The paper aims to discuss the major trends in changes of regional differences of economic wellbeing and the resulting spatial mobility of population as well as some regional consequences of these processes. The research is based on an empirical methodology, and visual analysis of mapped data is the main research method. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, fast decrease of employment in industry and agriculture has damaged, first of all, peripheral regions and, later, resulted in mass emigration, which is still evident in most Lithuanian municipalities. The decrease of the number of jobs in these sectors and its increase in those located in different places meant that most residents of non-metropolitan regions had to find new jobs outside the localities in which they resided. This resulted in growing mobility of the population, expressed by growing foreign emigration, inner migrations, and commuting, which continue to shape the social structure of the country to the present day, as spatial structures change more slowly than modes of production. Differences in wellbeing, which appeared at the end of the 20th century, played a role in accelerating emigration processes, which are still damaging local labour supply and economic development in many regions.
The author discusses different definitions of social justice related to equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. It is argued that, in the territorial perspective, public policy should aim at improving the equality of opportunity by means of reducing social exclusion rather than at fighting regional disparities in the standards of living. What is challenged is the interpretation of the relationship between political preferences and the core–periphery division of Poland into Northern and Western Territories on the one hand and Eastern and South-Eastern regions on the other, as presented by R. Perdał et al. (2020).
The article presents the results of a questionnaire received in Autumn 2013 from over 1,300 Polish municipalities whose population does not exceed 50 thousand people. The material obtained from this questionnaire offers exact data concerning the performance of local governments in promoting local economic development, as well as opinions and values shared by these governments. The research is related to a similar undertaking performed in mid-1990s, and confirms earlier hypotheses indicating that spatial differentiation of performance of the local governments in Poland has deep historical roots.
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.
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.
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.
The article gives the description and analysis of regional ownership changes in Poland at the end of 2004 with close attention to the privatization process. The research proves that in both dimensions - the whole-Poland and regional there have not been noticed any dominant privatization methods, though in particular voivodships there are some differences concerning their usage frequency mostly determined by the number and profile of state enterprises from particular voivodships. The privatization analysis in a regional aspect reveals an area differentiation of the process advancement.
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the importance of innovation in the formation of regions of development and those of economic stagnation in Poland. The test procedure adapted by the authors consists of two stages. In the ?rst one, the authors use cluster analysis to group voivodeships into two categories according to the strength and weakness of their economies, on the basis of socio-economic development indicators, structured according to the following aspects: (1) population and settlement, (2) the structure of the economy and the job market, (3) technical infrastructure and easy access, and (4) the ?nancial situation and wealth. In the second stage the authors use canonical analysis to identify the relationship between regional differences in the level of innovation and the distribution of development and stagnation regions in Poland. The results of the analysis shows a strong correlation between the level of innovativeness of a region and its level of socio-economic development in all highlighted aspects of this process, particularly in the relationship between the level of innovation development of a region and its ?nancial situation and wealth.
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.
In Western Europe, the model of local government has been changing in the previous decades: from a council-committee model to more executive-oriented ones, like the parliamentary and the presidential models. Political leadership lies at the heart of many of the recent institutional reforms of local government. An explicit aim of these reforms has been to strengthen the executive power, and to provide strong, visible and effective leadership. For example, the position of the mayor in Britain and Germany and of the board in the Netherlands has changed. The direct election of mayors is one of the ways to strengthen the political executive. Not all countries are undergoing such kind of transformation. In some of them, changes have been restricted to few municipalities. Others have been relatively immune to this international trend towards institutional reforms.
“Zombie developments”, i.e. the problem of unfinished development projects, is an unrecognised phenomenon in Poland. In the USA, research on the causes, consequences and actions aimed to reduce the nuisance has been conducted for years. Therefore, the aim of this article is to show, through case studies, that the problem of “zombie developments” also occurs in Poland, causing many negative consequences for various entities. At the same time, this study is intended to help identify the causes of this phenomenon in Poland.
The article deals with determinants of efficient absorption of European Union`s structural funds by local authorities entities. It focuses on factors connected with civil society that distinguish different regions. As it was broadly recognized and explored, the "basis of civil society is the social capital of a region. Social capital includes networks and relationships between people that transmit their shared attitudes and values and therefore influences on structures of common initiatives undertaken by individuals and different groups
in order to fulfill local societies` needs. The author studies to what extent social capital of different regions conditioned by cultural factors influences institutional efficiency of local authorities in Poland in relation to absorption of pre-accession fund SAPARD.
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 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.
The article analyzes the problem of delays in the preparation of local spatial development plans in Polish communes. Data from the annual survey sent to local governments and carried out in cooperation with the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology and the Statistics Poland were used. On this basis, the categories of communes in which there is highly possible to identify occurring of planning works prolongation (referred to in the article as delays in drawing up plans), as well as its reasons, were identified. No territorial differentiation in this scope was found. The basic differentiation is related to the population of communes, i.e. the larger the commune in this respect, the greater the delays are. The interviews obtained from 16 communes (at 68 over 50,000 inhabitants, where the highest number of delays in preparing plans was identified) show that the main reasons for delays include problems related to public consultations and arrangements of draft plans, changing legal regulations, and staff shortages in commune offices. The article shows how these issues are related to the broader problems of the Polish spatial planning system. Further research directions were also proposed.
This text addresses three key issues presented in the article by Perdał et al. (2020) and in the polemic by Bolesław Domański, published in this issue of Studia Regionalne i Lokalne: territorial aspects of social justice, the relationships between territorial differentiation of socio-economic phenomena and political attitudes and behaviour in Poland, and the problem of meeting the requirements of social justice in relation to territorial systems that are in a particularly difficult situation, mainly due to their depopulation.
Regional differentiation of the state may be caused by geopolitical factors. Different European states have seen the formation of so-called ideological regions. In Germany, such a region was Prussia and in Poland – East Borderland (Kresy Wschodnie). Both of them were relatively undeveloped, and peripherally situated. These features were accompanied by strong cultural position that is great significance of regional problems in cultural circulation of Germany and Poland. An analysis of long-term processes shows that after Germany’s reunion, Prussian areas play the same economical role as in the 19th century.
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.
The work described here has sought to investigate differences between the statistical features of large (annual) datasets of laboratory results from 23 regions of Poland. Collections of results for total protein, haemoglobin, cholesterol and glucose levels were analyzed. An original computer method called JEG, devised at the Institute of Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering of the Polish Academy of Sciences was used. Differences in mean values ranged from –2.81 to 2.01 standard deviations from the mean value for all results. The dependence of results on the sex and age classes differed greatly in the two extreme regions. In the comprehensive valuation of regions, the north-west region stood out in a positive sense, while the Wielkopolska region fared surprisingly poorly, and Upper Silesia and the north-east were also far from ideal. This situation in the Malopolska region looked extremely serious. The usefulness of the method was demonstrated by the research carried out, so it would seem advisable for the investigation to be continued with, in order that the picture for the country as a whole might be made complete.
The paper discusses the development of gated and guarded housing estates in Poland`s capital, Warsaw. It contains a presentation of recent empirical findings based on a series of field research carried out since the 1990s in Warsaw, with a special focus on its largest residential district of Ursynow. Detailed mappings of the researched housing estates are included, which evidence their rapid spread in the district. An attempt at classifying the housing estates according to different clusters of their physical design is made. A functional analysis of their physical features is carried out against the background of a global discourse of in/security which is presumed to play a major role in the development of contemporary cities. However, several local factors, which have a bearing on gating the city of Warsaw, are also reflected upon.
The present article aims to determine which factors contributed most to a differentiation of productivity levels of Polish voivodeships in the years 1998-2008. The author applied a non-parametric DEA method (Data Envelopment Analysis) and the Malmquist productivity index. The use of the latter allowed the author to distinguish three components of changes in productivity: changes in relative efficiency, technological progress and accumulation of real capital. As a result, sources of changes of productivity in the studied time period were found and recommendations for regional policies were formulated.
The paper discusses the findings from a survey conducted on representative samples from three historically dissimilar regions of Poland (Eastern Poland, Galicia, western and northern regions) and two in Ukraine (western and eastern Ukraine). It outlines the results of analyses investigating regional disparities in Poland and Ukraine, and similarities shared by all the five regions in terms of different aspects of local and national identity, taking into account the role of objective factors affecting regional disparities (mainly urbanisation rates). A series of cluster analyses has proven that the area of Poland is much more homogeneous than that of Ukraine. Likewise, western Ukrainians showed more similarity to the inhabitants of eastern and south-eastern regions of Poland than to the eastern parts of Ukraine.
The aim of the paper is to present spatial variation of social capital in Poland, especially in relation to historical differences between various regions (resulting from the country’s partitions and border changes) and the level of urbanization. Previous studies indicate that such variation exists. However, they were carried out on the basis of declarations, an approach which has its drawbacks. This study uses a novel approach to assessing social capital: observing the behaviour of a study group using experimental economics, used in conjunction with a questionnaire which enables us to study the intention-behaviour gap. The study group consisting of 1540 individuals indicates very little variation between the regions. However, there are differences concerning the gap between declarations and behaviour in questions related to trust, trustworthiness, and cooperation, and our results confirm the conclusions from previous studies only weakly.
The author of this article describes residential segregation of foreigners in Barcelona. She presents some theoretical considerations, makes statistical calculations pertaining to the problem, and defines causal factors of residential segregation. What is important, residential segregation in Barcelona may be far deeper than in other cities because of the relatively strong separatism in Catalonia and the required knowledge of the Catalan language. These factors make full access to local labour market very difficult for immigrants and lead to their marginalization. In the statistical calculations a measure of residential segregation (Duncan, Duncan 1955) is used which allows a comparison of the situation in Barcelona and in other cities, as well as an analysis of changes in Barcelona in recent years.
Competitiveness is a key factor determining the development of a region and hence the standard of living of its inhabitants, and human capital is one of the most important factors enabling improvement of regional competitiveness. The aim of the presented research is to analyse the spatial differentiation of the level of human capital in the regions of the European Union (EU) in relation to their level of competitiveness. The results show significant disproportions in this respect, especially between the so-called old and new EU. The higher levels of human capital in the old EU regions were also generally accompanied by a higher level of competitiveness. In the long run, this will lead to an increase in regional disparities in development.
Theory and empirical literature relates educational quality to two main explanatory factors: intergenerational transfer of human capital and the quality of schools, school composition and economic conditions. Based on these findings a model explaining territorial differentiation of educational quality is proposed. The dependent variable is test score of 6th grade students, averaged at municipality level. As it turns out, educational outcome is highly conditioned on local human capital stock. The role of traditionally meant school quality (resources) is minor (although higher in rural areas than in cities. Average school outcome differs significantly along historical divisions of Poland, not only in levels, but also in parameters of determining function. Legacies of the past and related socioeconomic processes have a substantial impact on the sensitivity of educational quality to different explanatory factors.
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.
Many authors claim that regional differences in average student achievements in Poland are partly determined by the cultural factors and cannot be fully explained by uneven spending on education or by reproduction of human capital between generations. The aim of this article is to better understand this phenomenon by studying the institutional aspects of Poland’s education system during its formation back in the 19th century, when Poland remained partitioned between the three empires: Prussian, Russian, and Austrian. It turns out that one fundamental difference between the early education system under the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian rule may concern the degree of social acceptance of the school, teacher status, and the role of education as a lever of social advancement. Another important factor is the perception of educational goals either in terms of acquisition of practical skills, or of personal formation. In this respect, there was a clear difference between Galicia (Austrian partition), where the curriculum was focused on the humanities, and other partitions (particularly Prussia), where schools were more linked to the economy.
The paper attempts to analyze the intensity and regional differentiation of uses of the noble heritage and its social reception. It is based on a survey conducted on representative groups of students in the Kraków, Poznań, and Warsaw urban areas. The key question of the study was the scale and reception of the milieu of the direct heirs of the landowning and aristocratic elites in the three main Polish cities. The results point to the largest presence of that group in Warsaw, which may be seen as a paradoxical finding given the image of Warsaw as the most socially open city, with the highest rate of social advance based on meritocratic principles. The paper proposes two interpretations of that phenomenon, in particular one based on the crucial role of the cultural capital in the former Russian zone of the 19th-century Poland. It is also related to the fact that the results point to successful integration of the old feudal elites in the modern intelligentsia elite.
The article presents the regional differentiation of several phenomena economic, social, political of the Polish space. It is striking to notice that the patterns of these differentiations are very similar, which proves a well-known thesis of mutual interrelationships that exist between several dimensions of development. The historical underpinnings of these differentiations prove once again that they are the product of "long duration". Both these characteristics the similarity of differentiations and their historical roots lead to a conclusion that the regional policy should assume a modest attitude, since it can change the objective reality only gradually and to some extent. The article ends with some extent. The article ends with some suggestions for this policy.
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.
The aim of the article is to determine the level of urbanness as regards the physiognomy of those settlements which, since 1990, the beginning of systemic transformation, have obtained the status of towns for the first time. The qualitative features of built-up areas were defined using the indicator showing the share of farm buildings, and height using the indicator showing the number of dwellings per residential building. In this way, a group of new towns with a typical rural physiognom existing in Poland (Glinojeck, Radłów, Świątniki Górne) was obtained, and settlements centres with unfavourable synthetic index values in the Zachodniopomorskie Voivodship (Gościno, Stepnica) were specified. Their example demonstrates the imperfection of the requirements and suggests that the procedure for granting urban status should to a greater extent take into account the physiognomy of potential towns and verify that aspect of urbanness.
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.
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.
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.
The paper discusses the development of gated and guarded housing estates in the Polish capital city of Warsaw. It contains a presentation of recent empirical findings based on a series of field research carried out since the 1990s in the city with a special focus on its largest residential district of Ursynów. Detailed mappings of the researched housing estates are included, which evidence their rapid spread in the district. An attempt at classifying the housing estates according to different clusters of their physical design is made. A functional analysis of their physical features is carried out against the background of a global discourse of in/security which is presumed to play a major role in the development of contemporary cities. However, several local factors, which have a bearing on gating the city of Warsaw, are also reflected upon.
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.
This article presents the opinions of residents of the immediate surroundings of three Brownfield Site Urban Regeneration Projects completed in Łódź (Poland) in the years 2006–2016, i.e. Manufaktura (textile industry facilities transformed into a mall), “Lofts at Scheibler” (a former spinning plant transformed into residential buildings with accompanying services) and EC1 (adaptation of a former EC1 power plant for cultural and educational purposes), and their impact on their immediate environment. The article presents the results of questionnaire surveys conducted by the author in 2017 on 587 respondents residing within a walking distance, i.e. up to 500 m from the above-mentioned investment projects.
The issue of political leadership is widely studied and described in the literature. It should be noted that this problem can be analyzed both at the institutional and the individual level. The institutional factors determine the way of selecting local leaders and the scope of their competence. The individual features, on the other hand, create a leadership style. Cities have a presidential system with a strong mayor. In the case of cohabitation, though, this system can be destabilized because, instead of peaceful institutional co-existence, the institutions may be in conflict. After the local elections of 2014, half of the Polish municipalities had to confront the problem of cohabitation. The aim of this paper is to present the question of local leadership in the context of cohabitation.
