The processes of incorporation and secession of urban and suburban municipalities: The case of Poland

ABSTRACT

The aim of the article is to explain the phenomena of mergers and territorial disintegration of Polish towns and cities from three perspectives: social, economic and spatial-primal. Administrative border changes are fundamental components of local urban policy guidelines in countries that have experienced a dual history in the socialist and post-socialist periods, such as Poland. The main method of the authors research was the application of statistical and cartographic methods focused on measuring quantitative administrative changes in urban areas and their demographic effects. The scope of the research covered all towns in Poland existing in the years 1945–2018. Since the changes in the administrative boundaries of cities particularly concern the rural areas in the vicinity of large cities, the suburban municipalities surrounding urban centres were analysed too. The findings underline the deterministic role of political systems in the territorial expansion of towns and cities, and indicates their role for current planning decisions. The authors conclude that noticeable differences between two analysed periods have had at least two significant causes. First, the political and economic systems determining the changes differed, and second, each system was accompanied by differing directions of economic development and therefore also different ‘urbogenic’ forces.

EDITORS:

• Arnt Fløysand

KEYWORDS:

• Poland
• urban area
• urban forces
• urban incorporation
• urban secession

ORCID

Robert Szmytkie http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6415-9342

Robert Krzysztofik http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1433-0866

Notes

1. In Poland, the term city refers to settlements with more than 100,000 inhabitants, the seats of city counties, and in which the president (not the mayor) of the city presides.

2. The Socialist Bloc (as well as the Eastern Bloc and the Communist Bloc) was a group of Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia under the hegemony of the Soviet Union (USSR) during the Cold War (1947–1991) in opposition to the non-Communist Western Bloc.

3. The majority of Polish place names mentioned in the article are shown on Fig. 1 and some are shown on Fig. 7 and Fig. 8. The only places not shown are Bnin, Radzionków, Sławków, and Wodzisław Śląski, as well as Bieruń, Imielin, Lędziny, Miasteczko Śląskie, and Wojkowice, which are mentioned in endnote 6.

4. Urbogenic forces refer to the making of urban space and involve both centripetal and centrifugal forces that act in socio-economic systems. The centripetal forces create central functions, whereas the centrifugal forces create specialized functions of towns.

5. In 1973, the settlements were liquidated and replaced with collective municipalities, while in 1975, 49 provinces were established in place of the former 17.

6. The towns are: Bieruń, Imielin, Lędziny, Miasteczko Śląskie, Pszów, Radlin, Radzionków, Rydułtowy, Sławków, Wojkowice (all in Silesia Province), Międzyzdroje (West Pomerania Province), Poręba (Lesser Poland Province), and Zagórz (Subcarpathia Province)

7. A settlement was an intermediate category of administrative unit between a city and a village, and resembled a small town on account of its nature and size.