Gentrification Processes In The City

Published in: Society and Space in Contemporary Poland in Łódź University Geographical Research, edited by T.MarszałDue to the fact that gentrification is a phenomenon of a global nature, it was considered important to survey it in post-socialist city. Both scientific literature and research in Central Europe have appeared only recently therefore it was decided to examine the gentrification in Łódź. It turned out that the gentrification processes in Łódź are in the initial phase and they are carried out mostly by the local authorities, developers, private tenement owners. In Łódź academic centre a certain part in the gentrification process is played by students who choose as their residence the peripheral housing estates and the old, renovated tenements in the inner-city of Łódź. The perspective of further studies of gentrification in Łódź would be to trace the displacement of the middle class within the city, as well as the influx of new gentrifiers

Multinational Cultural Heritage In The Landscape Of Contemporary Poland

Published in: Society and Space in Contemporary Poland in Łódź University Geographical Research, edited by T.MarszałIt should also be noted that in recent years, we have been noticing the foreign influences and have not been bothered by the non-Polish elements. We can find as many foreign traces in Polish cultural landscape, as there are Polish elements all over Europe and often far away from it. Both are parts of the same world cultural heritage that is so hard to classify or include in just one culture. Poland has more than a 1000-year history of statehood, which left a number of marks in the land. Many of its historic buildings can be found in the UNESCO World Heritage List, which shows how influential cultures of different countries are on the overall European culture. The presence of many Polish monuments in the UNESCO list makes us proud, but also shows how countries unite and appreciate each other’s heritage

Urban Land Use Planning

Published in: Origin Spatial Development of Contemporary Poland in Łódź University Geographical Research, edited by T.MarszałUrban land-use planning is still one of the key questions in research conducted by the Faculty of Geography at the University of Łódź. The particular character of works conducted in Łódź derives from the strong emphasis which is put on their practical application; the basis of many publications is the need to solve emerging practical problems. It also means constant cooperation with local administration, urban planners and other people involved in the practical activity, which is easier thanks to the fact that many members of the local administration staff are graduates from the Faculty of Geography in Łódź. A serious difficulty in preparing this chapter laid in choosing appropriate publications which, due to the limited capacity, were chosen subjectively and selectively, and were classified ambiguously. An indisputable gap was left in reference to the data and research results that had never been published. Nevertheless, they constitute a great number of works created by staff members of the Faculty of Geography, adding up to over 30%. 1 It is also worth mentioning that many studies have been carried out as responses to particular needs of certain organizations, or ordered by local or national administration, as well as state institutions involved in land-use planning in Poland. The cooperation is usually temporary, based on handling particular works and achieving specific goals. They result in preparing e.g. development strategies (e.g. in towns of Inowrocław and Uniejów), projects of new administrative division (dividing Łódź into local units, delimitation of the Łódź Voivodship), land use inventory (e.g. in Aleksandrów Łódzki), city revitalisation conceptions (e.g. Pabianice), experts’ reports on changing administrative borders (Szadek, Skierniewice), cooperation of metropolitan areas (Łódź and Warsaw) and many more. Undoubtedly, the above proves the great value of the competences of the Faculty of Geography staff members

Cultural landscape of the 21st century : Geographical consideration between theory and practice

The simplest definition of landscape describes it as the physiognomy of the geographical environment. The notion cultural landscape refers to landscape that has been transformed by Man as the result of civilizational development. Cultural landscapes are extremely dynamic and ephemeral systems. Currently, we are witnessing dramatic transformation of the landscape. The processes of consumption and globalization of the landscape are happening on a mass scale in the 21st century. Many of the factors that cause these rapid changes are within the scope of interest of geography; these include analyses of the impact on the environment of mass tourism, transport, fragmentation of the space resulting from growing areas of settlements and service sites, restructuring of industry, etc. The issues discussed in the paper include: factors of landscape transformation, diversification of European landscapes in selected regions and assessment of their condition, analysis of contemporary threats to the quality of European landscapes and directions of their transformation

Tourism Space: An Attempt at a Fresh Look

In this article, the author is trying to answer the fundamental question: what is present-day tourism space like at a time of highly increasing flows of people or even a shift from the space of a ‘place’ to the space of a ‘flow’? The article puts special stress on how to define the current unique multi-functional space. The author attempts to define tourism space as a new entity, founded on poly-functionality (i.e. different functions and use of the same space both at the same time and in different seasons), multi-scale (overlapping of tourism spaces depending on the scale concerned), multi-layer, as well as the multi-motivation of its creators and users, or even multi-relativity

The genealogy of Eastern European difference: an insider’s view

The view of Eastern Europe as a locus of complex family organisation and familistic societal values has reached the status of general dogma in Western social sciences and demography. By offering an overview of almost entirely unknown scholarly achievements of Eastern Europeanists, this essay represents an attempt to persuade scholars to accept less stereotypical images of families from outside ‘Western Europe’. Well into the late 1990s, Eastern European literature on family forms remained screened off from the main current of European thought. Thus, not surprisingly, tracing the lineage of work from east of the ostensible Hajnal Line reveals the sharp differences between the findings of Eastern European researchers and the dominant assumptions of Western science. These marginalised discourses need to be integrated into mainstream research and discussion, so that scholars can better understand marriage, family, household and community patterns in Europe and elsewhere. The diversity of family forms and the rhythms of their development in historical Eastern Europe revealed in this literature also provide us with an excellent opportunity to free ourselves from a simplistic view of the continent’s familial history, and particularly from the one implied by the notion of a ‘dividing line’.family forms, historical demography, household composition, marriage

Is a post-dystopian urban future possible? Alternative scenarios for Bytom

This article follows the argument that urban dystopia is reserved not only for the sphere of the fictional but also as a state of reality that academic methods can capture and describe. Taking the example of the city of Bytom, a traditional centre of coal mining in Southern Poland, the article discusses four spheres where the dystopian present is clearly visible – namely, the four elements that led Bytom to a socio-economic and spatial collapse: depopulation, social polarisation and ghettoisation, degradation of the urban fabric and mining damage. Apart from showing empirical evidence, the article critically considers the possibilities of a post-dystopian urban future for the city. A discussion of possible policy answers to these dystopian trends is based on two possible visions of how the urban future could look. First, the semi-dystopian vision assumes that the expected direction and the results of current policies will lead to some improvement in the quality of the urban environment and the residents’ quality of life. Second, the post-dystopian future is based on an optimistic vision, which assumes that a post-dystopian future is possible. However, the desired salvation from the dystopian present will not come about through the search for new utopian visions. It will rely instead on the improvement and mitigation of some of the substantial social, economic and environmental problems that exist and continue to present an unbreakable social image

Ukrainian Issues in Geopolitical thought of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Ukrainian lands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been in proximity of great geopolitical changes several times. During that time the Ukrainian nation – due to various factors – encountered a number of “windows of opportunity” for achieving the realization of dreams about independence and national sovereignty. The author identified in the period considered four “general moments,” of which two have been completed successfully. The first of these occurred in 1990–1991, when for the first time in modern history, Ukrainians managed to achieve a lasting and relatively stable independence. The second of the “moments” – still unresolved – are events that began in the late autumn of 2013. The process, called “Revolution of Dignity”, represents a new quality in the history of the Ukrainian nation, therefore, that the Ukrainians have to defend the status quo (independence, territorial integrity, sovereignty, etc.) but not to seek to achieve an independent being. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the ability of Ukrainians to achieve and maintain independence is largely a function of the relative power of the Russian state as measured with respect to the shape and quality of international relations