Current Changes in the Location of Industry in the Suburban Zone of A Post‐Socialist City. Case Study of Wrocław (Poland)

Abstract

In the time of post-industrialism, the increasing costs of life, scientific and technical development, an increase in the level of education and ecological barriers resulted in the decentralization of economic activity. One of the consequences of this is an increase in the locational attractiveness of the suburban zone. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the contemporary processes concerning location and concentration of industry in a post-socialist city illustrated with an example of the city of Wrocław. The conducted research enabled us to determine the functional specialisation of gminas (municipalities), which served as the basis for the construction of a simplified model of the suburban zone in the post-industrial period. In order to diagnose the extent of development and the level of spatial differentiation of the process of industrial activity concentration, the authors applied a location quotient (LQ) as well as a taxonomic method of linear ordering of distances from so-called development pattern.

Suburbanisation processes within and outside the city: The development of intra-urban suburbs in Wrocław, Poland

“…In the case of the larger cities of Central and Eastern Europe, the presence of large non-urbanised areas, particularly agricultural land, which can now serve as potential space for new construction investments, results from the features of territorial development of the cities transformation and intensified in the 2000s. Moreover, in this case suburbanisation is manifested not only in the development of individual residential construction in the suburban zone (so-called residential suburbanisation), but also has the nature of commercial suburbanisation, with the effect of business activity development in the near suburban zone (Brezdeń and Szmytkie, 2019). Processes occurring in the surroundings of Wrocław are thus like those observed in the surroundings of other large cities in Central and Eastern Europe (compare: Sýkora, 1999;Lowe and Tsenkova, 2003;Soós and Ignits, 2003;Hamilton et al, 2005;Nuissl and Rink, 2005;Hirt and Stanilov, 2007;Sýkora and Ouředníček, 2007;Brade et al, 2009;Kubeš, 2013;Martyniuk et al, 2016).…”

“…Increased interest in the phenomenon of suburbanisation in post-socialist countries results primarily from the scale and dynamics of the process itself, which to some extent served to make up some of the delays about similar processes observed in Western European countries, largely over the whole post-war period (Brezdeń and Szmytkie, 2019). Thus, it may be said that in the period the development and scale of suburbanisation in Europe was strongly dependent on the a Institute of Geography and Regional Development, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland (*corresponding author: R. Szmytkie, e-mail: robert.szmytkie@uwr.edu.pl)…”

The impact of residential suburbanization on changes in the morphology of villages in the suburban area of Wrocław, Poland

“…The political transformation of the 1990s and the resulting social and economic transitions initiated the second phase of suburbanization around Wrocław (see SCHNEIDER-SLIWA, 2006;LEETMAA ET AL., 2009;KUBEŠ, 2013;ZBOROWSKI & RAŹNIAK, 2013). The scale and dynamics of this process are, worthy of note (BREZDEŃ & SZMYTKIE, 2019), manifested by the intensity and spatial scope of the construction traffic in the suburban zone of Wrocław, and the resulting degree of landscape transformation. The emergence of a specific (transitional) suburban landscape with features of both urban and rural landscape has already been referred to in literature some years ago (BAŃSKI, 2008;GONDA-SOROCZYŃSKA, 2009;STASZEWSKA, 2012).…”

The Cyclical Nature of the Territorial Development of Large Cities: A Case Study of Wrocław (Poland)

“…66 Wrocław has recently seen a rapid development in the suburban area and in peripheral districts, as well as an increase in connections between the city and its close neighborhood (Figure 11). 67 Whether (or rather when) this cycle of spatial development of the city will end with the extension of its administrative boundaries remains an open question.…”