Depopulation of rural areas at the local scale. The case of the Lublin Voivodeship

Abstract

The article focuses on the issue of the structure and organization of the rural settlement network. An original research procedure was developed in the field of local settlement analysis, i.e. the focus was on changes taking place in the lowest­level local government units. The issue of depopulation was addressed on an intra­municipal scale. The following research questions were formulated: does depopulation affect all settlement units in rural communes? What types of communes can we distinguish in terms of demographic differences between towns? and what are the reasons for the differences between settlement units? The considerations refer to the concept of key settlements, which is important for spatial planning. Therefore, a hypothesis was formulated which assumed that the number of communes in which, despite general depopulation, there is an increase in some settlements, is large enough to determine the basic regularities of settlement transformations. The topic discussed in the article has important implications for the current and future organization of local settlement structures. It was found that in the vast majority of communes in the Lublin Voivodeship, all rural settlements lost residents in the first two decades of the 21st century. It has been noticed that demographic growth in some towns in the areas of municipalities that are generally depopulating is taking place in the suburban zones of smaller centers, although it is difficult, due to the non­common nature of the phenomenon, to determine spatial regularities in this respect. In our opinion, it is also worth paying attention to villages that do not officially have urban status, although they show many such features. Some of them have received city rights in recent years. The development of these settlements in rural areas in the context of the concept of key settlements should be thoroughly examined in subsequent studies in this field.