Given the importance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the European economy, it is essential to have adequate information about the various factors that determine their choice of location. However, the size of a company is often an aspect not covered in theoretical studies and empirical research on industrial locations and urban planning. This article examines the place of residence as a stimulator of SME development in suburbs. Multidisciplinary research carried out in the Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot Metropolitan Area, known as the Tricity, confirms this trend. The location determinants of SMEs in suburban areas were identified using a questionnaire. The survey was conducted in 251 enterprises located in seven municipalities with the highest suburbanisation rates within the Tricity. The study confirms that the municipalities characterised by the highest intensity of suburbanisation processes have higher business activity than other municipalities. Location decisions were largely made by business owners in line with behavioural theory. This means that SME owners more often consider personal factors than cost or demand factors. From the perspective of an entrepreneur, living conditions, the quality of public space, education and healthcare are significant.
For over 25 years, Poland has been undergoing major political, social and economic transformations. The country's system changed from a planned economy to a free-market, neoliberal one. The effects of these changes are visible on several levels, including the field of urban planning, where they manifested themselves as the birth of the suburbanization process. In the field of economics, it could be noticed that since 1989, the SME sector has been awakening very dynamically. Correlation of the parallel development of these two phenomena has led the authors to pose a question about the emerging potential links between the occurring processes i.e.-the process of the urban sprawl and the development of the SME sector. In this context, a thesis was established about emergence of the so-called "entrepreneurship nests", made up of a dispersed urban tissue with residential functions intermixed and high intensification of economic entrepreneurship, in the Polish suburb areas. To identify the research problem, a two-pronged research in the fields of urban planning and economic research was adopted. The Gdansk Metropolitan Area (GMA), consisting of three central cities and 31 towns and adjacent municipalities, was the subject of research. Municipalities with the highest suburbanization rate were established on the basis of the migration balance. Subsequently, business entities in those areas were identified with their business activity measured by the location quotient (LQ). The results of the classification of the units within GMA (cities, town village communities, village communities) according to the migration rate and the construction activity index indicated 7 communities with the highest intensity of the suburbanization process. Our analysis of LQ in all units within GMA (cities, town village community, village communities) and its core cities allowed identification of the communities with the highest SME activity. Additionally, based on statistical data of selected suburban areas, 2 municipalities (Chwaszczyno, Straszyn) with the highest entrepreneur potential were found, which we refer to as the nests of entrepreneurship. Our study confirms that communes characterized by the highest intensity of the suburbanization processes present higher business activity than other communes. However, this is just preliminary study, which offers incomplete explanation of the suburbanization process in a metropolitan area in Poland and will be further developed, using the CATI method, in additional studies.
Članek je bil napisan v okviru projekta UMO-2013/09/B/HS4/01175, ki ga je financiral poljski državni znanstveni center.
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