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.
The paper discusses the emergence of a new regional network of connectivities in the area of advanced producer services in a formerly industrial region in southern Poland. Changes in the region’s job market and the influx of foreign firm centers suggest the presence of globalization processes in the economy. Advanced producer service companies tend to cluster around the regional capital of Katowice and use the city as a gateway to other parts of the studied region. This process leads to the replacement of jobs characterized by lower qualifications with jobs requiring more advanced knowledge, new technologies, and a variety of forms of innovation. International economic networks play an increasingly large role in the entrenchment of economic globalization in the Górnośląsko-Zagłebiowska Metropolis, which has helped the city join other Polish cities in the classification of the World Cities Research Network.
In its methodological context, the article, expands on the idea of the organization of the “Silesia” superstructure. The idea of establishing a common urban organism emerged with the local governments of the Upper Silesian conurbation cities and was dictated by the need to find a way to change the traditional image of the Silesian region and its post-industrial role in the economic space of the country, as well as Europe. Therefore, in 2009, the Metropolitan Association of Upper- Silesia, an association for the initial institutionalization of “Silesia”, was registered, because “Silesia” does not hold any administrative or legal force. Such an organizational “revolution” of the Upper Silesian conurbation initiated a wide social debate, in which the arguments of both supporters and opponents of such an enterprise in the Silesian region became apparent, together with misunderstandings related to the term “metropolis”, and the idea of establishing “Silesia”. Representatives of local governments chose the more prestigious term “metropolis” as if a complex metropolisation had taken place in the Upper Silesian conurbation. It would be adequate, however, to look only for the first features of metropolitan functions in this de-industrialized and restructured region, which are going to shape the longlasting metropolisation process under the influence of globalisation.
ABSTRACT. The main aim of the article is to determine the role of services in the economies of small towns of Silesia and Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) regions. It will be achieved through the following steps: (A) characteristic of the set of towns under study, (B) determination of the share of services in their economies, and (C) description of their level of service development. The analysis rests on two criteria employed at each stage of the research: (a) that of location, which embraces the voivodships: Dolnośląskie, Opolskie, Śląskie (Silesia region) and Wielkopolskie voivodship and (b) that of size, with three classes of small towns distinguished: up to 5 thousand, 5-10 thousand, and 10-20 thousand population.
The purpose of the article is to indicate the directions and tendencies of population migrations in the selected municipalities of the metropolitan area of Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolis in the south of Poland. The inflow and outflow of population in the period of 2002-2015 and commuting in 2011 were analysed. The examined municipalities are subject to suburbanization, whereas their new habitants originate from various cities of the polycentric core. The aforementioned leads to urban sprawl and the development of dwelling function (residential) in the metropolitan area. Suburbanization predominantly occurs in the municipalities to the north of the core. In turn, commuting exhibits strong interrelations with various subcentres of the metropolis.
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