions, it depends on the situation in the urban, country, and global economies. The rise of discussion about possible paths of prospective development of the Vilnius city region is also among the tasks of this paper.
Transport policy requires greater territorial differentiation; at the local level, it should be closely integrated with education, health and social policies. This approach to transport policy contributed to the research and determined its area – the research was carried out among school students, and its aim (and that of this article) was to determine the accessibility of secondary schools in the Wągrowiec district via public transport. Many inhabitants of villages and small towns are forced to have a car or else face a whole host of difficulties. The most common difficulties include access to education, health care or better paid work.
From the five senses that men have the sense of sight and touch, though seemingly the most acute, are limited when it comes to examining space and all phenomena that occur in it. Moreover, it is much more difficult to examine space through the sense hearing and it is almost impossible to taste it, even if it is humanized. Another human sense i.e. the sense of smell which enables us to recognize different scents may, due to its transitory and temporary nature, appear to be useless when it comes to examining space. Nonetheless, if we concentrate on all the scents that fill the space, they are frequently a more distinctive and prominent landmark than, for example, a building or a road. Therefore, it seems to be vital that the perspective of sociology of scent be adopted if we want to make a more in-depth analysis and interpretation of space dynamics. The scents that fill a chosen urban and suburban old industrial region are analysed and observed in this study. What are the scents that fill urban space? On the one hand there is the tempting scent of private space, which is filled with artificial perfumes and air fresheners. However, on the other hand there is the unpleasant and offensive odour from neglected backyards and outhouses; the odour coming from a local beer stand and an aromatic bouquet of cognac in a hotel bar; obnoxious odours emitted by mine slag heaps and the scent of the pine forest. We aim to show that a wide range of different smells, ranging from delicate and lovely scents to offensive and foul odours, have a growing influence on fragmentation and privatization of urban space.
Territorial entitles and thus has influenced relations between them. In particular, these changes influenced the relations between the metropolis and its hinterland. Contemporary metropolis became a concentration of innovative activities that led to development of flows within world cities network. As a result its ties with regional surrounding, that offers mainly "simple" resources, has became relatively weaker. The article demonstrates these new processes by the empirical research of three Polish metropolises: Warsaw, Poznan and so called Triple-city (Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot).
Financial independence is considered to be a crucial instrument of self-governance. This issue is treated in a dynamic and structural approach. The aim of the research was the evaluation of the level of changes in local government units` financial independence. The highest level of independence is found in the cities with poviat rights, whereas the lowest is found in self-governing voivodeships and in poviats. In the communes, the level is average, but there are big differences between them in this aspect. The urban communes and those situated near big cities have a much higher level of financial independence than rural communes, situated far away from major cities.
The paper aims to show the relationship between changes in the number of the unemployed in the six largest cities in Poland and the corresponding suburban and peripheral areas. The performed analyses use VAR models. The results indicate that the number of the unemployed is the most flexible in cities, and the smallest in peripheral areas. Long-term relationships in unemployment occurred only between some cities and their suburbs. Stronger short-term relationships were found between cities and their suburbs, but the results varied depending on the city.
The purpose of this article is to analyse opinions and attitudes of inhabitants of a Silesian town of Tychy toward the civil society and local democracy. Basing on sociological research done in the spring 2003 and reinterpretation of sociological research of the town, the article shows an activity related to and awareness of these issues among the local community in times of democracy and free market economy. The example of Tychy is specific because during the socialist period sociologists emphasised the fact that it was a socialist town. After political transition, scientists and researchers have pointed that urban community has a disintegrated character and that social bonds must be created in order to cope with regional development. The present article is especially focused on changes which have taken place over the past few years in Tychy.
Tourism can cause changes in various areas of life of receptive societies. Each of them can be of functional or dysfunctional character. A lot depends on the type of tourism and the visited society itself. Tourism is seen as a vital development factor in the Podhale region. It is therefore crucial to know what the local people think about tourism. Their negative attitude to this particular sector of the economy can hinder or limit its development.
For more than 20 years, social capital has been gaining popularity both among researchers and policy makers. However, this theory has just reached its maturity. The paper presents classical and critical approaches to the concept. Main aspects and types of social capital are distinguished, followed by a description of the most relevant model for empirical research. Finally, the most important research fields are discussed, including mechanisms explaining the influence of social capital on other social, political and economical phenomena.
The article aims to present and assess educational migration as a driver of human capital redistribution across regions. The unique research on academic careers of 8.5 thousand secondary school-leavers in Lublin (Poland) allowed to gather microdata on the mobility of young people along with the school-leaving examination results being a proxy of human capital. The results indicate that the ratio of youth out-migration from their home region amounts to roughly 20%, which seems a low figure against comparative studies. However, the distribution of migration rate along with the logit regression proved high propensity of the most talented youth to move out. Hence, strong positive migration selectivity is regarded as an important driver of human capital redistribution across regions, which might negatively affect human capital accumulation in the sending area.
This article presents, from a sociological perspective, selected methodological issues concerning urban studies. The authors of such studies either create theories of a city’s rise and fall or describe a changing urban reality, investigating the history of cities. Examples of the first approach are the more or less formalized works of Louis Wirth or Richard Florida, as well as Geoffrey West’s and Louis Bettencourt’s quantitative concept.. The second type of studies is represented by Max Weber, Fernand Braudel and others. The author, although he is not denying the merits of the first approach, claims that the descriptive-historical perspective has so far been more useful in explaining the process of urban development.
The paper shows the basic problems of implementation of the cross-sector cooperation, in the frame of area-based partnerships, for specified rural areas in years 2001-2004 in Poland. In this period partnerships were created with international sources support and with appreciable participation of non-government organisations. The main obstacles to their actions were: the insufficient financial resources, the lack of legal form of self-governments, NGOs and entrepreneurships cooperation with equal rights, tendencies for leaders` domination in group`s actions, weak organisational structures and the lack of long-term strategies. The first effects of cooperation are little; they deal with social affairs and tourist promotion, but they show the positive role of such type coalitions in local development.
During the last few years Polish financial sector has been expanding in a very dynamic way, also in a spatial context. In cities banks displace other forms of urban activities from their previous locations. The aim of the paper is to examine spatial distribution of banking services in Warsaw at the beginning of 2009. The author, based on her own research, presents main current features of spatial structure of the phenomenon, resting on Proudfoot’s conception of principal types of city retail structure. Special features of the structure related to the specifity of banking services were also considered.
In this paper, we present the most important problems and development perspectives concerning the collection and analysis of data on Polish metropolises. The basic issues described in this context are: the definition of metropolis and functional city, sources of statistical information, methods of estimating missing data, and some persisting organizational and methodological problems. A special attention is paid to advantages and challenges of Poland’s participation in various international projects relating to regional statistics, such as URBAN AUDIT, EURAREA, etc. The former project provides many interesting propositions concerning assessment of living conditions of urban population and delimitation of metropolitan areas based mainly on a concept of the city’s scope of action. The latter is aimed at construction, development and research on the usefulness of theoretical tools of small area estimation. Moreover, we look at the potential of Polish regional statistics in terms of observation of metropolises and stimulation of their functioning, from the analytical point of view and in order to support decision-making at the local level.
The majority of major local actors of the city of Mielec have united in the idea of creating the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the 1st half of 90s. The informal coalition of representatives of various bodies and institutions quickly started to have access to institutional resources, that enabled them to control the decision-making and took over the social leadership. The young coalition managed also to gain the support from the government. Such informal deal was characterised by the most typical features for urban regime of symbolic type and develop to all actors a great mobilisation for finding new progress tendencies of the city. The strength of the coalition and the success of the regime may be measured by the first SEZ in Poland that has been created in 1995 in Mielec. The legal regulations for functioning of SEZs in Poland were developed mainly by participants of this regime having a visible stigma of local city problems.
The study contains a review of websites of local governments in Podlaskie voivodship. The authors address the problem of demand for internet services, provide the inventory of available websites and evaluate the importance of this form of communication. The popularity of Internet services is clearly growing, especially with respect to interactive solutions, saving time and money of citizens. The quality of website’s contents is also a strong determinant of it’s success.
Danuta Kochanowska, Mieczysław Kochanowski
The article presents the main topics of the European debate on the EU Cohesion Policy after 2013, i.e. a discussion of territorial cohesion, the new EU economic strategy 2010-2020, and the next EU financial perspective after 2013. The debate has been continuing in the shadow of the financial and economic crises (2008-2010) and the trouble in the Euro zone (2010), which were caused by continued structural differences between the Member States. The Cohesion Policy is too weak an instrument to solve these problems. The author’s analysis focuses on the main proposals of changes in the Cohesion Policy put forward during the debate, which were shaped mainly by political interests of the dominant actors, and based on experts’ opinions and scientific concepts. In the conclusion, the author presents some recommendations for future Cohesion Policies.
The aim of this paper is to examine the process of issuing decisions on building conditions and land management in rural-urban areas located in the outer zone of the Szczecin Metropolitan Area, and to determine whether the individual municipalities adopt a similar policy in this case. We also study the possible reasons for the differences. In the research, covering the years 2007–2010, we examined four rural-urban municipalities located in the outer zone of the Szczecin Metropolitan Area. We specified the number of decisions regarding the building conditions in each year and in each municipality, we counted the motions which were denied and the decisions to establish the locations of a public purpose investment. In the latter case, we also studied the purpose of such investments. Moreover, in the total number of the decisions issued for economic purposes, we defined the percentage of those made in favour of legal persons and those made in the city’s area.
The paper presents the principles regarding the protection and shaping of rural settlement landscape, drawn up on the basis of literature analyses. The authors confront the principles with the provisions of local planning documentation and the actual changes in the commune that have taken place since the plan was adopted. Finally, the authors determine the degree of implementation of the provisions. They identify some irregularities and shortcomings in the provisions and some differences between the provisions and actual spatial development. They also indicate the main directions of changes of local spatial policy.
Many people wonder how suburban shopping centres and hypermarkets emerged and what are the economic foundations of their dynamic development in the last decade. The answer to the question is not impossible, although hard. It is based on the presumption that the expansion of this form of distribution may result from changes in the transport system, which additionally have a rather weak economic basis.
To assess the development level of Polish regions, it is necessary to observe changes in the country taking into account its sustainable development. Differences between regions are due mainly to their nature, their social, economic and institutional conditions and their political functions. The character of a region has a strong impact on the direction and the pace of development of individual spheres of sustainable order. Research shows that regions with big urban areas have much higher economic and social points than non-industrialised areas. However, agricultural and tourist regions deal with environment problems better. That is why all actions concerning region development and meant to decrease disproportions have to depend on the type of region. The taxonomical analysis can be a base for further research.
Olimpia Gogolin, Eugeniusz Szymik
The study proposes a method of designating areas at different levels of socio-economic development (problem, success areas, and the intermediate stages between them). In the adopted research procedure, the above-described areas were identified on the basis of a synthetic indicator, which took into account six features assigned to two thematic categories (socio-demographic and economic-technical). The years 2003–2019 were assumed as the research period. The applied dynamic approach made it possible to trace the path of socio-economic development of the surveyed units within the proposed four types of areas. The obtained results refer to rural and urban-rural municipalities of Dolnośląskie (Lower Silesia) Voivodship (województwo), with a particular emphasis on the Kłodzko district (powiat), which has been considered a problem area for many years.
The absorption the European Union structural aid, available in 2007–2013 period, provides Poland the opportunity of fast development and improvement of life quality. A regional policy that will effectively use the structural funds may contribute to the improvement of infrastructure, development of entrepreneurship and restructuring of rural areas. The issue of absorption ability has to be considered with particular attention. This study – on the basis of experiences in implementing the Integrated Regional Operational Programme – points out some threats and bottlenecks limiting the potential absorption of funds. The barriers have been identified using the questionnaire based research on the experiences of local governments in the swietokrzyskie region.
From the five senses that men have the sense of sight and touch, though seemingly the most acute, are limited when it comes to examining space and all phenomena that occur in it. Moreover, it is much more difficult to examine space through the sense hearing and it is almost impossible to taste it, even if it is humanized. Another human sense i.e. the sense of smell which enables us to recognize different scents may, due to its transitory and temporary nature, appear to be useless when it comes to examining space. Nonetheless, if we concentrate on all the scents that fill the space, they are frequently a more distinctive and prominent landmark than, for example, a building or a road. Therefore, it seems to be vital that the perspective of sociology of scent be adopted if we want to make a more in-depth analysis and interpretation of space dynamics. The scents that fill a chosen urban and suburban old industrial region are analysed and observed in this study. What are the scents that fill urban space? On the one hand there is the tempting scent of private space, which is filled with artificial perfumes and air fresheners. However, on the other hand there is the unpleasant and offensive odour from neglected backyards and outhouses; the odour coming from a local beer stand and an aromatic bouquet of cognac in a hotel bar; obnoxious odours emitted by mine slag heaps and the scent of the pine forest. We aim to show that a wide range of different smells, ranging from delicate and lovely scents to offensive and foul odours, have a growing influence on fragmentation and privatization of urban space.
This paper presents analysis of different connections between institutional participants of three area-based partnerships (LEADER Local Action Groups) that have been created in rural areas to coordinate actions which contribute to social and economic development of the respective regions. The relations in three partnerships located in different historical-cultural regions of Poland were analysed in the context of the social capital concept, using basic network relation indexes. Various types of interactions between agents (coordination, conflict, co-operation, control and competition) and flows (information, financial assets, human resources and tangible resources) have been analysed.
The aim of this paper is twofold: to demonstrate development challenges of large Polish cities and to assess the extent to which Cohesion Policy in the 2004?2006 programming addresses these issues. The analysis covers different aspects of EU intervention: sums assigned for particular categories, types of beneficiaries as well as types of large cities. The results allow us to formulate the following observations. The thematic structure of the intervention only partially addresses challenges related to contemporary informational economy, which is due to the cities’ relatively low support for innovativeness and their metropolitan functions. In the analyzed period, the bulk of EU Cohesion Policy funds was devoted to the development of basic technical infrastructure (transport and water management), which was the result of huge underdevelopment in these fields in former years. However, EU intervention had some successes: thematic fields were well adapted to types of cities. Furthermore, most funding was allocated to the largest cities because of the strong involvement of their authorities in EU funds projects, while in smaller cities a significant share of the funds was given to large industrial plants.
The ecological activity of municipalities can be a very important element increasing their attractiveness. Modern digital technologies offer intelligent solutions and help fulfil many economic and social demands related to environmental issues. The study primarily looked at the degree of activity of municipalities in the implementation of optional ecological projects and revealed a low level of participation of municipalities in cross-border projects. A questionnaire survey was designed as a universal tool for studying digital maturity in a cyclical, low-cost manner, which provides extensive information by verifying various areas of municipal activity and then formulating conclusions for climate and regional policies, etc. On the one hand, the study fostered the need to implement ecological projects, especially of a cross-border nature, and on the other hand, it disseminated knowledge and indicated various possible solutions.
The aim of the paper is to examine the relation between pupil movement between school catchment areas and the examination results of primary and secondary schools. The problem is analyzed in a broader context of educational disparities related to the spatial organization of educational activity. The results show that the non-rigorous approach to educational zoning by the city authorities, school directors, parents, and their children, causes an intensive movement of pupils between school catchment areas (especially at the level of secondary school). It was found that pupil movement between catchment areas accounted for almost 50 per cent of variation in examination results in the secondary schools in Poznan. The consequences of this situation for the city’s educational policy and school management are discussed.
This article aims to explore residents’ preferences and perceptions of the actual styles of local political leadership in Poland over the past decades. In particular, it analyses the size of the gap between preferred and perceived leadership styles. The paper uses a classification developed by Peter John and Alistair Cole distinguishing city boss, visionary, care-taker, and consensus facilitator styles. The primary empirical material comes from a nationwide survey of residents conducted in December 2022 and surveys in a few case study cities conducted in the spring and summer of 2023. In addition, previously published results from surveys conducted using similar methods are used. The results indicate a growing preference for consensus facilitator style, assuming an inclusive style for both policy preparation and policy implementation. The size of the ‘expectations gap’ is explained by the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents (age, education) and the size of the city. Younger and better educated respondents have a particularly high expectation that mayors should involve different stakeholders in the preparation and implementation of local policies, while at the same time being more critical in assessing the actual behaviour of local authorities.
The suburban zone of Wroclaw is characterised by dynamic population changes and increased construction traffic. However, the pace of the changes taking place is not fully reflected in official population statistics, based on registration data, presenting a much lower population than actually resides in the suburban municipalities. The purpose of the article is to estimate the actual population of the Wroclaw suburban zone for data from 2012/13 and 2020, and to show the degree of the differentiation of the population transition taking place in individual reference units. The estimation of the population size was made on the basis of the author’s method, based on the aggregation and comparison of statistical data on registrations from the register of the General Electronic System of Population Registration (PESEL) and vector spatial data from the Database of Topographic Objects (BDOT10k). From 2012/13 to 2020, the population of suburban zone of Wrocław almost doubled compared to official statistics data. The highest level of the underestimation of the actual population was observed in villages located near main communication routes and in the closet vicinity to Wrocław city. Those are places where the suburbanistion processes were observed the earliest.
Evaluation is an important element of the public policy cycle, providing information for improving the effectiveness of implemented policies and designing future ones. In Poland, the need for the diffusion of this practice from the field of structural funds to other public policy fields has been discussed for at least 15 years. Although one such obvious direction of diffusion is local government, very little is known about evaluation at this level, and in studies summarising the general evaluation practice in Poland, this strand is omitted. The aim of this study was to assess the extent and characteristics of evaluation practices in the period 2010–2021 in cities with county [Pol. powiat] status. The analysis was based on the information on evaluation studies provided by city halls. Out of the 55 cities that were included in the analysis, 62% carried out evaluations and they completed a total of 469 studies. A systematic increase in the number of studies and the number of cities carrying them out was also observed. The dominant thematic areas were civic budgeting, social policy, and development strategy. The shares of studies carried out internally and those commissioned from external companies turned out to be similar. In contrast, studies of intervention implementation processes dominate over evaluations of intervention effects. This research can serve as a starting point for further, more detailed analyses of the organisation of the evaluation process and its use in local government.
Ensuring an appropriate level of transport accessibility of peripheral areas is one of the greatest challenges of regional and local policy. Higher accessibility has a positive impact on the attractiveness of a given area as a place to live and creates favourable conditions for running a business. An example of a region located peripherally and at the same time problematic in the socioeconomic sphere is the Jelenia Góra agglomeration. The aim of this article is to examine the validity of implementing urban rail in the functional area of Jelenia Góra and to determine the scope of its operation as part of shaping sustainable mobility in the Karkonosze subregion. A crucial part of the work is the original concept of the ‘Karkonosze Light-Rail’, which is a reference to previously published plans of the Jelenia Góra agglomeration railway.
The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between the socioeconomic potential and the financial condition of regions (voivodeships) in Poland. The authors hypothesise that there is a linear relationship between the potential of regions, manifested by the wealth and economic activity of people living and entities operating in their area, and the income potential of these local government units, and thus their ability to meet the needs of the local government community. For the purposes of the analysis, eleven measures were selected from four areas, reflecting the social and economic potential of the regions, and seven measures of financial condition, reflecting the structure of their budget income and expenditure, as well as their selected values on a per capita basis. In connection with the above, the study used descriptive statistics methods, linear correlation r-Pearson, and the method of standardised sums (Perkal index) in order to typologise the studied entities.
The aim of the study is to examine how and at what stage in the evolution of the cohesion policy rural areas have been incorporated, thus gaining space for empowerment. The role of the territorial instrument, CLLD, will also be considered. The research problem was verified through a review of literature and EU legislative documents as well as empirical material from two evaluation projects. It was found out that the extension of the cohesion policy to include the objective of territorial cohesion was of particular importance for rural areas. In the 2014–2020 financial perspective, due to the territorialisation of cohesion policy – previously perceived as mainly urban – rural areas were considered for participation. CLLD has been proven to strengthen the sense of empowerment of local communities.
The work has two goals: 1) to identify the dominant charges in complaints to administrative courts regarding land use plans for municipalities (gminy), to assess their legitimacy and effectiveness, and to classify the complainants; 2) to show that the court rulings are related to the diversity of municipalities, i.e., their character (morphology, social and economic functions, etc.) and characteristics of socio-economic development. All the judgments of voivodship (regional) administrative courts issued in 2010–2019 concerning complaints about municipal plans were analysed (531). The problem turns out to be the undefined scope of such plans, which, however, does not affect the extent to which these instruments are challenged by property owners. A high concentration of complaints in the regional capitals and their suburban areas is also demonstrated.
The issue of transport-related exclusion in Poland is increasingly being raised in the public debate. This problem intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the reduction in the number of routes and the frequency of buses and trains. However, in Poland, the scientific literature on this subject is still insufficient. This article attempts to broaden our knowledge on this topic. The main objective of the paper is to show, from the perspective of the residents, various aspects of transport-related exclusion. Three dimensions of this phenomenon are considered: limited access to public transport, spatial and temporal limitations, and the inability to participate in important social institutions. The article is based on three case studies in the Masovian Voivodeship, namely from Ostrów Mazowiecka, Żuromin, and Tczów. The research was carried out in 2021 through the use of two methods: an analysis of secondary resources and individual in-depth interviews. Based on the opinions and observations of the residents of the above-mentioned towns, this article presents the social consequences of limited access to bus and train connections.
The aim of the article is to analyse the strategies undertaken by urban movements in the process of advocacy promoting the interests of the inhabitants of Polish cities. The strength of urban movements in the first years of their activity in Poland was their grassroots nature, lack of connections with the public policy system, and therefore independence and being able to put forth uncompromising postulates. Over time, urban movements began to undergo transformations, and the strategies of representing the interests of the residents they implemented evolved as well. When starting research on this text, the author assumed that the results of the analyses would be the observation of a clear trend from bottom-up activities to professionalisation. However, an in-depth analysis of the issue showed that there is no uniform trend in the development of urban movements nor in the strategies of advocacy for the interests applied by them. The study was based on desk research analysis; additionally several individual in-depth interviews were conducted.
The article presents a synthetic assessment of the diversity of the housing situation in Polish communes in the context of ongoing demographic changes. In addition, it presents an original method of typological research combining measures of the housing and demographic situation for all 2,477 communes in Poland as at the end of 2021. The scope of the study covered the years 2011–2021. The article identified that both functional urban areas and coastal municipalities have their own specificity in terms of housing and demographic situation, to a lesser extent this phenomenon affects mountain municipalities. It was also pointed out that the lack of a place-based policy in the National Housing Program makes it difficult to shape the national housing policy in a manner adapted to local and regional conditions.
The article presents the classification of municipalities in Poland, divided into urbanised and non-urbanised based on their spatial dimensions. The spatial distribution of urbanised municipalities and their basic characteristics are discussed. The classification was performed using the k-means clustering algorithm on the spatial data from Corine Land Cover databases. The comparison of the administrative and land-use driven classification of municipalities in Poland indicates that the widest differences occur between the functional areas of cities and along dynamically developing transport routes, when identification of urbanised areas in terms of land use is taken into consideration.
The aim of the paper is to identify and diagnose problems relating to Poland`s metropolitan areas. In the frst part, the authors offer a review of the most important features metropolisation process and indicate problems associated with such processes on the local and regional scales. This is followed by an identification of major urban centres in Poland, and a delimitation of their metropolitan areas. In the subsequent part of the study, the identified metropolitan areas are characterised in terms of their pertinent development problems. Finally, a set of conclusions and recommendations is proposed, with the aim of improving the functioning of the largest cities and their environment.
Jacek Kotus, Bartłomiej Kołodziej
For some time local governments and urban politics have been undergoing significant changes related to the change of the traditional welfare state model. These changes have concerned economic, political and management dimensions. While describing these processes numerous authors refer to the notion of New Public Management. This article discusses three theories which have been created to help in interpretation of on-going processes. New Political Culture theory by T.N. Clark stresses value and economic changes and underlines their implications for changes in styles of local politics. Local governance theory developed mostly by Peter John concentrates on shape of local government institutions. Another T.N. Clark’s theory of the “city as an entertainment machine” focuses on evolving mechanisms of local economic development and their impact on policies adopted by urban governments. The paper formulates questions and initial hypothesis about applicability of these concepts to Polish environment.
The article deals with the evolution of the regional policy in the UK whose traditions in this respect are the richest among West European countries. Its genesis is linked with attempts to reduce unemployment in industrialised regions. It is commonly agreed that state interventionism in regional development began with the publication of the Special Areas Development and Improvement Act of 1934 which covered Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and northern England. The article focuses on the assumptions behind the regional policy, its objectives, scope, instruments used, and institutions responsible for its implementation indicating changes made by subsequent Conservative and Labour governments. While the former restricted the scope and volume of support in aid of assisted areas, the latter did the opposite. The regional policy defined and modified by the European Community plays a significant role in determining its shape as much as deregulation, reinforcement of the regional tier itself, predominance of social matters over economic ones as well affective and selective nature of support.
Human capital stock affects the economic growth by raising the productivity of labour or by improving the ability of the economy to create and absorb innovations. In the scale of the local economy of an academic city, this process can be reinforced by attracting students and researchers to study and work at the local universities. To do this successfully, the city needs not only a high quality academic institutions but also the wider labour market for the educated individuals and – more generally – the ability to attract the creative class to settle down. The article provides the comparative analysis of the ability of the largest Polish cities to attract and absorb human capital. The research is based on the unique dataset coming from nasza-klasa.pl website (allowing users to contact their former class mates). The research concludes with the typology of the Polish cities with respect to the scale of benefits from performing the academic function.
The paradigm of analysis of the reality and its management, based on vertical hierarchic structures, cannot be used to characterize situations of resources concentration in the hands of many social actors. Nowadays, the paradigm seems to be less popular. First scientific diagnoses of the described situations seemed to prove their chaotic and ungovernable character, but they were gradually replaced with approaches which allowed to penetrate and govern composed systems. The notion of ‘governance’ (i.e. a multi-layered network process whose participants have different statuses and resources, and which results in a consensus achieved in an interactive play of all partners) has a high heuristic value. France is a perfect illustration of this phenomenon. The process can be observed especially in metropolitan areas that create their own compounded authority systems.
The privatization of the Center of Contemporary Art (CCA) area in Torun allows us to observe relatively new processes in Polish urban reality. The case shows how private-public partnership and place marketing are constructed and how partners combine spheres of culture and commerce to realize the investment. Private investor, using the cultural arguments, tries to create a shopping mall in the recreation area located next to the historical center of the city. The aim of the paper is to analyze the dynamics of the process of privatization and strategies used to privatize the public space in an attractive district of Torun.
The revitalisation process in Polish cities – here by the example of Poznan – is still rather on a modest level. Nevertheless the needs are urgent if we consider the continuing degradation of inner-city areas, the insufficient quality and quantity of housing resources and increase of suburbanisation. The legal, financial, and socioeconomic conditions do not allow the application of Western patterns. Yet there exist in Poznan various examples of renewal of old housing stock as well as of revitalisation of whole inner-city areas. They may be regarded as starting points for the realisation of future revitalisation ventures, also with regard to expected European funding.
Democratic end economic transformations that occurred after 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe Countries have resulted in a new political situation in the Baltic Sea region. They created opportunities for unrestricted development of cooperation not only at international, but also at regional and local communities level. Those initiatives are a consequence of the necessity for social and economic activation, the belief in opportunity of achieving economic benefits for everybody and they are motivated by cross-sborder transport links, cultural and language similarities between communities living at both sides of the border. The paper aims at presenting the scope and scale of regional cooperation in the Baltic Sea region with particular focus on the current effects and potential of that cooperation in the border areas of Poland. The paper presents the results of questionnaire based on investigations encompassing representatives of local governments from border municipalities of the Baltic Sea Euroregion.
The article explores the issue of social development of the local communes. This development process is defined as growth and differentiation in the fulfilment of needs of the social groups located on the particular area. There is spectrum of measures that allows us to define level of development and specificity of the particular territorial communes. Author presents the concept of Indicator of Development of Territorial Communes (IDTC) calculated for communes. This indicator is calculated according to the portfolio method and it takes into account both growth factors and barriers of development. The practical use of the IDTC is illustrated on the example of the communes in Zachodniopomorskie Region, for years 1999–2001. The results show uneven and incoherent development of the communes in the region discussed. The further conclusion is that this situation would not change in the short-term perspective.
In this essay the author explores the relation between fragmentation, segregation, and reconstitution of urban order. Although metaphors of cohesiveness are usually applied to the past, and fragmentations to the present, nevertheless the city of fragmentations coexists recently with another image of the city – a nostalgic city of lived body. It will be hard to speak in simple notions of true and false experience here; the difference is in the very idea of Aristotelian “the good life”. Dealing with Edward Soja’s concept of somatography she will argue that in an age of informational technologies, mobility, and consumer culture, such old metaphors like city as a fragmented dead body and city as a lived body are more important than ever. Acts of differentiation, separation, and segregations are based both on urban somatophobia and urban somatophilia. The question to be asked here is what is reconstitution of urban order in the first sense, or revitalisation of city space in the second.
It was in winter 2009/2010, from mid-December to mid-February, that almost all Poland, especially Warsaw, faced exceptionally heavy snow falls. What did the snow falls change in the city? How was city life affected by those winter conditions, how did the inhabitants deal with the snow? What new elements were introduced in the urban space and what new kinds of everyday life practices emerged? We present our own take on the city-users’ attitude toward the heavy winter, based on press news, on-line comments and blog entries. This paper is based on participant observation and discourse analysis, including urban anthropology and anthropology of everyday life.
The paper presents the evaluation of Cohesion Policy impacts on diffusion of development processes from cities to their regional hinterlands. We evaluated two things: a) the indicators illustrating metropolitan and regional concentration of population, enterprises, employers, and local governments revenues, and b) the impact of EU funds on the development of municipalities located in the surroundings of large cities (based on local governments survey results). For the first type of analysis, we delimitated the regional surroundings into two zones: metropolitan area and regional hinterlands (the former was only applicable in case of capital cities of voivodships). The outcome of the analysis in this dimension indicates a lack of any significant impact of Cohesion Policy on agglomeration processes in the analyzed spatial scales. However, the studies in the second dimension allow us to identify the thematic categories of public intervention that have the largest relative impact on spread effects from developing large cities to their regional surroundings.
The paper reviews issues related to traditional food from the perspective of its producers and region development. Research conducted during the Poznan International Fair “Polagra 2006” among producers was used in the paper. This examination brought attention to problems stemming from the functioning of such basic ideas as regional and traditional products, including consumers awareness of such products, as well as the current possibilities of epidemiological – veterinarian rules and norms. A separate issue discussed in the paper concern barriers in the development of rural areas and possibilities of eliminating them by means of financing from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development.
The paper offers a comparison of changes which have been taking place in the eastern regions of Poland and Germany in the recent years. It sets out to identify the main problems of these areas and explain how they have affected economic development processes. The development trajectories of the eastern regions of Poland and Germany are discussed in the context of the reuni?cation and trans-formation processes, and are related to the policies implemented by the public authorities. In its conclusions, the study evaluates the relevance and scale of the problems affecting the eastern parts of Germany and Poland, among them the effectiveness of their regional policies.
The article presents a model of functional-spatial structure in the strategy of supra-local development, which is an attempt to translate the assumptions of the new planning paradigm, referred to in the world literature as strategic spatial planning, into Polish ground. In this regard, the new legal regulations set forth in the Act of July 15, 2020 on amending the Act on the principles of development policy and certain other acts were used, which, due to their high generality, allowed the authors’ approach to their interpretation and implementation. The paper presents the various dimensions of integration of strategic and spatial planning undertaken in the Polish legal system over the years up to the present day. In addition, the role of supra-local development strategies in integrated development planning in Poland is defined, and different types of functional areas are described, which are the starting point for differentiating the scope of the functional-spatial structure model. Then the description of the most important elements of the model was deepened, and other elements of the spatial dimension in the new supra-local development strategies were presented. The added value of integrating the spheres of strategic and spatial planning was pointed out, which is important for improving their effectiveness and efficiency, as well as for increasing public acceptance of the measures taken.
Internet shops are becoming an increasingly popular form of trading. In 2006, their turnover in Poland reached 1.3 billion zlotys, or about 1% of total retail trade in the country. According to different experts, the sales and turnover indices are on an upward trend as the numbers of shoppers buying on-line and also e-shops are still increasing. Interestingly, a lot of research show that the central points of e-business concentration are metropolitan areas although the administration of e-shops is possible from virtually any place in the world. This indicates that economic, technological and social factors have an impact on the growth and concentration of e-shops.
In recent years, the largest Polish cities have experienced intensive suburbanization processes. People migrate to suburban communes and hitherto undeveloped areas change their function towards single- or multi-family residential neighbourhoods. Spontaneous and dispersed suburbanization processes (urban sprawl) have many negative consequences that might become a serious problem, not only for the inhabitants but also for the local authorities in the suburban areas. The article presents the results of the evaluation of the role of Cohesion Policy projects in counteracting negative effects of suburbanization processes in potential suburban zones of the largest Polish cities. The results of the evaluation indicate that in suburban areas there is a major focus on meeting the current needs of residents, whereas strategic prevention of negative effects of suburbanization processes is neglected.
The paper refers to sublocal units within metropolitan governance, focusing on Wrocław in the context of multi-level governance and good governance. In Poland, such units function as ancillary units of municipalities (gminy). The paper describes their legal status and functioning within the Polish territorial government and discusses selected urban districts (powiaty). The analysis is based on legal acts and interviews with people involved in the local and sublocal government in Wrocław. The organisation of metropolitan governance based on smaller units is an efficient solution applied in cities worldwide, however, in the case of Wrocław, the borough model leaves a broad potential to develop this element of municipal management structure. Currently, a clear concept of their role in the city is needed.
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether connections within cyberspace are in any way related to borders in the geographical sense. The author assesses the connections between the websites of local authorities and destinations that can be reached by hyperlinks. He analyzes 29 counties in Lower Silesia and shows that the activity of local self-government units in cyberspace covers their real-life territory. On the whole, it can be said that connections existing in cyberspace largely reflect actual borders. However, the main functional node dominating cyberspace is the country’s capital city.
The paper focuses on the most significant space management instruments, i.e. local zoning plans. The authors’ purpose is to determine whether and to what extent spatial development is constrained by environmental and nature protection provisions included in local plans. The research has been conducted on the planning documents from the area of the West Pomeranian region. The contents of all local development spatial plans from 2013 have been analyzed, i.e. 92 plans, including 78 adopted in rural and rural-urban communities, and 14 in towns with county rights.
What we today call the social space, what we can see in our houses and outside of them, was initially established by the Old Testament. The people of Israel governed and changed it, creating the patterns that exist till our time. It’s easy to find the systems of town building in the Old Testament. Also the division of space into centre and peripheries and between the sphere of sacrum and profanum are clear. Moreover, the Old Testament shows us the process of spatial transformation – from the unnamed to symbolic places.
The aim of this article is to identify the role of fees and user charges in the budgets of large cities (cities with county status) and policies of these entities in this regard. To achieve this goal, the article reviews the research on the importance of fees and user charges in local government finance, and analyses the role of fees and user charges in large cities finances in Poland from 2006 to 2012. The study confirms the global trend observable in different countries, i.e. the increasing importance of revenues from fees and user charges to local government budgets. Secondly, the relative size of revenues from fees and user charges in large cities in Poland are evening out. Thirdly, there are two key areas in terms of service charges: public transport and housing management.
The aim of the paper is to identify different visions and expectations of the citizens and the local government regarding the development of their suburban space, which are a source of potential spatial conflicts. It discusses contradictory interests of all the people living in the suburban area, certain groups of inhabitants, and local authorities. The paper characterizes different types of conflicts, including spatial ones. The conflicts in the suburbs are generated by a desire to keep the suburban character of the place of residence, the primacy of property rights and individual interests over collective ones, and excessive development ambitions of local authorities. Considerations on spatial conflicts in a suburban zone are illustrated by the results of two surveys carried out in the Lesznowola municipality near Warsaw, one on a representative sample of residents throughout the whole municipality (394 persons), and the other on a representative sample of residents of Mysiadło (305 people).
The goal of this article is to investigate the spatial allocation of human capital investment at the local level in Poland. In particular, this analysis refers to the funds within the Human Capital Operational Programme (POKL 2007–2013). The study is divided into the following parts: extrapolation of the algorithm for allocating the POKL funds between regions to the local level; comparison of the allocation based on the data from the period before the programme with the hypothetical allocation of the same funds based on the measurement done after the end of the programme (the „before-after” method); and a comparison of the intentional allocation of POKL funds with the observed actual absorption of funds at the local level in 2007–2015. The analysis carried out in this article proves that the final effect of POKL allocation at the local level is not a simple extension of the government’s plan of division expressed by an algorithm. The absorption of funds per capita differed between municipalities within individual voivodships, but more funds did not necessarily go to the areas that were particularly structurally burdened (according to the governmental algorithm). The „before-after” analysis leads to the conclusion that, in the period under study, development disparities increased, and development gap between eastern and western Poland deepened. The situation is particularly difficult in the territories of the so-called internal peripherals.
The paper includes the most important results of the project of the same title, carried out as part of a larger project “The Development Trends of the Mazovia Region”, implemented for the local government of the Mazowieckie voivodship in 2010?2012. It primarily concerned demographic and settlement issues related to the evolution of functional relations and linkages, spatial availability, as well as infrastructure and land use conditions. The main objective was to formulate the conditions which would ensure development, and to identify the factors and conditions that affected easy flow of development stimuli and better efficiency of the suburban zone and spatial cohesion of the Mazovia region. The horizon time of the project concerned the period after 1990 (diagnosis and retrospective study) and 2030 (forecast). The paper has a survey character, it reports on selected topics only, and its aim is to disseminate important research results.
The institutionalized revitalization process is an important tool of contemporary Polish public policy. According to the declarations of local authorities, its programmes are designed to support the development of so-called degraded spaces and the effort against social exclusion of their inhabitants. However, as the analysis of municipal revitalization programmes (GPR) in the biggest cities reveals, planned revitalization leads to gentrification of a urbanized area and is therefore more conducive to segregation than to social inclusion. This paper discusses the relationships between revitalization and gentrification on the basis of the content and assumptions of urban regeneration programmes. It is based on the literature and on selected GPRs.
This paper focuses on the changes in transport accessibility at the regional scale in terms of individual car transport due to the introduction to the regional road network of the bypasses of Łódź in the meridian course. The changes are determined on the basis of measures of the time and potential accessibility of the network, conducted before and after the ring roads were implemented. The results are presented in both relative and absolute terms for each of the 4956 settlement units and 177 communes of the Łódź region. The author determines that the construction of motorways and expressways, especially those representing bypasses of large urban centres, helps to increase the cohesion of a region and increase accessibility of peripheral areas, while the size and spatial extent of the impact of road investments are clearly differentiated.
European regional support has grown in parallel with European integration. The funds targeted at achieving greater economic and social cohesion and reducing disparities within the EU have more than doubled in relative terms since the end of the 1980. making development policies the second most important policy area in the EU. The majority of the development funds have been earmarked for Objective 1 regions, i.e. regions where GDP per capita is below the 75% of the EU average. However, the European development policies have come under increasing criticism based on two facts: the lack of upward mobility of assisted regions and the absence of regional convergence. This paper assesses, using cross-sectional and panel data analyses, the failure so far of European development policies to fulfil their objective of delivering greater economic and social cohesion by examining how European Structural Fund support is allocated among different development axes in Objective 1 regions. We find that, despite the concentration of development funds on infrastructure and, in less extent on business support, the returns to commitments of these axes are not significant. Support to agriculture has short term positive effects on growth, but these wane quickly, and only investment in education and human capital which only represents about one-eight of the total commitments has medium-term positive and significant returns.
The article attempts to indicate the hypothetical spatial extent of the process of rural gentrification. To this end, using the extended case method, the author elaborates on the rural gentrification index that has been developed by describing demographic, social, economic, and spatial changes. This approach made it possible to identify areas where the phenomenon in question is the most active. It turns out that the potential range of gentrification in Poland mainly includes counties located near large cities – especially those located in central, northern, western and, south-western parts of Poland – which could be described with the English-language term as city’s countryside.
The paper focuses on the assessment of the role of tourism in the development of towns and cities of the Warmian-Masurian voivodeship. The respondents, representatives of town halls, claim that tourism is important and has an impact on economic development of towns and cities. However, nature and wildlife of the Warmia and Masuria regions are not the key tourist attraction of the regions’ towns and cities. The respondents say that each town and city should build its own unique brand rather than relying on the region’s or a dominating city’s brand. It is however useful for the towns and cities of the regions to cooperate in order to promote the tourist product.
The main question of the paper concerns the way the eurozone crisis has affected cohesion policy. In particular, the author intends to answer the questions related to the phenomena observed in the crisis in the eurozone (2010–2015), but in relation to the field of cohesion policy. Did intergovernmental management and the informal role of the largest and richest Member States become more visible in this policy? Did the European Commission’s powers grow, but without increasing its autonomy in relation to the EU intergovernmental institutions? Did the crisis lead to the emergence of a “two-speed Europe” (one segmented into the eurozone and the rest of the EU) in cohesion policy? Or maybe is there another dividing line in this policy?
In many European countries local governments, in particular on the municipal level, search for new solutions to improve the governing process. The aim of this paper is to present an innovative model, based on the idea of New Public Governance management, which operates in the city of Tampere, situated in southern Finland. Introduced in 2007, the model is based on three main pillars – strong leadership, effective and responsible service provision, and citizen involvement in the decision-making process. The paper describes each of these elements and indicates its practical advantages and disadvantages. The analysis has been conducted on the basis of official city documents and interviews conducted with experts in Finnish local government as well as leading local politicians from Tampere. In conclusion, it is pointed out that although the Tampere model should certainly be labelled as innovative, the solutions adopted generate some difficulties. These include tensions between politicians and administrators as well as problems related to the coordination of city services and the attitude of politicians and administrators towards citizen participation.
The article attempts to identify and analyze the actions undertaken in the cities of the Wielkopolska Voivodeship in the area of urban renewal in the 1999–2005 period as well as the direct and indirect effects of these actions. In order to reach this objective, we analyze the local renewal programmes as well as other strategic documents launched in the investigated cities. In addition, we employ the survey technique and conduct numerous in-depth interviews with the local actors of the renewal process in order to get better insights into the economic, societal and spatial context of the renewal process. As a result, we show that the actions undertaken by the cities of the Wielkopolska Voivodeship in the realm of urban renewal are hardly integrated (they are not comprehensive and do not complement each other in a given area) and dominated by infrastructural investments. In contrast, the economic and social projects remain rare and their consequences ambiguous. We also identify some unexpected, positive as well as negative, consequences of the renewal process, such as increasing engagement of local property owners, entrepreneurs and associations in the renewal actions as well as the problem of profiteering on the renewed areas.
Apart from traditional fashion trade fairs understood as specialist events addressed to a limited number of business clients, a growing popularity of B2C fashion fairs has been observed in recent years in Poland, in particular in large cities. Such events provide opportunities for purchasing unique clothing, offering possibilities for cultural distinction but also for spending leisure time, engaging in social interactions, and participating in urban arenas. They are in line with broader phenomena such as the festivalisation of urban space, the development of the experience economy, and the ecologisation of consumption. The aim of this article is to show the scope of this phenomenon in the Polish context. Proposing a typology according to this sort of fashion events as well as places where they occur, the authors attempt to show the intraurban and interurban specificity of fashion fairs, pointing to main centres and important factors of their location.
Many goods that are used by urban dwellers are common goods. They are used by many entities at the same time, which generates problems typical of public goods. The goods are, among others, public spaces and properties, urban transport and infrastructure, but also such immaterial elements as shared urban values and attitudes, urban culture and identity. Today’s urban commons are subject to dynamic transformations in the way they are created, supplied, and used. The aim of the paper is to present the notion of urban common goods theoretically, from the perspective of urban economics, as well as to review key methodological challenges which are important from the point of view of potential studies on this phenomenon.
Referring to three case studies, the author makes an attempt to understand the basis of conflicts concerning changes in school catchment areas in rural districts of Poland, and the importance of the implemented changes for local authorities, parents, and rural communities. The research shows that such conflicts arise from misunderstandings between parents and local authorities concerning the essence of new assignments to catchment areas, irrespective of the fact whether schools were closed or not. Additionally, changing school catchment zones resulted in each of the cases in the parents’ increased activity when choosing a school, and made them feel that rural areas were marginalized.
As a form of spatial and social organization, the city has been in deep crisis in the recent years. Nowadays in Poland, we can observe the renaissance of urbanity, as evidenced mostly in the increasing activity of social movements and the growing importance of civic participation. This paper discusses the role public consultation on spatial planning can play in urban policy. The analysis is based on a case study of active and innovative approaches to public consultations carried out during the process. The authors describe the potential of such sociological intervention in solving the crisis of urban communities.
The paper analyses the changes in the scale of the rural economic activity and identifies their selected determinants. The socio-demographic characteristics of the labour resources and the economic differences between rural regions in Poland were analysed as reasons for the dissimilar levels of rural employment. Analyses have demonstrated that, in 2010–2016, rural economic activity measured by the employment rate increased from 50% to 53%, primarily as a result of the impact of cyclical determinants, reflected in the increase in the number of the employed being higher than the number of inactive persons, with a reduced scale of unemployment overall. The studies indicated similar values of the employment rate for urban and rural areas, while the differences in its level within the selected social categories were much more visible for rural populations. This reflected a persistence of territorial disparities in labour markets as well as a trend towards their convergence. The level of territorial differences in the rural employment in Poland was moderate and should be linked with regional economic characteristics. In this context, the allocation of rural labour supply could be attributed to the impact of cities and their functional areas and to the progress in economic diversification of villages located in a particular region. The discussion section of the paper outlines the institutional opportunities and barriers increasing rural economic activity. The presented conclusions were based on the Central Statistical Office data (mainly the Labour Force Survey and the Local Data Bank) and statistical and comparative analysis methods.
The paper discusses research results concerning company relocation processes in five major metropolitan areas in Poland in the period 2001–2013. Key characteristics of relocation processes are analyzed mostly from the perspective of the nature of relocating companies, including time since company establishment and type of business. The study covers more than 500 companies employing at least 50 workers each. More than one third of the studied companies were found to have relocated, which confirms the rather widespread occurrence of company relocation. The results obtained in this study confirm most research findings produced in relocation studies in Western Europe and the United States that have been used to help formulate the incubator theory.
The paper is devoted to the observed and anticipated impact of CAP on the modernisation of Polish agricultural sector and the attitudes of Polish farmers towards EU. Since Poland’s accession the approach of this group to the European community evolutes from the extreme scepticism to enthusiasm. CAP improved the financial situation of farms, stabilised farmers income and contributed to the fall of social tension in rural areas. Some structural changes are also noticeable: polarisation of area structure, specialisation of output in small farms, dualisation. There is a threat that Polish farmers will not be able to exploit all opportunities of the CAP, since they eagerly benefit from the traditional services and remain unconfident towards the innovative instruments, creating so called “rural policy”.
The article presents the role of territorial units in enterprise stimulation, discusses the factors that encourage local authorities to promote entrepreneurship or discourage them from using supporting instruments. The authors assess the current activity of local governments in the domain and they suggest potential changes in local policy regarding entrepreneurship stimulation. The article points out areas where improvement is possible despite the obstacles due to the existing legal framework
The article presents intersectoral partnerships forming Local Action Groups, and analyzes the mechanisms of emergence of such partnerships in the Podkarpackie region, particularly factors contributing to their emergence, their initiators and partner-recruitment methods, as well as the relations of partnerships with their social milieu, decision-making inside partnerships and expectations regarding their future. The theoretical framework of the study is rooted in the neoinstitutional theory with its historical, normative, rational-choice and network approaches. Based on them, the authors formulate some hypotheses referring to the innovativeness of the partnerships, the supremacy of local authorities over other partners, the utilitarian character of partnerships and the assumptions concerning their future. The hypotheses are then verified on the basis of the results of quantitative research of Local Action Groups in the Podkarpackie region.
Tri-City, with the suburban area, like other Polish urban centres with metropolitan aspirations, has real chances for becoming metropolitan area of European importance. According to some European concepts, Tri-City is recognized as a member of the group of European metropolises and regarded as a link in the zone of high dynamic development in the Baltic Sea Region. The main problem for the functional efficiency of Tri-City agglomeration is cooperation and competition between cities and municipalities. The lack of common activities can be the reason of efforts and effects to squander in the field of spatial planning, programming of regional development and functioning of the whole settlement system of the metropolitan area. Pursuing the integration of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot and thus creating an integrated metropolitan space of the highest ability to compete in the global economy, is a real challenge for the Tri-City.
The article presents the factors influencing the choice of local transport delivery modes in Poland. It is the first quantitative study conducted on a representative sample of municipalities since the 1990s, and it concerns three service delivery modes: contracting-out, cooperation, and corporatization. Most local governments do not invest their own resources to deliver local transport, but rather act as a private market supply regulator and contract the service out to private enterprises. Some of them act based on functional connections within metropolitan areas, joining forces with other local governments. More affluent and densely populated cities opt for corporatization, which gives them greater political control over the delivery process. The presented results are useful for decision-makers who have to select the mode of local transport service provision, as they characterize the municipalities which, in 2017, chose one of the three analyzed modes.
The author explores the problem of territorial reorganization of the metropolitan area within the Canadian evolutionary federal system, taking as an example the cities of Toronto and Montreal. The results of the research indicate that adaptation strategies, applied by states aiming at empowering the metropolis, depend on the general level of the territorial units’ autonomy. The existence of strong local self-government favours creation of intercommunal cooperation structures without dissolution of current local territorial units. Territorial reorganization in the case of states with a low level of local autonomy may facilitate elimination of former local units by theirs amalgamation in new, larger metropolitan self-government structures. As far as this context is concerned, Canada constitutes a very interesting study case. Taking into consideration Canadian evolutionary federal system, highly limited local autonomy of the cities, and its mix of European and American traditions, one can observe almost all the above-mentioned dimensions of reform and adaptation strategies. Advanced and institutionalized intercommunal cooperation, developed in Toronto and Montreal in the middle of the 20th century, was interrupted by amalgamation imposed by provincial government, which resulted in creation of new, enlarged metropolitan cities of Toronto in 1998 and Montreal in 2002. In both cases the amalgamation has not been accepted by a part of the population and destabilized cooperation in these metropolitan areas. The trouble with amalgamation led to abandonment of further structural and territorial reforms, which were replaced by functional ones, taking the form of special agreements between Toronto and Montreal and their respective provinces (Ontario and Quebec), giving them both new competences and financial resources. Regardless of any difficulties in pursuing an appropriate metropolitan regime and the suitable position for the metropolis in the structure of a political and territorial system, both cities have achieved strong economic performance and high quality of life.
The article aims to verify the relationship between the value of real estate and urban renewal. The analysis was conducted for undeveloped land properties traded between 2006 and 2014. In that period, a time trend was set for the real estate from the areas covered by the Local Revitalization Programmes and the areas located in their immediate vicinity. The observed trends of the changes were compared with those occurring at the same time throughout Krakow, as well as in the areas specified in the Urban Revitalization Programme for Krakow as potential revitalization complexes, for which no local revitalization programmes were eventually prepared. In addition, the author analyzed how transaction prices were distributed in space over the specific years. The obtained land value maps were compared with the records of the documents which formed the basis for the urban renewal of Krakow.
The purpose of the article is to present the evolution of the economic space in the modern metropolis. The paper systematizes the most important changes of that space, in particular those expressed in the emergence of new areas and places of economic activity. To present this evolution, three axes illustrating various types of activity are used, constituting the contemporary pillars of metropolis development: production and technology, control and information, and consumption and culture. The ongoing transformation is shown in the context of centrifugal and centripetal The purpose of the article is to present the evolution of the economic space in the modern metropolis. The paper systematizes the most important changes of that space, in particular those expressed in the emergence of new areas and places of economic activity. To present this evolution, three axes illustrating various types of activity are used, constituting the contemporary pillars of metropolis development: production and technology, control and information, and consumption and culture. The ongoing transformation is shown in the context of centrifugal and centripetal.
The paper summarizes the activities, carried out in Poland in the period 2011–2016, which led to the delimitation of Functional Urban Areas of Voivodeship Centres (FUA VC) in the scope of the implementation of Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI). The first part of the paper presents the principles of implementing ITI in Poland, and the results of the delimitation of FUA VC proposed by the central authorities. In the second part, they are confronted with the results of studies conducted in all Polish regions. This makes it possible to assess their mutual relations, and to observe five variants of works related to the delimitation of FUA VC for the implementation of ITI, namely I. Ministerial, II. Cooperation, III. Strategic Planning, IV. Expert, and V. Interim.
One of the most important features of Eastern Poland is its peripheral character. This region is often associated with various negative socio-economic phenomena. Population processes, including the problem of depopulation, affect a large part of rural areas of the macroregion. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the demographic changes occurring in rural areas of Eastern Poland in 2002–2015 on selected areas of socio-economic life, as well as to attempt to determine the scale of the changes and their spatial consequences in the field of education, entrepreneurship, construction, housing, and public finances.
The paper presents the state of development and the identity of the city of Biała Podlaska using the analysis of literature and official documents of the municipal authorities. The opinions of 316 PSW students about the city’s image and identity were also presented. The research revealed that the city’s image is strongly determined by its location near the state border and the presence of academic centres in the region. The functioning of universities affects not only the city, the surrounding towns of the municipality, but also the entire region and other places of residence and employment of graduates. The research corroborated the hypothesis that the way in which students perceive the city is important for the further development of the city.
The article aims to identify the geographical dimension of social (in)justice in the context of the existing permanent differences in the level of socio-economic development in Poland from the geographical and historical point of view. It also discusses the consequences of these inequalities for development policy on regional and local levels. The study consists of two essential parts. The first one presents synthetic deliberations on the geographical aspect of the social justice discussed. In the second part, an attempt was made to exemplify a geographical dimension of social (in)justice through the analysis of the spatial distribution of the socio-economic development level (a synthetic indicator) and selected partial indicators. In addition, the presence of dependencies of the socio-economic development level and the degree of political support for political fractions proclaiming the slogan of “social justice” was verified. The results of the conducted research confirm the existence of considerable developmental differences in the Polish space. Their strength is historically determined and, despite the passage of time, their pattern invariably corresponds to the former partition boundaries. These disparities are not minimised and the influence of economic growth on the income rise remains limited, especially in economically weaker areas, which leads to growing social dissatisfaction. As a result, one can conclude that in Poland those differences constitute the geographical dimension of social (in)justice.
A representative sample of 1328 participants, coming from three historically different regions of Poland (Western and Northern Lands, Eastern Wall and former Galicia), and an analogous sample of 900 participants, recruited from two different regions of Ukraine (western and eastern Ukraine) were compared with respect to different aspects of identity (place identity, place attachment, psychological rootedness, neighbourhood ties, regional and national identity, etc.). In line with the predictions, Poland turned out more homogeneous than Ukraine. Western Ukrainians showed more similarity to inhabitants of the eastern and the southern regions of Poland than to the eastern parts of Ukraine.
The aim of the article is to identify in spatial and thematic terms the so-called special areas in strategic and planning documents at the national and regional levels, and a quantitative and qualitative description of spatial delimitations (comprising the communes categorised in particular special areas). The analysis included documents at the national, supra-regional and regional levels, i.e. 10 country-wide strategies (including 7 industry-specific strategies), 5 supra-regional strategies and 16 regional strategies and voivodeship spatial development plans. All the special areas were vectorised or assigned to the relevant municipalities, and then such issues as the number of special areas within them were examined. The analysis demonstrated significant over-regulation of strategic planning (in one of the communes 87 different categories of special areas at the national or regional level were identified). This article expands the issues examined in the project carried out in 2015-2016 at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation PAS for the Ministry of Development, entitled “Identification of the state intervention strategic areas, including problem areas” (Śleszyński et al. 2017a, 2017b).
After 10 years of discussions about the need to empower the metropolitan areas in Poland, finally a metropolitan union law for the Śląskie Voivodeship [Silesian region] has been adopted. Defining two million people as a population level required for the creation of the metropolitan union confirmed that the legislator’s intention was to establish the first metropolitan union in Poland specifically in the Silesian conurbation due to its unique territorial structure. The establishment of the Upper Silesian and Zagłębie Metropolis [Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolia] should be seen as an important social experiment and significant innovation in the Polish local – government system. The large territorial delimitation of the metropolitan union with 41 local units is a courageous step that proves a high level of mobilisation and strong involvement of Silesian local decision makers. The specific decision-making procedure based on double majority voting should entourage dialogue between the large and small member cities of the metropolitan union. The generally formulated competences of the metropolitan union allow considerable freedom to the authorities in prioritising tasks and projects. The author’s analyses the institutional architecture of the first Polish metropolitan union, which is a hybrid organisation combining an inter-municipal association and a local government unit, from the perspective of turning the Upper Silesian metropolitan area into an efficient system of metropolitan governance.
The main purpose of this paper is to analyze depopulation processes of rural areas in Lower Silesia in the years 1995–2015. The authors intend to determine the scale, durability and spatial distribution of depopulation in rural areas, as well as to analyze the factors of population changes which contribute to population loss. It helps them to identify depopulating rural areas and to draw up their typology according to the specificity of contemporary demographic changes. With reference to the scale of depopulation, four types of rural areas are distinguished (developing, stagnating, depopulating, intensively depopulating), and according to the durability of depopulation five types are identified (constantly developing, episodically depopulating, temporarily depopulating, prevalently depopulating, constantly depopulating). The analysis shows that depopulation is a problem in the rural areas of the Sudety Mts., Sudety Foreland, and in peripheral areas, in main urban centres. What is more, the processes of depopulation in Lower Silesia should not be associated exclusively with villages located in the Sudetes. In depopulating rural areas of Lower Silesia, the population decline is compounded by negative demographic trends (low birth rate, increase in post-working age population).
The paper discusses the role of commuting as one of the main indicators of functional linkages and a criterion used in governmental classifications and delimitations of areas, e.g. in the US Metro and Non-metro Classification by US OMB, in the Canadian Census classification, and the ‘Rural and Small Town’ classification. The above methods are presented in the light of selected research findings on the social and economic phenomena which, as either a reason for or a result of commuting, justify the use of the three main parameters, i.e. direction, catchment areas, and intensity, as tools of classification and delimitation of areas.
The objective of this paper is to present the role of the relationship between the location and financial performance of local government units. One of Poland’s largest voivodships, Wielkopolskie, was used as an example. Recent acceleration of suburbanisation processes not only results in socioeconomic changes in municipalities surrounding cities but also affects their financial performance. To attain the aforesaid objective, this study used variance analysis to investigate the significance of the differences in the financial ratios between the units analysed by location (measured as the distance of rural municipalities from district towns and from Poznań, the region’s capital). The research proved that the closer a municipality is to an urban centre, the greater its financial autonomy, liquidity and investments, yet at a higher level of debt. Also, the proximity to Poznań is a better determinant of the differences in financial performance than the location close to smaller urban centres.
The paper describes the creation of the Greater Paris metropolitan area (Métropole du Grand Paris, MGP), with special emphasis on the changes and challenges related to the implementation of the housing policy at the metropolitan level. MGP is an inter-municipal cooperation structure with its own budget and special status. It embraces Paris, 123 municipalities located in the neighbouring departments, and fie external municipalities. MGP will take the responsibilities in the field of: management of resources to support social housing, renovation of housing, elimination of low-quality buildings. The implementation of the housing policy at the metropolitan level is associated with a number of challenges mainly in terms of consolidation of activities undertaken by the institutions of social housing, reservation of land for social housing investments, increase in the amount of new housing, including attempts for their more even distribution at the metropolitan scale. In addition, a set of new challenges appeared due to the changing socio-demographic structure of households, which in turn require innovative architectural solutions.
Revitalisation, which is defined as a planned process of restoring deprived areas, entails the difficult challenge of achieving long-lasting spatial, economic and social effects. In Poland, the accompanying inflow of European Union funds not only fosters a wide range of activities for entities involved in urban renewal, but also raises a question about the potential dysfunction of investments in deprived areas. Based on the experiences of Kraków, the paper presents some undesirable effects of projects implemented under the Local Revitalisation Programmes (LRP) in the years 2007-2013. The goal of the LRP projects was to promote the rehabilitation of deprived housing areas. The initial results, however, indicate that these projects are characterised by specific pitfalls, which include touristification, uniformisation, gentrification and social polarisation.
The author attempts to determine the size, structure and diversification of the economic base of towns and cities in the Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodship, as well as their evolution in the years 2008-2015. An additional objective is to determine the relationship between the level of economic growth of the examined units and the state of their economic base. The obtained results confirm the hypothesis that the economic sector is not a significant part of total employment in the surveyed units. At the same time, the exogenous employment structure is poorly diversified, and in the period under study it decreased even further, exposing local economies to external shocks. There is also a positive, although weak effect of the increase in local specialization on the level of revenue in local self-government units and on their level of unemployment.
Modern cities are developing dynamically in search of ever newer concepts of management. One of them, developed in Poland since the 1990s, is the concept of the marketing management of the city, which is based on the marketing mix concept. The city authorities also look for new sources of the competitive advantage (this is how the concept of slow city management was born). At the same time, in addition to competition, there is a desire for cooperation between cities, manifested by the development of the Citt?slow city network. The study identifies the marketing mix instruments of cities which are used by Polish cities after they joined the Citt?slow network. The method employed was a questionnaire survey, which was sent to 26 Polish Citt?slow member cities in 2017. It was observed that the greatest changes occur in the product strategies under which cities are obliged to develop these urban sub-products that are necessary for the city to function in accordance with the slow city philosophy. As part of promotional efforts, PR activities should be emphasised, whose aim is to create the image of a slow city. The “hospitality” of the city and openness to contacts with the external environment has also increased.
The aim of the paper is to indicate metropolitan areas in Poland as well as to provide the assessment of their situation. The first part is devoted to literature review focused on identification of the most significant trade-offs of metropolisation process in regional and local scale. This constitutes a base for indication of the most important cities in Poland for which delineation of their metropolitan areas are provided. In the next part these metropolitan areas were characterised to reveal obstacles in their development. This enables authors to provide recommendations regarding activates that should be undertaken to facilitate growth of the largest cities and their surroundings.
The right to the city is being able to co-decide about the city by its inhabitants. It can be implemented by means of urban participation that consists of two elements – a formal framework created by municipal authorities that enables city residents to join decision-making processes as well as readiness and willingness of the inhabitants to engage in such processes. In recent years, we have witnessed a “participation boom” that manifests itself through an increasing number of public consultations. In this context, the aim of the article is to describe the category of urban participation and offer a critical analysis of participatory processes and their determinants. At the same time, it should be emphasised that the article is theoretical in nature, and the analysed factors determining participation should be treated as a set of the author’s hypotheses that require empirical verification.
The purpose of the article is open to debate. It presents the main conclusions from a study made in March 2017 for the Office of Analysis and Expertise of the Senate of the Republic of Poland on the merits of changes in the territorial division of the Warsaw Metropolitan Area. In this study was carried out a synthesis of the research conducted mainly by the author on the development of Warsaw Metropolitan Area and the Mazowieckie voivodship, including the impact of the capital and delimitation of its functional urban area. In its summary were formulated the most important conclusions, arguing for finding a compromise solution, aimed at establishing a new administrative division system, taking into account both the daily urban system, spatial cohesion needs, and the interests of residents and entrepreneurs. Due to the importance of the area, including Warsaw’s functions as a capital city, the conclusions apply to the whole Poland.
The article offers a multidimensional analysis of the dynamics of population ageing in Poland. To this end, the spatial dynamic shift-share method is used. The data used in the analysis include the number of people aged 65 or over per 1,000 population, based on the criteria of sex and place of residence (urban or rural areas) in 72 Polish subregions in the period from 2003 to 2016. The study analyses the pace of changes in the scale of the phenomenon and identifies structural and local factors underpinning the net effect in specific subregions. In effect, subregions with the greatest pace of change and its underpinning factors are identified.
Transport exclusion is currently a serious social problem, especially in the counties of the Low Beskids and the Bieszczady Mountains. To better illustrate this problem, it is necessary to observe changes in the suburban public transportation network and, in particular, to identify areas where its quality has deteriorated significantly. The starting point of the research is the year 1990, when on the one hand, the economy was already shifting to the new free market principles, while on the other hand, PKS enterprises still dominated the public transport. The endpoint of the study is the beginning of the year 2019. The article also discusses the background of the described changes. The summary also includes the consequences of those processes as well as the recommendations on how to neutralise some of their negative effects.
The paper is an attempt to analyze the reform of the local government electoral system introduced by the Act of January 11, 2018. The authors of the study describe the most important changes from the point of view of the citizens mentioned in the title of the act as well as of the institutions involved. Among the most important changes the authors list those related to passive voting right, seat allocation method and the structure of constituencies. Because of the lack of an appropriate time perspective, the authors limit themselves to legal and political analysis, pointing only to their possible consequences.
The global Post-Fordist economy based on permanent flows changes the way we use space. It modifies the processes of functioning of cities, some of which take the role of global hubs or regional networks. It is an open question whether and how the changes concerning territorial and competence range of cities influence institutions and institutionalizations of contemporary city authorities. Although it is difficult to establish a general answer to this question, the author bases his reflection on the case of the evolution, unprecedented in the French conditions, of the local government system of Grand Lyon Urban Community. On 1st January 2015, after 45 years of its existence, Grand Lyon became a Metropolis of Lyon, establishing a new unit of local government with extended range and new competences, combining the prerogative powers of municipalities, an urban community, and a department.
The article is discusses the new concept of harmony limit as an instrument for strategic management of tourism development in tourism destinations. In the author’s opinion, that concept can be used as a basic instrument in creating tourism development strategies, which would help to start or continue the process of developing sustainable tourism. Furthermore, the concept is based on three interdependent elements: pillars of sustainability, multi-stakeholder responsibility and the sphere of needs. The author draws attention to the problems associated with the new concept and offers certain solutions, thereby demonstrating its application value.
The tourism sector plays an important role in regional economies. Its growth could become a driver of socio-economic development of different areas in Poland. The increasing number of visiting tourists has a positive impact on the labour market, and it stimulates entrepreneurship in other regions’ service sectors. Even though some Polish regions have great potential, there persist some substantial barriers to development of tourism: poor state of technical infrastructure, especially transport, significant dispersion of the sector, lack of tourism products, and poor promotion. As no separate policy dedicated to tourism is provided at the European Union level, the development of this sector can be financed from cohesion policy funds. The paper focuses on the use of EU funds for the development of tourism in the Warmia-Mazury region. The results of the analysis show a positive – albeit limited – impact of implemented projects on tourist attractiveness and on competitiveness of tourism sector firms. The effectiveness of the projects is limited due to low interest in cooperation in creating tourism products and to over-investment effects in some projects.
The article attempts to assess the development policy of the self-government authorities of Pomorskie region. Since the third level of territorial self-government has been established upon the state reform of territorial administration, one may ask how the intra-regional policy develops in Poland. The self-government of the region has been bound by the law to draw up a document specifying the trends of the region development a strategy of the region. The strategy provisions constitute a good point of reference for the assessment of the undertakings within the development policy taken on by the regional authorities. The assessment of the development policy in the years 1999-2004 corresponds to the first term of office and a half of the term of office of the regional authorities elected during an election. The article covers many aspects and concentrates on the description of the selected undertakings with the aim to create a regional innovation system, to support medium and small business, to create regional capital market, to develop farming and operation of the special economic zones. The author makes an attempt to show that the regional self-government, giving as an example the Pomorskie region self-government, tries to create its own development policy in compliance with the strategy in the circumstances of stiff standards imposed by the central authorities.
This paper is a comparative study of main social theories of urban development in the last fifty tears. The author presents various approaches and social theories from across the world. He divides the after-war period into three phases according to the profound social changes. the first one covers the years of ending the post-war reconstruction of economy, infrastructure and cities damaged by the war. the second phase includes "the golden years" between approximately 1955 and 1975, when the formation of different types of welfare state, but mainly the urban population growth, suburbanization and metropolization processes and improvement of living conditions and urbanities took place. the third phase, covering the years between 1975 and 2000, is marked by the first signs of the decline of the welfare state accompanied by deepening social inequalities increasing urban poverty, marginalization of some groups of the population, political radicalization and urban conflicts as well as by urban and regional polarization.
The paper focuses on issues related to the impact of quality management in local government at the municipal level on the use of EU funds supporting local development. Poland is one of the greatest beneficiaries of structural funds provided for regional development and strengthening cohesion within the Community. Local governments are one of the groups which absorbed most of the funds for 2007–2013. The paper describes how and to what extent the implementation of New Public Management tools in local government administration can guarantee efficient use of EU funds. Three areas of such impact are taken into consideration – the amount of acquired funds, efficient implementation of the projects co-financed by the EU, and the quality of these projects.
The aim of our research is to evaluate the level of economic independence and its influence on political system changes in different groups of local government. The research shows that the decisive factor in differentiating economic independence of local governments is the level of urbanization. In urban self-government, its own revenues surpass 50% and sometimes even 60%, whereas in rural areas (defined as rural communes and land districts) they reach about 30%. Such marked differences can cause local governments to develop in two structurally different directions.
The aim of the article is to measure the sustainable development of rural areas of the Wielkopolska region and define the role of the Rural Development Programme for 2007-2013 in reinforcing developmental changes. The conducted research measured sustainable development for the year 2015 (in three dimensions: economic, social and environmental), and shows the spatial variations of the analysed phenomenon. As the next step, the awarded funds were measured and their impact on sustainable development was assessed. The measurements were carried out with the use of a synthetic measure, while the relationship between the level of development and the level of the awarded funds was assessed using analysis of variance. The research comprised rural and rural urban municipalities in the region. The findings demonstrate significant variations in the level of sustainable rural development in the Wielkopolska region.
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether it is feasible to ensure neo-endogenous sustainable development of valuable natural areas of the Lublin voivodship. In order to do that, the author analyzed the literature and documents on local development strategies, and the results of research carried out in 2013 in the Lublin voivodship, in 30 communes with the greatest natural value. As part of the study, she conducted a survey among 383 councillors – 86% of the total. The author shows that due to accumulation of many serious problems of sustainable development, such as deficiencies in environmental infrastructure, or underutilized (economic) potential of protected areas, it is difficult to implement neo-endogenous development – only 13% of the councillors said opportunities for development depended on a favourable arrangement of external and internal conditions.
Changes caused by transformation of political system such as comeback of ground rental and other market factors caused some changes in socio-spatial structure in Eastern Europe cities. One of them was segregation, which means increase of differences between social status of dwellers of particulars zones and quarters. These changes occur mostly in Eastern European greatest cities. Meanwhile socio-spatial structure of industrial "dependent cities" is less crystallized. Changes in these cities are still in initial phase. In four concentric spatial zones of the city social status of dwellers is similar. Meanwhile at the level of settlements there is clear, although weak statistical connection, which reveals some degree of socio-spatial differentiation. Social status of dwellers in eastern part of the city, especially in the Widzew quarter is higher, than in the other parts of Lodz. But in general differences of social status of particular spatial units are small, what corroborates basic hypothesis about weak differentiation of socio-spatial structure of lodz. It means, that processes of segregation and polarization are at the very beginning phase. For now, its negative consequences of globalization which occur in Western metropolises such as ethnic ghettos and “dualization" of city are no threat for lodz, but, on the other hand, this result reveals small dynamics of development of the city. There are some negative effects of transformation process, such as decrease of social status of dwellers of standard housing units. On the other hand, there is no concentration of the poorest people in particular parts of the city, and existing enclaves of poverty are the margin of urban space; however, this margin is growing. Also people of the highest status don`t live in particular parts of the city and there are very few settlements of the very high standard. There are some enclaves of such houses, which don`t cause the clear increase of standard in broader units. Trend of increase of social status of dwellers in the Eastern parts of lodz may be the response to the expectations for very far future perspectives of common Warsaw lodz metropolis. Basic hypothesis, verified during the research, claimed, that socio-spatial structure of lodz is differentiated in small degree. Survey was run at the turn of 2001 and 2002 on the sample of 797 dwellers. Method of selection caused, that demographic structure of sample in particular zones, quarters and smaller settlements was the same, as in population. We analyzed three attributive variables: character of employment, level of education and financial standard, measured with number and quality if durables. These variables were the basis for indicator of social status.
The aim of the study is to examine the impact of the amendment to the Municipal Self-Government Act (hereinafter: MSGA; Journal of Laws 2018, item 994) on the implementation of participatory budgeting (PB) in 2019 and 2020 in Polish voivodship cities. Using the desk research method, 36 PB regulations and over 3.4 thousand projects were selected for implementation in 10 categories: 1) sports (investment and other), 2) leisure and recreation (investment and other), 3) construction or modernisation of sidewalks, 4) construction or modernisation of streets, 5) pedestrian walkways, 6) parking lots, 7) lighting, 8) city bicycles (bicycle infrastructure), 9) modernisation of buildings, and 10) other (e.g. educational, cultural, training). Detailed studies were carried on the influence of legislative changes on: 1) financial mechanisms; 2) principles and organisation of the budgeting process; 3) generic structure of projects; 4) participatory budgeting model. In order to verify the results obtained, changes in the PB regulations not resulting from the MSGA provisions were additionally analysed. It was shown that the amendment to the Act had a significant impact on the implementation of PB in all the analysed cities. The changes mainly concerned the financial and formal-organisational aspects of participatory budgeting process. The most crucial ones include: increase in the size of the overall subsidies (in 15 cities), modification of the distribution of the financial means (9), introduction of letters of support at the stage of project submission (7) and appeal procedure (9). Among the “non-statutory” activities, the abolition of age limits in the remaining 7 cities should be mentioned. These activities brought positive effects on the increase in turnout (15), the number of projects selected for implementation (12) and their average value (13). On the other hand, the changes in MSGA did not affect the generic structure of the projects (in both years, in 10 cities the category “leisure and recreation” prevailed, and 1149 projects from this category were selected for implementation). The final unification of the PB implementation model in Polish voivodship cities has been completed. Finally, three modes of PB implementation according to the new rules were indicated: financial, procedural and combined.
In most European cities industrial districts and, later, consumption areas have emerged supplementing the areas of exchange, which had always been existing within the cities. At present, the cities are almost free of production (especially of industrial production), which has been replaced by the areas of entertainment. This is due to the fact that the metropolitan class - which lives in the cities and moves between them as the most precious part of the tourist community – has demonstrated growing demand for culture and entertainment. The influences of the media, mostly of television, make this demand more and more uniform, which results in globalisation of culture and entertainment. It is therefore quite obvious that big corporations engage themselves in undertakings that shape the urban areas in order to advertise their products and brands. As a result, the public parts of the cities are appropriated by individual interests and privatized in a specific way.
The paper focuses on the institutional solutions adopted in different Polish urban regions as a response to the requirement to create the so-called ITI instrument in the framework of 2014–2020 EU financial perspective. This phenomenon is analyzed in the light of the mechanism of launching and functioning of metropolitan cooperation structures and the concept of Europeanization. The authors assume that former – more or less successful – attempts to institutionalize such cooperation in Polish urban functional areas influence the process of creation and functioning of ITI cooperation.
The paper presents a new interpretation of global space. The most important elements of this space are four megaspaces of America, Europe, China and India. A megaspace is a grand geographical area representing a big demographic, political, economic, and scientific potential. The megaspace is a regionally differentiated area with no important barriers limiting free flows of persons, commodities, information, capital. The innovative studies of four megaspaces are a great theoretical and pragmatic challenge for Regional Studies Association as an organization which should open new chapters in the interpretation of the global space of the XXIst century.
University-industry collaboration seems to be crucial to the transfer of knowledge and innovation in a modern world economy in which knowledge, information flows and the level of innovation of countries and regions are the center of attention. The article presents the specifics of university-industry linkages, and the instruments that operate in support of such relationships, the focus being on the French CIFRE (Industrial Agreement for Training through Research) procedure. A description of the functioning of this scheme in France leads on to an analysis of its influence on the development of French regions as regards their levels of innovation and the nature of strength of the linkages between the world of science and academe on the one hand and enterprises on the other.
The article is demonstrates the differentiation of the intensity and characteristics of entrepreneurial activities in Belarus. With respect to many features, Belarus seems to be divided into the western and eastern part, that is, between the territory belonging before World War II to Poland and USSR. The eastern part is more urbanized (76% of urban population comparing to 60% in the west), includes largest cities and has better education indicators that the western part. As the entrepreneurship is highly correlated with education level and the degree of urbanization, it is not surprising that small business is most intense in Minsk and eastern Belarus. However, of the areas characterized by similar urbanization and education level, but located at different sides of the pre-war border, the entrepreneurship is decidedly more developed in the west. The research was conducted in the two regions: Grodziensk (western Belarus) and Witebsk (eastern Bealrus). It showed that the entrepreneurs from the western part of the republic are more free market oriented. While they main request from the central government was simply: less regulations, their counterparts in the east demanded rather more direct support from the state. This difference is the legacy of historical divisions and closer links of the western Belarus with the market economies of Poland and Lithuania.
The paper examines whether EU funds may encourage local and regional development in the Lubelskie voivodship. The authors compare the actual structure of support in 2007?2013 with the necessary conditions of a positive and sustainable result of financial assistance found in the literature. In addition, six case studies were carried out to explore the mechanisms of support at the local level. The analysis shows the dominance of infrastructure spending and support for rural areas. Low expenditure on economic and knowledge capital is accompanied by virtually no support for social capital and administration quality improvement. Funds at the local level are often used purely as social aid. The observed ways of spending the funds may lead to petrifaction of an unfavourable regional economic structure, and do not ensure growth of production factors productivity
The article describes the phenomenon of urban space in Lodz being transformed by graffiti and wall-writings. The graffiti samples selected for analysis may be described as conveying a message that is easily understood by every local. This seemingly meaningless composition of wall-writings is highly influential in fact and transforms the surrounding city space. The author, by analysing the content of the graffiti, its graphical form and space context in which it appears, explores the way in which graffiti transforms urban space in the city of Lodz. The subject of the research is photographic documentation made in 2006 and 2008 in the city centre and some of the residential areas situated on the outskirts of the city.
Urban renewal in derelict sites has become a focal point of interest in many traditional industrial cities. Having adopted the case study of the Cork City (Ireland), the authors presented four urban renewal schemes which were implemented in this city over a 25–year period. It ought to be emphasised that not only has Cork implemented various rejuvenation programmes since 1979, but also revived three entirely different urban sites: the former industrial areas, the historic centre and the docklands. However, the latter still requires further regeneration. The urban renewal schemes contributed to an enhancement of the quality of life and a rise in local and inward investment. Moreover, the number of tourists increased considerably. In consequence, the image of the city was improved. Hence, the urban renewal has become a factor of Cork’s redevelopment.
Self-government-owned properties, and especially local ones, are primarily owned by urban and urban-rural communities. Many of them constitute municipal real estate resources and serve the collective needs of both members of the local community and visiting outsiders. These properties need constant budget expenditures (both current and asset-related). Some of them generate income that is a small percentage of total municipal budget revenues. However, the income from their sale can be much higher if the local authority decide to sell it and someone wants to buy it. The interests of both sides do not meet often enough. Not all municipal properties are for sale, and those that are do not always meet buyers’ needs. Very often the value of a property is different in the owner’s and the potential buyer’s opinion. The purpose of the study is to answer the following questions: 1) Do municipal properties have market value and does their sale price reflect their value?, 2) What are the determinants of municipal property price and for what reasons do local authorities decide to sell them?, 3) Are all municipal properties equally attractive to buyers?, 4) What revenues has the sale of municipal real estate generated for municipal budgets in the recent years?
The paper describes the “chaotic” transformation of Warsaw after 1989, and aims to analyze what Hegel calls “the work of the concept” of (urban) “chaos”, and to embed it in a theoretical framework. The author proposes a typology of urban chaos. The text analyzes the use of the term “chaos” in Poland and singles out particular contexts in Warsaw’s public discourse during the years of post-socialist transformation. Within these contexts, the author reconstructs the distinct social phenomena and power relations hidden beneath the superficial impression of chaos. Empirically, urban chaos is never mere randomness but rather a conglomerate of multiple pockets of order regulated by non-transparent power relations that only appear to be arbitrary. Using Hegelian language, one can argue that chaos is cunning. The key to understanding this cunning is the difference between “chaos” as a term used in public discourse and chaos as a structural condition of power relations between distinct pockets of order.
The aim of this paper is to discuss urban renewal policy implemented in France over the 20th and the 21st century. Referring to selected examples from the agglomeration of Paris, special attention is paid to the social dimension of urban renewal. The diversified tools in the field of urbanism and contract policy led to vertical and horizontal cooperation between different entities. The key element was the differentiation of housing supply, especially in the case of apartments for rent. In the areas with better potential and likely to become more multi-dimensionally attractive, the effects of renewal were more spectacular, whereas urban renovation carried out in deprived areas still brings mixed outcomes.
Uptade from 2.03.2021: Parts of this article were subsequently used in the following publication: Swianiewicz, P., & Chelstowska, K. (2015). Neighbourhood Council as a Path of Political Career Development in Poland. Polish Sociological Review, (190), 223.
On the basis of data from six Polish cities, the authors discuss the role of sub-municipal (neighbourhood, city district) councils as paths to political career in big Polish cities. The analysis of social composition of neighbourhood councils is based on Putnam’s law of increasing disproportionality, while various theoretical concepts inform the division of the selection process into three stages: self-selection, pre-selection (top-down selection), and bottom-up selection. Neighbourhood councils are considered as incubators and respirators of political career.
The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how the development of European peripheries can be strengthened by cooperative clusters, viewed as loose business organizations where cooperation of partners results in a synergy effect. The existence of clusters in peripheral areas may give efficient solutions to many problems, such as unemployment or the need of restructuring regional economy. Partnership of clusters may add up to their competitiveness thanks to the home demand. The present paper presents an example of the Lubelskie Region, the most neglected region in Poland. It is argued here that cooperation among local clusters provides a chance for an increase in the region’s social activity and for its economic growth.
This research concerns the relations between the community of metropolitan area of Warsaw, their character and influence. The article is focused on cooperation between the units of area, which is considered to play an essential role in the process of integration. The attempt has been made to estimate the scale and range of integration on metropolitan area. The research is based on surveys (questionnaires) answered by the local authorities of metropolitan area`s community. the analysis covers different partners, cooperation between them, as well as its aims and results. One of the major outcomes of the research is a map describing the network of interrelations. different zones of integration together with passive and active connections were identified on the basis of directions and intensity of cooperation.
Identification and delimitation of metropolitan areas, as well as measuring their actual metropolitan potential, are complex research problems. They become even more complicated in the case of a metropolis shaped around a polycentric core, consisting of cities which rank similarly in the national or transnational urban network. The paper is an attempt to identify and analyze the crucial problems of internal integration within the Tri-City metropolitan area which significantly hamper the metropolitan discourse and undermine the cooperation indispensible for metropolitan development.
Strengthening economic cohesion of regional economies is usually considered as one of the major goals of regional policy. At the same time, metropolitan cities are recognized as main centres of economic growth, influencing the development perspectives of more peripheral areas. It is therefore important to know the range and the mechanism of spillover of socio-economic development from metropolises to their surroundings, as well as to identify the areas which are economically lagging as a result of missing functional links with metropolises. The authors apply the local spatial correlation measures (local Moran’s statistics – LISA) in the analysis of municipal revenues in order to delimit the diffusion and polarization of economic development in Poland.
The debt of local government units (LGU) is part of the public debt. Therefore, the analysis of the phenomenon of local government debt is important for the financial security of the state. In Poland, in the period 2007–2013, the debt of local government units rapidly increased, in particular in the major cities with poviat rights – metropolises. Due to the dual nature of metropolises, they perform many important tasks in the social and infrastructure sphere that determine the quality of life of their residents and contribute to the socio-economic development of the region and metropolitan areas. However, an excessive increase in debt of the metropolis may in the future be a barrier to achieving a high rate of socio-economic development. The aim of the paper is to analyze the phenomenon of indebtedness in the largest cities with poviat rights – metropolises – in Poland in the years 2007–2013. The study draws on publicly accessible databases compiled by the Ministry of Finance (Wskaźniki do oceny sytuacji fiansowej jednostek samorządu terytorialnego).
The aim of this paper is to identify the character of transborder cooperation on the local level in the Polish-Czech borderland with a special focus on the transborder relations network. To this end, the author analyzes cooperation co-financed under Poland-Czech Republic Cross-Border Cooperation Programme 2007–2013 in the framework of ETC and examines all realized Project and all beneficiaries, i.e. 250 projects and 350 Polish and Czech institutions. Due to the mountainous character of the Polish-Czech borderland, special attention is paid to projects concerning tourism. The research reveals that the cooperation network is poorly developed. However, the most import ant nodes in this network are clearly visible and they are the most active institutions that shape the relations of transborder cooperation.
The article discusses the functions of the Committee of the Regions with respect to the legislative process and politics of the European Union, as well as to the politics of the Member States. The main assumption of the analysis, based on the deductive method, is that because of the current political situation in Europe, in addition to being a body giving opinions on the law, the Committee of the Regions should have a greater, fundamental role in shaping the future directions of development for the entire European Union. The discussion is set in the context of fiscal federalism theory and one of its elements assuming that a federal structure has a role in mitigating conflicts, as well as referring to the hybrid nature of the contemporary models of development. It is underpinned by the relevant literature, analyses commissioned by the European Commission, materials of the Committee of the Regions, findings of earlier studies, and the so-called impact reports of the Committee of the Regions published from 2014 to 2017.
The article analyzes decision-making councils of Local Action Groups operating in Axis 4 LEADER Rural Development Programme in three Polish regions which were described in the literature as differing significantly in terms of their historical and cultural backgrounds. According to the concept of governance, implemented in programmes such as LEADER, the influence of representatives of various sectors of the economy on local decisions should be balanced and, in accordance with the rules of the support programme, no more than 50% of council members should represent the public sector. This provision, included in formal documents of Local Action Groups, is designed to ensure that non-public sectors do have some impact on council decisions. However, in the three studied regions, the real participation of mayors, officials and executives of the public sector was from 15 to 21% higher than in the official data, and in about one-third of the surveyed organizations it exceeded 50%, which gave the public sector representatives the dominant role in decision-making and selection of eligible projects. This practice was very similar in the studied regions, and is discussed in the context of the concept of governance, as an example of tokenism.
The aim of the paper is to analyze the processes of localization and globalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in rural areas in Wielkopolska. The author discusses the problem of rural economy as the place of localization of internationalized and globally active enterprises. First, she analyzes the potential factors of enterprises’ localization in the condition of open economy. Then, she focuses on shares of foreign capital and foreign exchange of enterprises operating in urban and non-urban environments and in agricultural and non-agricultural areas. The author analyzes the data reported in the years 2008?2011 by the Polish Statistical Office GUS concerning entities with foreign capital and firms with capital abroad. She shows that the pace and advancement of the globalization processes in the investigated enterprises differ according to the level of urbanization and the economic structure of different localizations. The results show that globalization leads to polarization of the development of regional and local economy.
The aim of the article is to examine if the form of ownership is a base of social identifications as important as a space of living. Author presents results of own research, conducted in Szczecin in Social Housing Associations area. The results show that forms of ownership become important part of social identity, even more than location in urban space.
Big cities in Poland as well as abroad are the focus of many scientists of different disciplines. The authors of this study join these researchers and concentrate on a previously neglected segment of the Polish big cities’ political actors – city councillors. The aim of this paper is a socio-demographic description of the big city elite. The authors analyze its main characteristics: gender, age, occupational position, and local government experience. They also try to compare the big city elite with other parts of the political elite, especially with the simultaneously studied medium city elite. The paper is based on survey research conducted by the authors in the 12 biggest Polish cities.
The paper describes an indicator constructed to measure financial flows between local governments in Poland. These flows are considered as the measure of local governments’ cooperation and of the strength of functional connections crossing administrative boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to present the scale and the subject of financial transfers between local governments and the factors explaining the variation of local governments’ financial cooperation. The biggest financial transfers take place in functional urban areas, but only in terms of current expenditures. Transfers of investments expenditures are higher outside these areas and are characteristic of less affluent municipalities. The strongest associate function is to provide transportation services: both in terms of current expenditures and investments.
The study discusses the processes of reactivation of passenger rail traffic in Poland in the years 2000–2020. After the reductions of the railroad network carried out before 2000, a renaissance of passenger transport could be observed. In the period under study, 63 sections of the railway lines were reconstructed. The total length of the reactivated routes was 1992 km, of which the electrified sections covered 549 km of the network. The largest areas of the concentration of reactivation activities were identified in south-eastern and northern Poland. The average speed on most routes was 65 km/h. The transport offer for 55% of the lines was based on more than six connections per day. Inconsistencies were also identified: out of 63 routes, passenger traffic was suspended again in 20 sections. Three types of reactivated routes can be identified, most of which are blindly terminated routes. The identified processes of reconstruction of traffic systems after 2000 represent yet another phase of railroad operations in Poland, after the previous phase of intensive regression and underfunding.
The paper is based on the results of empirical studies concerning town identity building conducted in 206 selected town administration offices in Poland during the years 2003–2005. The paper aimed at identifying the main identity strategy instruments applied in Polish towns. For that purpose the major town identity building instruments related to visualization, communication and pattern of behaviours including marketing activities, were identified and characterized. Those instruments should be focused around the most important attributes of a given town. It was established, however, that towns expose too many attributes of identity in their strategies hence the image created can become unclear and illegible.
The aim of the article is to present the process of changes which occurred from the 1970s until 2012 in the areas of urban agglomerations in Poland. In contemporary agglomerations in Poland, their socio-economic function is centralized while land use and building development become progressively decentralized, which results in dynamic growth of the central metropolitan area, and in simultaneous deurbanization of its zone of influence. The described problem is typical of the Warsaw Urban Agglomeration (Warszawski Zespół Miejski, WZM), where the population of the metropolitan zone increases while the importance of the surrounding towns, particularly in their central areas, decreases. The objective of this paper is to present these contemporary trends in the communes of the northern zone of WZM. The analysis involves three towns: Legionowo, Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki, and Zakroczym, and two communes – Jabłonna and Wieliszew. The results are compared with relevant changes occurring in the communes of the Piaseczno district. The examined processes are also confronted with the proposals and arrangements included in planning concepts prepared in different periods for the agglomeration. The escalating suburbanization, characterized by deurbanization visible in spatial planning, affects the effectiveness of newly created building developments and their rank of service centres, and also shows the failure of long-term planning, which is not supported by detailed analysis and research.
The main focus of the text is the city tourism viewed as a form of city promotion on which the city development depends to a great extent. At the beginning of the industrial age, tourism concentrated around the sea resorts and spas. The first changes in tourism resulted from the decline of the paradigm of the industrial progress in western countries. The decaying cities previously bound up with industry started then to change the image in order to improve their economic situation. The new image pointed out culture in the first place, because culture started being perceived as the tourist attraction. The article presents the different ways of city promotion. The particular stress is placed here upon public space investments – such as revitalization phenomena, theme space and commercialization of urban landscape and constructing the museums and other public use buildings by the outstanding architects. The development of the urban tourism is also closely tied up with the changes in tourists’ behaviour and preferences. The phenomena presented in this article explain the increasing interest in the city as the tourist attraction and emphasise the indispensability of the promotion efforts.
The paper gives an appraisal of Polish cities in the context of processes and problems observed in cities of highly developed European countries. These last cities, in particular those situated in the hard core of EU, enter a new development stadium. Interconnected by networks of multifarious links, they create an integrated urbanised space of the highest ability to compete in the global economy but lose at the same time the character of relatively closed and spatially distinguished socio-economic systems. The paper, pointing at the processes that lead to this phenomenon, stresses that they are already visible in Poland but not advanced. Poland is a country of a delayed urbanisation and cities the economic base of which is not competitive in Europe. These cities possess a not bad human but rather weak social capital and the urban space is of a low quality. The paper outlines the main challenges Polish cities are facing in the era of European integration and presents also the most frequently discussed visions of XXI century European city described through development goals and strategies.
The purpose of the paper is to point out the characteristic features of spatial development in cities of the Metropolitan Union of Silesia (GZM), located in the central subregion of the Upper Silesian region. The specificity of its development is the result of both historical conditions arising from the exploitation of natural resources, which were taking place for many centuries, as well as the contemporary economic and social impacts that are affecting the functioning of highly integrated territorial units that co-create the GZM. The presented research results refer to a selected area of interest in urban morphology. In this case, it is the comparison of a combination of building types located in the GZM cities with buildings in other cities of the Upper Silesian region and all other Polish cities.
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the activity of local governments’ planning and investment service in the environmentally valuable areas of Podlaskie Voivodeship. Spatial planning at the local level is extremely important, especially in the environmentally valuable areas. It makes it possible to preserve the natural environment for future generations and to maintain ecological processes. However, protective measures should not disturb municipal investments. One of the appropriate solutions is the introduction of local land development plans – a framework of rational management of natural resources and of marketing development. This is particularly important in the areas of municipalities which, beside ecological functions, play an important role in the development of tourism and transport, and are situated in suburban areas.
The article, referring to the elaboration offered in 2005 by Swianiewicz, presents the very recent development of the theoretical concepts used in urban political research. It concentrates on the rescaling concept, which assumes the need for territorial reorganization of urban research and practice. Reteritorialization implies an increase in the importance of the sub-state levels, i.e. the levels most affected by globalization. Globalization has forced big cities to compete internationally, which also influences their organization. The debate on metropolitan governance has changed significantly in comparison to the one of the old regionalism – less attention is paid to administrative solutions, more to conditions and mechanisms of international functioning of metropolises. Metropolitan governance has moved from vertical, redistributive and coordinative relations within the state towards a horizontal competition with other metropolises. New relations, cutting across the traditional levels of organization, are being created within the current stable institutional framework. One of the biggest challenges for contemporary urban political studies is the elaboration of conceptual frames for those relations. The challenge is especially important as institutional solutions to metropolitan areas still leave a lot of questions and doubts.
The aim of the study is to indicate the importance of rural areas in the system of inter-communal migrations in Poland. Internal migration in rural areas was analysed for the years 1995–2019, with particular focus on the state of migration registered in 2019. The study used basic indicators determining the intensity of migration, which made it possible to conclude that rural areas play an important role in the system of internal migration in Poland, contributing to the spatial redistribution of population. However, this influence varies due to the fact that, on the one hand, there is a strong influence of suburbanisation on migration processes in rural areas in suburban zones of large and medium-sized cities in Poland. On the other hand, migration outflows caused by an unfavourable socio-economic situation are visible in the case of external and inner peripheries.
A measure of economic development for regions is proposed in the form of a multicomponent index. This measure is composed of the following aspects: technology, infrastructure, human capital and social capital and defied by an array of indicators. Such a measure has significant advantages over the most commonly used indicator of GDP per capita. The statistical data based on which it is built are freely available and with a much shorter time lag than GDP at the regional level. This indicator makes it possible to depict economic factors behind long-run economic growth as well as to include less measurable factors such as social change, environmental degradation, etc. On the one hand, the proposed indicator comprises symptoms of the quality of life, and on the other hand, it includes factors which are essential for long-run economic growth and productivity. The authors show usefulness of such an indicator for policy formulation, which is rarely pointed out in the case of other indexes and is especially important at a time when long-run economic growth, and also development, in high-developed countries is endangered. The authors also discuss some general aspects of constructing indexes of economic development for regions, e.g., the often omitted problem of inclusion of cyclical indicators in the indexes of development. Empirical analysis of the proposed indicator is made for the NUTS-2 regions of Poland for the years 2009–2011.
