Development of metropolitan areas under self-government transformation in Poland 1990-2014

Abstract

The article presents the basic issues concerning the organisation and functioning of metropolitan areas in Poland within the last 25 years. The entire article is an attempt to determine the factors that have an impact on the metropolisation of large urban agglomerations and centres related to them spatially and institutionally located within the limits of their peripheral ring. First, the change in the system and the most important aspects that influence and result from social and business transformation after 1989 was presented. With regard to metropolitan areas, the basic outline of the process of metropolisation, the legal environment, the organisation and functioning, as well as the progressive increase in the importance of metropolities were described. Today’s approach to the management of the network of environmentally interdependent and mutually cooperating sectors: public, private and non-profit, was also presented. The article also presents the conditions resulting from the country’s development policy formulated within the framework of the basic strategic documents (long- and medium-term national development strategy, the concept of national spatial planning and the regional development strategy of the country), aimed at enabling further development and evaluation of metropolitan areas arising from the new European Union Financial Framework for 2014-2020. A general analysis of the metropolitan areas identified in Poland was also made, based on Polish statistics (GUS) using available data for the period 2010-2012. The author focuses on defining the most important provisions stemming from the previously enforced and the planned government policy of promoting the idea of the regional development of integrated activities involving local government units with particular emphasis on the role of metropolitan areas in providing services and delivering products of public utility.