Growing spatial mobility is a challenge to cities in many ways. It brings positive development impulses and social diversity, but at the same time contributes to a decomposition of existing structures and is a challenge to planning. Under the conditions of the obvious signum temporis -an intensifying hyper-diversity and a growing liquidity of values with weakening social bonds and a less evident physical rootedness, the question should be posed whether urban places can still sustain their interactive local identity based on social solidarity, mutual support and trust. The problem is tested on the example of two districts of Warsaw -Praga Północ and Ursynów. In the search for regularities in the relation between the level of social diversity on one side and social solidarity on the other, the analysis focuses on the areas characterised by fundamental differences in their historic development, built environment and social structure.
Key wordssocial diversity • social solidarity • post-socialist city • Warsaw • Praga Północ • Ursynów "The cross-links that enable a district to function as a Thing are neither vague nor mysterious. They consist of working relationships among specific people, many of them without much more in common than that they share a fragment of geography" (Jacobs 1961:54)
Small towns’ functions are exposed to pressure stemming from globalization and metropolitan development. In North-East Poland, the study area, they are at the same time affected by the restructuring of rural economy. As in other peripheral regions in Europe, they are subject to de-population trends. The analysis of socioeconomic functions performed by small towns reveals functional polarization – a division line between local service centers and those towns additionally performing specialized functions. Whereas some towns succeed in sustaining, or attracting, often niche type industrial and service activities, others remain to rely upon the provision of private and public services for the surrounding rural places. By referring to R. Camagni’s conceptualization of territorial competitiveness, the role of selected territorial capital components – local entrepreneurship, social capital and local leadership is identified in the observed development of socio-economic functions of supra-local market range. The findings reveal the focusing, by the successful local firms upon the specificity of market offer, its linking with local tradition, skills, and natural resources. On the conceptual side, at a town level, they indicate the importance of mutual interlocking of individual endogenous factors in the development and the sustenance of competitive functions.
Abstract. In the paper patterns of social interaction are examined, as shaped by an inflow of new residents to an inner-city subarea characterized by a low socio-economic status and featuring ethnic homogeneity. The empirical material is derived from a set of semi-structured interviews conducted by the authors with the area's inhabitants, and with representatives of local governance arrangement and initiatives. The analysis is based on the concepts of social hyper-diversity, social networks, the concept of place and the research on gentrification. Sub-categories of residents are distinguished by referring to both functional and emotional types of social relations they enter into. The findings point at the formation of networks of integrative nature, mostly such that are supported by the use of common urban space, across the social categories identified, but also to limits and obstacles to social integration, both general and those specific to the case study area.
Artykuł opisuje proces gentryfikacji na Pradze-Północ, który prowadzi do hiperróżnorodności tej dzielnicy. Badania pokazują, że zróżnicowanie społeczne może mieć zarówno pozytywny, jak i negatywny wpływ na mobilność społeczną, choć żeby uruchomić jego potencjał do pozytywnych zmian, ważne jest wcześniejsze zadbanie o integrację społeczną w danym regionie. Hiperróżnorodność ma także dwojaki wpływ na przedsiębiorczość na Pradze. Z jednej strony obniża próg wejścia, ułatwiając założenie biznesu, który jest w stanie się utrzymać, ale jednocześnie znacząco utrudnia wytworzenie szerokiego grona stałej klienteli, która dawałaby przedsiębiorcom poczucie stabilności i możliwość rozwoju.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.