The paper provides a comparative analysis of so-called land management and spatial development studies of the biggest Polish cities regarding the scope of functional and morphological delimitation and zoning. Due to the lack of detailed regulations, individual cities developed their own zoning methodologies. The authors of such studies take into account three factors: functional, morphological and administrative aspects. The zoning in the analysed cities is determined by individual factors which vary from city to city.
The quality of the delivery system along with theoretical underpinnings, development strategy and country`s institutional system has decisive influence on EU regional policy implementation. Analysis of the management system of the Integrated Regional Development Programme shows that there is more weak than strong points. Main weaknesses can be described as: not transparent, politically sensitive project selection and time consuming procedures, unclear allocation of responsibility, high costs imposed on beneficiaries, low managerial skills, and, finally, conflicting solutions with existing legal distribution of powers between regional government and regional representative of the central government. Implementation effects of 2004-2005 confirm that delivery mechanism fails to meet expectations.
In the paper we present two neoclassical growth models of Solow-Swan type: with regional budget deficit and without it. The main aim of the paper is to analyze the convergence of regions in Poland towards their stable steady-states and to check the speed of this convergence. We use the method of calibration of parameters in models and numerical methods for calculating capital and output per worker in stable steady-states. The computations were made for the new administration division of Poland. On the base of empirical results we make conclusions about future distribution of wealth among regions and about potential possibilities of growth in regions. We also try to answer the question if in the future there will be convergence or divergence of welfare among regions of Poland.
The aim of the paper is to present the impact of ICT on the spatial behaviour of the main actors (households, enterprises, public administration) that constitute the regional economic system. The results are based on the regional case study developed within the ESPON 1.2.3 project. The research has been conducted in 2006 in the Podlaskie Voivodship – an example of peripheral Polish region. In particular the analysis covers the range and effects of new technologies implementation both in private and public sectors.
The article deals with the analysis of the anticipated middle-term demand for dwellings in Poland. On the basis of the empirical research this demand has been considered as being determined by the two groups of factors: demographic and economic, together with the level of the state of fulfillment of the basic housing needs. The finale set consisted of eight factors of the diverse wage. These were: the percentage of deficient flats counted as the difference between the number of households and the number of flats, the average space floor per capita, the population growth in 1998-2002, the percentage of people in the age from 20 to 39, prognosis of the number of inhabitants in 2002-2010, the unemployment rate, average wages, and the number of the business entities per 1000 inhabitants. The analyze has been carried out in the commune-scale pattern and can be useful for spatial planners and persons professionally involved in the housing market.
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.
Stanisław Owsiak, Roman Kucharczyk, Krzysztof Stępniak
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.
The purpose of this article is to analyse both the allocation of the financial support from the 2nd instalment of the CGFLI in the Opolskie Voivodeship and the debate in this region over accusations of the clientelistic allocation of this fund. According to the first hypothesis, the local governments affiliated with the German minority are not treated as politically neutral; therefore, they might be vulnerable to discrimination in allocation of the fund. The second hypothesis claims that the peculiarity of the local political patterns in the voivodeship, which is characterised by the low level of partisanship, gives the ruling party’s regional politicians the opportunity to undermine the thesis on clientelistic distribution of the CGFLI. The research has shown that the local governments affiliated with the German minority have a lower chance of getting financial support when compared to the non-partisan ones. Additionally, the study has distinguished five modes of counter-arguing against the thesis on clientelism, employed by the ruling party politicians of the region.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of raising and spending EU funds by the local government in Lublin in the first period of the Polish accession (2004–2006). The criteria of effectiveness we use are: increase of city competitiveness (attractiveness) and creating conditions for diffusion of development processes into the region. Compared to other Polish cities, Lublin had trouble raising EU funds. Besides, there was no innovative strategic vision of their spending. As a result, EU Cohesion Policy improved Lublin’s competitiveness and contributed to the development of the relations between the city and its region only to a small extent.
Competitive advantage of a region, beside its natural resources, is determined to a large extent by the quality and competence of local and regional authorities. In order to benefit from region`s full potential, it is essential to involve the authorities into efficient information policy. It is reflected by the results of a Poland-wide research, where 67% of respondents perceived that it was the creation of an information system enabling fast and accurate decision-making that was the key factor determining efficient management of a company. It is therefore important to analyse how the Western Pomeranian companies see the role and activities of local authorities in this aspect. Local governments play a unique part in information delivery as they represent a group of entities which should actively affect development conditions for companies in the region, within existing legal and administrative system. The paper presents results of the research on information policy in local governments in Western Pomerania.
The article is devoted to the role of the local political elites in the process of local commune (gmina) development. The research was made in three municipalities that differ in terms of economic development and their location on the territory of Poland. The author discusses the relation between the social-economic awareness of the councillors and the commune development strategy. She confronts the strengths and weaknesses of the municipalities in question as perceived by the local decision-makers with their communal development strategies and the course of action undertaken. The analysis of the development strategies of the three communes shows different approaches to strategic planning that result from differing attitudes of the councillors towards the creation of economic progress which, in turn, have a fundamental influence on the functioning of local structures.
Article is devoted to identification of towns endangered by socio-economic degradation (marginalisation). Using the example of 10 selected towns it shows their weak and strong points and complex sources of developmental problems. Authors present and evaluate activities undertaken by town authorities. Town of Bilgoraj serves as a benchmark (positive example of successful local transformation after 1989).
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.
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 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 article seeks to identify socio-economic conditions that affect the demand of individual consumers for cars and to analyze spatial differences in these conditions. To achieve this objective, econometric modelling is conducted. The analysis was conducted in all poviats in Poland and covered the years 2010-2015. The findings show that the demand for new cars is stimulated by incomes of potential consumers and by a net in-migration, while the level of unemployment together with prices of complementary goods (especially petrol prices) negatively affect the demand for cars. Moreover, geographically weighted regression shows that the identified conditions differ across the country, which may explain the noticeable differences in the level of motorization between poviats.
The article focuses on the beliefs of the regional political elites in Poland about the models of democracy, operationalised as opinions about political representation, direct democracy and elite integration. The empirical basis is a questionnaire survey of 400 members of regional political elites carried out in 2017. The sample consists of 400 councillors of the 2014-2018 term of regional (voivodship) assemblies and town councils of big cities. The data show that an incoherence of views characterises the regional political elite: they do not form a more general vision of the democratic process, and detailed opinions on representation, direct democracy and elite integration poorly correlate with independent variables, including those describing political affiliations, i.e. party affinity or location on the left-right scale. The primary explanation for this incoherent image is the thesis about the lack of professionalisation of the regional elite.
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 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 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.
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).
The subject of this article is historical urban development, localization-specific and cultural urban heritage of the Georgian capital city of Tbilisi. All the urban development periods, from the very beginning until today, are described in a chronological order. Also, the author discusses general legal principles of urban space development applicable in this country. In all the cases, the author seeks to clarify the legislation problems and to discuss some examples of urban management of the twenty-hundred-years-old urban space. The text is based on the: (1) urban rehabilitation and revitalization documentation of Tbilisi, prepared in 2000 within an international project financed by the European Council and The Georgian Cultural Heritage Foundation, published in Strasburg in Georgian, French and English languages (Tumaniszwili 2001), (2) empirical documentation prepared in 2003–2006 within the international Project AIA and (3) historical documentation gathered in Georgian and foreign libraries in 1998–2008.
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.
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.
Rock mining is popular and characterized by the exploitation of local deposits, which are used as a bargaining chip in local economic and socio-political politics. The aim of the paper is to analyze the impact of rock mining on the local economy of Polish communes. A contextual analysis was performed of inflows to the communes’ budgets resulting from the exploitation of rock minerals, the contribution of rock mining in the creation of local jobs was assessed, and the benefits from reclamation and development of post-mining areas were estimated. To do all that, the Author used the method of indicator analysis of local government units and stochastic methods of data analysis, as well as inference based on collected data. Studies have shown that rock mining is a factor supporting the local economy. Benefits from the exploitation of rock minerals should be taken into consideration in the development of plans concerning mineral rock deposits.
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 aim of the paper is to analyze the level of economic development and its dynamics in the cities and towns in the eastern region between 1995 and 2015. The objects of the study were 54 cities and towns of the region. The source of the data for the analysis was the Local Data Bank of the Central Statistical Office. Taxonomic analysis, no-pattern method was used for the study. Ten variables were analyzed during the studied period. They were divided into those referring to budgets of municipalities/communes, national economy entities, and the labor market. As a result of the analysis, it was discovered that 50 cities and towns showed signs of development in the period. It was observed that the diversification of the level of economic development of cities and towns of the eastern region in the spatial layout did not decrease. It was also stated that the accession of Poland to the European Union had an impact on the growth of dynamics indexes of changes for the towns and cities.
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.
