Suburbanisation represents one of the most important contemporary problems facing large urban agglomerations. An analysis of the development of urban agglomerations in Central-Eastern Europe, and especially Poland, leads to the observation that this problem is not particularly advanced in any of them. The aim of this article has thus been to examine how relevant it might be to consider the suburbanisation stage in large Polish agglomerations, as a permanent feature of the Klaassen/Paelinck and van den Berg models. Specifically, the article focuses on Poland's seven largest agglomerations, though there is a particular emphasis on the Katowice conurbation. The essence of the study lay in the identification of differences in the population balance between these agglomerations, and above all, between their cores and outer zones. The study also included data on the structure characterising out-migrations. A consequence of the study was to draw attention to the apparent diversity of the Katowice conurbation, the only one in Poland to record a population decline in both the core area and the outer zone. This specificity was explained mainly by the drivers of polycentricity and post-industrialism. In other agglomerations, these elements were either absent altogether or were involved in separate shaping of urban regional space.
This analysis investigates medium-sized towns in Poland, i.e. those with a population between 20–100 thousand, located up to 100 km away from the main city of the agglomeration. The aim of this article is to compare the level of socio-economic development of Polish towns depending on their location in relation to the main city in the largest agglomerations in 1998 and 2013. Three zones of distance from the main city of each agglomeration have been taken into consideration: a. the inner zone, reaching up to 25 km from the main city; b. the outer zone located at a distance of 25 to 50 km from the main city, and c. the peripheral zone, located at a distance of 50 to 100 km from the main city and including the medium-size towns located outside the agglomeration system. This analysis of the distribution of medium-sized towns and their level of socio-economic development has shown various levels of changes which depend on the distance from the main city of the agglomeration. In 1998, the highest level of development of the medium-sized towns was recorded in towns outside of these agglomeration systems, i.e. those located most remotely from the main city (peripheral zone). Most of the medium-sized towns are situated at a distance of 50–100 km from Warszawa, Kraków, Łódź, Lublin, Gdańsk and have developed their own local, or even regional labour markets and some of them have even provided administrative functions in the past as voivodeship capitals. Only in the Poznań agglomeration, the level of development of medium-sized towns was higher in the immediate surroundings of the main city (25 km). The medium-sized towns in all zones of the distance from the main city in the Wrocław agglomeration represented a similar level of development. By 2013, the level of development of the medium-sized towns in the peripheral zone in all investigated settlement systems had decreased, with a significant improvement in the level of development of the towns in the immediate surroundings of the main city. Such situation occurs especially in the conurbation of Gdańsk and the agglomerations of Warszawa, Kraków and Poznań. This shows that the largest cities of Poland are the main engines of economic development by stimulating their surroundings and their impact on the surrounding areas. Unfortunately, the towns located in the marginal zones of several agglomerations (the zone 25–50 km away from the main city) experience certain disadvantages, such as the process of “the backwash effect”. Furthermore, the lack of developmental impulses is observed in many medium-sized towns at the distance of 50-100 km from the main city of the agglomeration.
Brownfields are remnants of the functional and spatial transformations of urban areas in Poland. They are particularly abundant in old industrial districts, based on coal mining and metallurgy. The aim of this study is to identify the transformation directions and functional changes of brownfields in the former Upper Silesian Industrial Region in southern Poland, which has evolved into the Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolis (GZM) through the process of socio-economic transformation. The study makes use of the χ2 test of independence and Cramer’s V as a post-test, and the method of in-depth interviews. The results indicate that the most popular new functions of post-industrial sites are production and services. When we consider large brownfields such as, in particular, disused mine dumps, dumping sites, settling ponds and workings, the most popular new form of land use is green spaces. Moreover, the study shows that the size of brownfields impacts their new forms of land use.
Many towns and cities in the world experience the process of urban shrinkage. This may be observed in localities of different types and of all sizes, including a large group of post-industrial towns and cities of Central and Eastern Europe. One of the districts affected by the urban shrinkage process is the Katowice conurbation in Poland, which may serve as a good example to consider the potential for introducing the idea of sustainable development. In this perspective, sustainability is considered as a specific challenge within the progress of regional transformation, but also a target concept for a large urban region to be followed throughout the evolution and at particular stages of the change. In the discussed region it is all the more important because it is followed by phenomena related to post(industrialism), relatively high pollution levels compared with the European average and a polycentric system of settlement. This paper states that the current urban policy implemented in the Katowice conurbation does not seem to have any palpable effect reversing the trend of depopulation in the region, which seems to stem from the fact that numerous initiatives undertaken in the area are ‘illusory’ and often unnecessary and unjustified. This also applies to activities embracing and fostering the idea of sustainability. With regard to the latter issue, the main concern refers to overinvestment and wasting the measures to reduce low emissions and to make savings in the heat supply system for residential buildings. The Authors proposed a new vision for the transformation of the region. It will respond to the current and expected needs of the residents, while making allowances for multidimensional sustainable development, particularly in terms of housing policy and spatial development. This concept primarily focuses on a new balance between the areas covered by low-rise and high-rise buildings and the reorganisation of the structure of the local economy.
The problem of depopulation in towns is present in most European countries. In Central and Eastern Europe it emerged primarily after the political transformation at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Despite the often-significant demographic decline, the problem did not immediately become part of agenda-setting in towns' local strategies. This paper discusses the above topics, focusing on the principal reasons for trivialization of depopulation in local policies of towns in the Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. In the discussion an emphasis is placed on the fact that in this region the issue of depopulation and urban shrinkage 'vied' with another consequence of transformation: unemployment. Because the Silesian Voivodeship is one of the largest regional labour markets in Europe, the confrontation of the two phenomena in local and regional policy took an original course characterized by phenomena such as policy taboo, trivialization, informal agenda-setting and mismatch strategies. The paper shows that while all the mentioned attributes of urban policy with respect to depopulation may be regarded as negative, considering the gigantic scale of the unemployment and depopulation phenomena and lack of experience in urban governance, they were a 'natural' reaction of the local authorities to the accumulated problems. It also indicates that in the studied region issues such as strongly marked morphological polycentricity and its (post)mining and (post)industrial nature were also not without significance.
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