Daily press as a means of informal economic education: case study of DELL in Lodz

Informacje przekazywane przez media stanowią dla wielu ludzi jedyną okazję do zdobywania wiedzy na temat otaczającej ich rzeczywistości. Informacje te mogą więc być traktowane jako narzędzie edukacji, jeśli są przygotowane rzetelnie, a temat, którego dotyczą, jest na tyle interesujący, by mógł zostać omówiony kompleksowo. Z tej perspektywy w artykule został przedstawiony przykład bezpośredniej inwestycji amerykańskiej firmy Dell w montownię komputerów w Łodzi. Na podstawie artykułów prasowych, opublikowanych w latach 2005–2012, odtworzono historię inwestycji, wskazując szczególnie istotne zagadnienia obejmujące tematykę bezpośrednich inwestycji zagranicznych, o których mogli dowiedzieć się z tych artykułów czytelnicy. Ponieważ inwestycji towarzyszył szereg szczególnie interesujących wydarzeń i związanych z nimi emocji (m.in.: likwidacja zakładu w Irlandii, znacząca pomoc publiczna, zagrożenie likwidacji lub sprzedaży zakładu w Łodzi), poświęcono jej bardzo dużo uwagi w mediach. W artykule podjęto próbę oceny, na ile materiał ten jest użyteczny z punktu widzenia nieformalnej edukacji z zakresu wybranych zagadnień dotyczących bezpośrednich inwestycji zagranicznych.Information provided by the media represents for many people a unique opportunity to learn about the surrounding reality. This information can then be seen as a tool of education, if it is prepared accurately, and if the subject is interesting enough to be discussed comprehensively. From this perspective, the article discusses the case study of a direct investment of the U.S. company Dell in a computer assembly plant in Łódź. Based on newspaper articles published in 2005–2012, the present paper reconstructs the history of the investment, indicating particularly important issues related to the phenomenon of foreign direct investment, of which the readers of these articles could learn. As the investment involved a number of particularly interesting events and raised emotions (e.g. closure of the plant in Ireland, significant public support, the threat of closure or sale of the plant in Łódź), it acquired a lot of attention in the media. The present paper attempts to assess how the material is useful from the point of view of educating the public in the field of foreign direct [email protected] Jakub Kronenberg – Wydział Ekonomiczno-Socjologiczny Uniwersytetu Łódzkieg

Urban Green Space Availability, Accessibility and Attractiveness, and the Delivery of Ecosystem Services

The main goal of this article is to analyze how different barriers which restrict urban green space (UGS) provision – notably their availability, accessibility and attractiveness – affect the delivery of ecosystem services (ESs). Our analysis involves three case studies in Lodz, Poland: the removal of trees in private properties following the liberalization of the Nature Conservation Act (availability); the replacement of allotment gardens with a city beach (accessibility); and the organization of entertainment events in the forest (attractiveness). The analyzed barriers include governmental failures, insufficient social support for the existence of certain UGSs, changes in spatial planning and activities discouraging other users. Our analysis shows that physical access to UGSs is not always equal to access to ESs, and that different ESs are affected differently at the three levels of UGS provision. Also, those who suffer from the loss of access to ESs are often not involved in making the relevant UGS provision decisions. All of these issues add new aspects to the current debates related to political ecology, environmental justice and ES trade-offs

Proste życie i zrównoważona konsumpcja

After a brief reference to the philosophical background of simple living and its basic ideas, we explore how simple living can aid sustainable consumption. We look at general linkages between the two concepts and suggest how simple living can be used to support sustainable development (what elements to promote, what policy instruments to use, what barriers may be encountered). We conclude that philosophical reflection is the most important element of simple living that might enrich the current debate on sustainable consumption and suggest how to further strengthen the popularity of simple living movement.Artykuł rozpoczyna omówienie filozoficznych uwarunkowań idei ‘prostego życia’, które następnie umieszczono  w kontekście zrównoważonej konsumpcji. Zwrócono uwagę na ogólne powiązania pomiędzy prostym życiem, zrównoważoną konsumpcją, a rozwojem zrównoważonym. Wskazano, jak proste życie może wspomóc wprowadzanie rozwoju zrównoważonego (jakie jego elementy należy promować, jakich instrumentów politycznych użyć i na jakie bariery można napotkać). Artykuł zamyka sugestia, że refleksja filozoficzna jest najważniejszym elementem prostego życia, który może wzbogacić prowadzoną obecnie debatę prowadzoną wokół zrównoważonej konsumpcji, a sama idea prostego życia warta jest popularyzacji

Nature-based solutions

Publikacja finansowana ze środków funduszy norweskich oraz środków krajowych w ramach projektu „EkoMiasto. Kształcenie na rzecz zrównoważonego, inteligentnego i partycypacyjnego rozwoju miast” (FSS/2014/HEI/W/0081)

Usługi ekosystemów – nowe spojrzenie na wartość środowiska przyrodniczego

Publikacja finansowana ze środków funduszy norweskich oraz środków krajowych w ramach projektu „EkoMiasto. Kształcenie na rzecz zrównoważonego, inteligentnego i partycypacyjnego rozwoju miast” (FSS/2014/HEI/W/0081)

Degrowth in the context of sustainability transitions: In search for a common ground

The aim of this paper is to study how sustainability transitions analytical framework can help to make other concepts of sustainable socio-economic development more specific and operational. Specifically, we investigate the linkages between sustainability transitions and degrowth. Both approaches to transitions – degrowth and sustainability transitions – are closely related. Ideologically, degrowth represents one of the most far-reaching forms of sustainability transitions, yet it would benefit from a more stringent conceptualization using the analytical framework of sustainability transitions. Based on a literature review of both degrowth and sustainability transitions, we distinguish several aspects which provide a common ground for both approaches. We apply some conceptual notions from sustainability transitions theory to describe the idea of a degrowth transition. Then, we analyse case studies of degrowth practices (mainly in an urban context), which demonstrate that they may be understood and managed as transition experiments.This research has been funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, with grant no. 2018/29/B/HS4/01042

Urban Green Spaces—An Underestimated Resource in Third-Tier Towns in Poland

Urban green spaces are frequently presented as being important for urban quality of life and urban development in general, but more detailed interpretations and discussions are typically confined to large urban centers, the so-called first- and second-tier cities. Not enough attention has been paid to smaller urban units, the third-tier towns. The main goal of this article is to investigate the share and types of urban green spaces in five selected towns in Poland. We compare different sources of data based on satellite imagery and land-use maps with those used in public statistics, to check whether town authorities are managing all potential green spaces or only a selected part of them. We find that the predominantly used data, based on what is classified as “urban green space” for the purposes of public statistics, obscure the complexity of urban green spaces and focus on the narrowly understood formally managed public green spaces (which occupy 3.5–5.7% of town areas). Meanwhile, based on other sources, such as the national land-use map (BDOT10k), Urban Atlas, and satellite imagery (Landsat 8), what is considered to be green space turns out to cover 50–80% of the town area. The latter large numbers are associated with the predominance of arable land, grasslands, and forests, overlooked in any green space management practices based on data and definitions adopted for the purposes of public statistics. The situation found in our five case study towns resembles that identified in larger cities in Poland, and it exhibits the inadequacy of public statistics definitions and the related management practices, hindering the management of urban green spaces as an interconnected system of urban green infrastructures.Funding This research was funded through the 2015–2016 BiodivERsA COFUND call for research proposals, by the national funders: the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences, and Spatial Planning, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the German Aeronautics and Space Research Centre, the National Science Centre (Poland) (grant no. 2016/22/Z/NZ8/00003), the Research Council of Norway, and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Acknowledgments Some desk research analysis was carried out within the MINIATURA 3 project, funded by the National Science Centre (Poland) entitled Evidence-based spatial planning—sources of greenery data in cities (grant no. 2019/03/X/HS4/00060)

Based on nature, enabled by social-ecological-technological context : deriving benefit from urban green and blue infrastructure

Peer reviewe

Conceptualizing multidimensional barriers: a framework for assessing constraints in realizing recreational benefits of urban green spaces

This article was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.Although potential urban green space accessibility is being discussed widely, specific barriers that affect accessibility are often under-estimated. They do not equate to limited or uneven accessibility nor are they exclusively related to physical settings. Rather, the range of barriers and their complex interactions, including people’s perceptions, personal conditions, and institutional frameworks, make this topic less clear cut and difficult to put into practice for planning purposes. Given the importance of barriers when people make decisions, we present a conceptual framework to capture the cumulative and interactive effects of different barriers on realizing recreational benefits of urban green spaces. The framework classifies physical, personal, and institutional barriers and highlights their interactions based on three case studies: Stockholm, Leipzig, and Lodz. We argue that constraints to the accessibility of urban green spaces are not so much the interactions between various physical, personal, and institutional barriers, but more the significance that beneficiaries assign to them as perceived barrier effects. Studying barriers seeks to improve the knowledge about the non-use of urban green spaces and to enable us to draw conclusions about the actual accessibility of recreational benefits. Deduced from the conceptual framework, three pathways are contrasted for improving accessibility to the recreational benefits of urban green spaces: the environment, knowledge, and engagement. We argue that these pathways should not be a diffuse objective, but a sensitive and scale-dependent re-balance of individual, physical, and institutional factors for considering justice in environmental and green space planning and management. Our systematic conceptualization and classification of multidimensional barriers enables a more comprehensive understanding of individuals’ decisions in terms of accessing recreational benefits.Peer Reviewe

Greenery in urban morphology : a comparative analysis of differences in urban green space accessibility for various urban structures across European cities

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MThe understanding of urban social-ecological systems requires integrated and interdisciplinary methods. This paper explores differences in the accessibility of urban green spaces (UGS) based on urban morphology. In contrast to other comparative analyses that followed simplified quantification of UGS provision and/or omitted the impact of morphological properties of urban space, this study proposes three improvements. First, it uses the share of UGS in the service area of 300 m walking distance around each residential building in a city as a measure of UGS provision. Second, it includes the potential physical accessibility of UGS as warranted by key actors, such as owners or managers, who decide whether UGS are open or not to potential users. Third, it links UGS accessibility and heterogeneous urban structures. We developed a mixed-methods analysis that combines multiple data sources regarding UGS, the spatial distribution of residential buildings, and street networks. We conducted our analysis in five case-study cities (Barcelona, Halle, Lodz, Oslo, and Stockholm). Our findings suggest that the urban structures where the human-environment interaction transformed the space (such as in the core city areas) are characterized by limited UGS in the service area. Urban structures that are less transformed by human activity (especially suburbia) have the highest share of selected UGS in the service area. In addition, even if the share of UGS in the service area is high, many of them might have limited physical accessibility. In the broader sense, this highlights that social-ecological processes are linked to urban form and cannot be separated in an analysis. Therefore, social-ecological systems could be better understood through the lens of urban morphology