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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 aim of this study is to assess the impact of foreign investments on the development of one of the poorest Polish provinces – the Podkarpackie region. The article shows the location, structure and spatial variation of direct foreign investments in the region. The institution method was used to compile data: the number of employees and the size of investment were assigned to places where they were made, but not where the company`s headquarters are located. Results suggest a rather positive impact of foreign investments on local and regional development in the Podkarpackie province, especially in manufacturing industries. The influence of FDI on growth of socio-economic disparities in the region should be rated unfavourably.

The paper begins with an analysis of policymaking principles and responsibilities of local authorities in Poland. Next, outputs of local policies at the level of the gmina are presented in a case study of the suburban area of the Gdansk agglomeration. Chosen features of local policies are pointed out as a basis for comparison of the local districts. The decisions taken by local governments allow to classify types o local policy. For instance, while some of the local districts prefer investments in social infrastructure, other are more inclined to invest in technical infrastructure. Only two out of seven local governments create and implement policies which can be identified as sustainable.

The article analyses the expenses of local communities in zachodniopomorskie voivodship during the 2000–2005 period, with special regard to capital expenditures and to social care expenditures. Local communities conduct counterbalanced expenditures policy adapted accordingly to incomes. Whereas capital expenditures vary in time with growing tendency to diminishing, the social care expenses continually grow (in analyzed tenure). In spite of this the numbers of people taking advantage of social help diminishing very little (and even growing from time to time). What is more, as can be presumed, the social funds are constantly directed to the same group of beneficiaries without gaining the results in limiting the scale of poverty in community.

This paper examines the development of international financial centres (IFC) in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The study argues that the development of the financial services in CEE is characterized by external dependency, which is manifested in the form of hierarchical command and control functions over CEE financial subsidiaries within the West European IFC network. The paper quantitatively compares the factors of IFC functions of Budapest in comparison to those of Warsaw and Prague. It argues that despite the lack of market evidence showing signs of a regional centre focus during the transition period, there are some signs of IFC formation. The paper assesses the uneven impact of the global economic crisis upon CEE financial centres and confirms that their development trajectories became more differentiated as a result of the crisis. The steady decline of Budapest during the second half of the 2000s was accompanied by the rise of Warsaw. Our analysis concluded that Budapest, despite its earlier endeavours, most likely lost the competition to become an international financial centre.

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.

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 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.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the reasons of development of the Integrated Territorial Investments in the new 2014-2020 period in the context of EU reforms, and to describe the creation process and the threats this experimental approach may encounter in Poland. The Author’s main thesis is that the experimental ITI concept causes additional conflicts between management authorities and beneficiaries who are used to the fact that declared and implemented intervention aims are different. The Author also assumes that there exist important factors that could potentially hinder the radical reforms and re-establish the status quo (or “domesticate” the policy). The main methods (desk research and involvement in preparatory works as a Ministry expert) determine the structure of the sources used. The paper offers some conclusions.

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 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 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.