Rykiel, Z.

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

ccRevista de Geografia,), vol. XIX. Barcelona, 1985, pp. 97-104. 
Relationships of urban 
agglomerations 
in the National Settlement 
System: a Polish case study 
by ZBlGNlEW RYKIEL* 
Palabras clave: 
Aglomeraclón urbaaa; Polonia; slstema de poblaclón. 
The problem 
It is widely accepted in the literature that urban agglornerations, which in the 
Polish literature are conceptually close to Arnerican metropolitan areas, play an irnpor- 
tant part in the national settlement systern. A question, however, arises whether they 
should be considered in terrns of a comrnon subsystern within the national settlernent 
system or as cornparised within their individual regional settlernent systems. Starting 
frorn morphology of the agglomerations, especially frorn their observed sectoral de- 
velopment, as following bands of transportation and cornrnunication infrastructure, it 
was concluded that the developrnent was related to the replacement of neighbouring 
agglornerations. On this basis, a conclusion was rnade that the agglornerations rnust be 
strongly interrelated. Further on, a hypothesis was put forward that agglornerations 
forrn an integrated subsystem within the national settlernent systern (Korcelli, 1976). A 
test of whether or not urban agglornerations can be considered in terrns of a comrnon 
subsystern should be, however, supported by an investigation of whether their in- 
terelationships are rnore important than relationship of each of thern with its urnland. 
To answer this question would allow to conclude whether changes in  the Polish settle- 
* The autor 1s assoc~ated wlth the Inst~tute of  Geography and Spatlal O r g a n ~ z a t ~ o n ,  at Warsaw OPI-  
mons presented h e r e ~ n  are. however. str~ctly personal and d o  not necessarlly correspond to those of  the 
Inst~tute 
97 
- 
98 Z. Rykiel 
ment system drive at development of one super-agglomeration, as Leszczycki (1973) 
maintains, or of a system of urban regions with agglomerations being centres of some 
of them, as Dzieworíski (1972, 1973) argues. An analysis of Polish regional structure in- 
dicated that agglomerations are entities of a regional rather than national scale; this al- 
lowed to hypothesize that relationships of individual agglomerations with their regions 
are stronger than those between the agglomerations (Rykiel, 1978). To test the 
hypothesis vectoral, data should be used which would allow to distinguish relationships 
within the hypothetic subsystem of agglomerations, those between individual agglom- 
erations and their respective regions, and those with the rest of Poland. 
ldentification of areal units 
Nine Polish urban agglornerations were identified for this analysis (Warsaw, 
Cracow, Lódi, Wroclaw, Poznan, Gdansk, Szczecin, Katowice, and Bydgoszcz), i.e. 
those which had been identified in the National Plan of Physical Developrnent till 1990 
as developed agglomerations (Plan.. . , 1974). The developing agglornerations as iden- 
tified in the Plan are argued here to belong to the future rather than conternporary set- 
tlernent system and thus not be analyzed herein. The sarne applies to the potential 
agglomerations as identified in the Plan which rnust have been based on rather unclear 
criteria of identification. As cores 'of the agglornerations, 7 individual cities were taken 
while in cases of Katowice and Gdansk conplexes of 13 and 3 cities, respectively, were 
identified. Outer rings of the 9 agglornerations were ad hoc delirnited with towns and 
cornmunes taken as basic areal units. The proposed delimitation (fig. 1) differs in de- 
tails from those provided in finer approaches (Iwanicka-Lyra, 1969; Gontarski, 1980), 
and, like any other, could be criticized as arbitrary. I n  doing this, it must be kept in 
mind, however, that it was not the delirnitation that was a scope of the analysis; rather, 
the delirnitation was only a means which rnade possible to rneasure a spatial scale of in- 
teractions of the agglornerations involved. 
As a first approach to delirnitation of regions of the 9 centres, i.e. the cores of the 
agglomerations, cornrnuting sheds of the centres were taken as based on 1973 data with 
rnodifications concerning changes of basic areal units till 1978. The cornmuting sheds of 
eachs of the centre analyzed comprized spatially contiguous basic units with 10 or rnore 
out-cornrnuters to the city. In cases of overlapping sheds they were separated on the 
basis of the prevalent interaction. Yet any regional delimitation should be based not so 
on the range of influence of the regional centre in an open space but rather in the space 
which is relatively closed by influences propagated from cornpetitive regional centres. 
Region is therefore said to be identified on the basis of relative closure of relationships 
which are recognized to be characteristic of it (Dziewonski, 1967). The influence of the 
30 cornpetitive regional centres, the figure being identified on the empirical ground 
(Rykiel, Zurkowa, 1981). should be therefore taken into account in order to define 
urban regions of the 9 analyzed cores of agglomerations. Firstly, frorn the cornrnuting 
sheds of the cores of agglornerations, those areas should be excluded which were rnore 
strongly related to any of the 30 regional centres. Secondly, areas being situated beyond 
the 39 cornmuting sheds (i.e. those of both the cores of agglornerations and regional 
centres) were included to urban regions on the basis of their rnigratory gravitation. In  
this way, 39 Polish urban regions were identified of which, however, only 9 are interest- 
ing for further analysis (fig. 1). They are sornewhat different frorn the 47 regions iden- 
tified by Korcelli, Petrykowska and Bodzak (1981), which did not exhaust the national 
territory. 
Relationships of urban agglomerations 
Figura 1. Polish urban agglomeration and their regions. 1. Warsaw; 2, Cracow; 3, Lódi ;  4, Wro- 
claw; 5, Poznan; 6, Gdansk; 7, Szczecin; 8, Katowice; 9, Bydgoszcz. 
Relationships of urban agglomerations in the national settlement system were 
analyzed as based on migration. The latter was defined as crossing of administrative 
boundary of communal andlor municipal level. The 1978 data were used. 
Analysis of relationships 
Out of the relationships of urban agglomerations within the national settlement 
system, it is some 118 only that is accounted for by those with other agglomerations, 
some 113 by those of the agglomerations with their respective regions, and over 112 with 
the rest of Poland (the other 38 regions but 8 agglomerations). The share of the 
hypothetic subsystem of agglomerations in the turnover of individual agglomerations is 
rather similar (table 1). On the contrary, shares of intra-regional relationships are more 
100 2. Rykiel 
TABLE 1. Spatial pattern of migratory relationships of Polish urban agglomerations, 1978, 
total 
differentiated, with especially small proportion in cases of Katowice and Szczecin 
agglomerations; even there, however, they are responsible for a proportion roughly 
double as large as that accounted for by relationships with other agglomerations. The 
strongest relationships of agglomerations apply, however, to the rest of Poland; they 
comprise 213 of relationships of Szczecin agglomeration and nearly 314 of Katowice 
agglomeration; it is only in  the case of Cracow that they are equally important as the 
intra-regional relationships. 
The generalized pattern pointed to above differs for different categories of mig- 
rants analyzed. In this paper, four education categories of migrants were analyzed, as 
existent in the Polish education system, viz. primary, post-primary skilled, secondary, 
and tertiary. When flows of the primary educated are soncerned the importance of the 
system of agglomerations decreases to 1/13, and it is only in  cases of Cracow and Szcze- 
TABLE 2. Spatial pattern of migratory relationships of Polish urban agglomerations, 1978, 
the primary edueated 
Relationships with % Other 
agglomerations 
Agglomerations 
Ow n 
region 
41.2 
41.1 
42.7 
35.1 
43.7 
31.6 
22.5 
34.1 
19.1 
31.9 
Warsaw 
Lódi 
Cracow 
Wroclaw 
Poznan 
Gdahsk 
Szczecin 
B y dgoszcz 
Katowice 
9 agglomerations 
Rest of 
Poland 
46.7 
46.0 
42.7 
44.6 
45.8 
57.0 
63.2 
53.6 
71.5 
55.9 
12.1 
12.9 
14.6 
10.3 
10.5 
12.0 
14.3 
12.3 
9.4 
12.2 
Other 
dgglomerdtlonc 
Own 
reglon 
48.9 
48.6 
47.4 
36.5 
50.4 
36.1 
21.3 
39.5 
18.5 
36.7 
Warsaw 
Lódi 
Cracow 
Wroclaw 
Poznan 
Gdansk 
Szczecin 
B y dgoszcz 
Katowice 
9 agglomerations 
Rect of 
Poldnd 
43.9 
44.1 
42.0 
55.7 
42.9 
56.3 
68.3 
52 4 
75.2 
55.7 
7.2 
7.3 
10.6 
7.8 
6.7 
7.6 
10.4 
8.1 
6.3 
7.6 
Relationships of urban agglomerations - 1 O1 
TABLE 3. Spatial pattern of migratory relationships of Polish urban agglomerations, 1M8, 
the post-primary educated skilled 
cin agglomerations that it exceeds 1/10. The share of intra-regional relationships slightly 
increases in general, yet in cases of Szczecin and Katowice agglomerations it decreases. 
It is to this spatial scale that rnajority of relationships fall in cases of Cracow, Lódi and 
Warsaw agglornerations, as well as of Poznan for which it rnakes an absolute majority 
(table 2). 
As far as the post-primary educated skilled are concerned the share of relationships 
between agglomerations increases to 1/12 while in cases of Cracow and Szczecin 
agglomerations the higher proportion rnaintains (table 3). In cases of Poznan, Cracow 
and Warsaw agglomerations, it is by the respective regions that absolute majority of 
migration is accounted for; in cases of the other agglornerations, it is the rest of Poland 
that accounts for the rnajority, although it is relative rnajority in cases of Bydgoszcz and 
Lódi agglomerations. 
TABLE 4. Spatial pattern of migratory relationships of Polish urban agglomerations, 1978, 
the secondary educated 
Rest of 
Poland 
41.5 
46.2 
36.5 
51.0 
38.6 
57.5 
64.6 
47.8 
75.4 
55.5 
Own 
region 
50.9 
43.9 
53.3 
41.7 
54.4 
33.6 
25.2 
43.7 
17.9 
36.4 
Relationships with % Other 
agglomerations 
~ ~ ~ l o m e r d t i o n s  
Rclationsh~ps with 'L Othcr 
agglomcr;itions 
Agglomcrat~ons 
Warsaw 
Lodi  
Cracow 
Wroclaw 
Poznan 
Gdansk 
Szczecin 
Bydgoszcz 
Katowice 
9 agglornerations 
O w n  
region 
37.0 
40.6 
38.3 
31.3 
37.4 
23.6 
21.8 
25.8 
19.0 
27.5 
Warsaw 
Lodz 
Cracow 
Wroclaw 
Poznan 
Gdansk 
Szczecin 
B y dgoszcz 
Katowice 
9 agglomerations 
7.6 
9.9 
10.2 
7.3 
7.0 
8.9 
10.2 
8.5 
6.7 
8.1 
Revt of 
Poltlnd 
49.0 
54.3 
47.2 
56.7 
50.1 
61.2 
61.3 
58.8 
68.6 
60.6 
14.0 
5.1 
14.5 
12.0 
12.5 
15.2 
16.9 
15.4 
12.4 
11.9 
2. Rykiel 
In the case of the secondary educated, the share of migration between agglomer- 
ations increases to 118 but decreases to 1/20 in the Lódi case. The share of intra-reg- 
ional relationships decreases so that it does not exceed 215 of the total, Lódi being the 
only exception, yet in any single agglomeration it is considerably greater than that of 
migration between agglomerations. What prevails in this category of migrants are re- 
lationships with the rest of Poland which merely in the Warsaw and Cracow cases do 
not reach 112 of interactions (table 4). 
When the tertiary educated concerned (table 5), the share of relationships between 
agglomerations increases to 116, but in the Katowice case decreases to 1/14. It is for this 
category of migrants that relationships between agglomerations play a relatively most 
important part, although in no single case comprise they 115 of the respective total. 
Intra-regional links are more important, yet it is relationships with the rest of Poland 
that dominate; in the case of Katowice agglomeration they account for over 415 of mig- 
ration. 
TABLE 5. Spatial pattern of migratory relationships of Polish urban agglomerations, 1978, 
the tertiary educated 
~ 
Conclusions i 
The present analysis indicated that in migratory relationships of urban agglomer- 
ations, a dominant part is played by extra-regional links directed to areas outside the 
9 agglomerations. The second position is occupied by intra-regional links while inter- 
relationships of the agglomerations occupy the third place. The role of flows between 
agglomerations increases, in general terms, when the education level of migrants in- 
volved increases although individual agglomerations possess regularities of their own, 
e.g. exceptionally small role of flows between agglomerations for the tertiary educated 
in the Katowice case, and for secondary educated in the Lódi case. 
In table 6 categories of migrants were shown as most characteristic of individual 
spatial scales of interactions of agglomerations. Of migration between agglomerations 
the tertiary and secondary educated are characteristic; of flows between agglomerations 
and their respective regions -the post-primary skilled and primary educated; of those 
between agglomeration and the rest of Poland-, the secondary and tertiary educated. 
Relationships with % Other 
agglomerations 
Agglomerdtions 
Own 
region 
34.1 
35.7 
37.7 
33.7 
39.4 
33.6 
22.7 
28.2 
12.2 
29.4 
Warsaw 
Lódi 
Cracow 
Wroclaw 
Poznari 
Gdansk 
Szczecin 
Bydgoszcz 
Katowice 
9 agglomerations 
Rest of 
Poland 
49.4 
47.3 
43.1 
54.0 
47.2 
51.6 
59.1 
55.9 
80.8 
52.1 
16.5 
17.0 
19.2 
12.3 
13.4 
14.8 
18.2 
15.9 
7.0 
18.5 
Relationships of urban agglomerations 103 
TABLE 6. The categories of migrants, as defined by education levels, prevailing in individual 
spatial scales of migratory relationships of Polish urban agglomerations, 1978. 1. The primary 
educated; Sa. the post-primary skilled; 2. the secondary educated; 3. the tertiary educated 
Relationships with % Other Own Rest of 
agglomerations rcgion Poland 
Agglomerations 
Warsaw 3 la 3. 2 
Lódi 3 1 2 
Cracow 3 la 2 
Wroclaw 3. 2 la 2 
Poznan 3 1 a 2 
Gdansk 2 1 2 
Szczecin 3 la  1 
B y dgoszcz 3, 2 la 2 
Katowice 2 1 .  3 
9 agglornerations 3 1, la 2 
Generally therefore, in intra-regional migration the lower educated prevail; and in 
extra-regional migration, the higher educated. Of individual agglomerations, however, 
distinctive particularities are characteristic in this respect. This, and even more the tact 
that interrelationships of agglomerations account for a slight proportion of migration 
concerning the agglomerations imply that urban agglomerations could be hardly said to 
form an integrated subsystem within the national settlement system; rather, they are 
strong regionally rooted, it can be therefore argued they are comprised in their respec- 
tive regional settlement systems. Additionally, a considerable share of their relation- 
ships with the rest of Poland implies their considerable integration with the national sys- 
tem as a whole. 
Results of the analysis have significant plannistic implications. Planning o n  the 
scale of agglomerations, although desirable, seems insufficient; what seems necessary is 
to relate this scale of planning with that on the regional scale. It is especially important 
in case of planning of social infrastructure and capacity of respective networks, which 
should be balanced with demand on the regional scale rather than merely those within 
agglomeration. 
References 
DZIEWONSKI, ., 1967: Teoria regionu ekonomicznego. (A theory of economic region.) aPrzeglad 
Geograficzny,,, 39, 33-50. 
DZIEWONSKI, ., 1972: Kierunki badari osadnictwa w Polsce na tle badari w nauce Swiatowej. (Di- 
rections in Polish investigations of the settlement vis-a-vis those in the world science.) Slaski In- 
stytud Naukowy, Katowice: Studia nad Ekonomika Regionu, 3, 43-56. 
DZIEWONSKI, ., 1973: W sprawie podstawowych pojeC i terminów uzywanych w analizie i plan- 
owaniu wielkich aglomeracji miejskich. (In the matter of basic notions and terms used in 
analysis and planning of  large urban agglornerations.) Kornitet Przestrzennego Zagos- 
podarowania Kraju PAN, Biuletyn, 79, 91-100. 
104 2. Rykiel 
GONTARSKI, Z., 1980: Obszary metropolitalne we Polsce. (Metropolitan areas in Poland.) Komited 
Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania Kraju PAN, Biuletyn, 109. 
IWANICKA-LYRA, E., 1969: Delimitacja aglomeracji wielkomiejskich w Polsce. (A delimitution of 
Polish urban agglomerations.) lnstytut Geografii PAN, Prace Geograficzne, 76. 
KORCELLI, P., 1976: Zagadnienia teorii i planowania rozwoju aglomeracji miejskich. (Questions of 
theory and planning of deveLopment of urban agglomerations.) aMiasto,,. 3, 3-7. 
KORCELLI, P., A. Petrykowska, D. Bodzak, 1981: Ukfad yrzestrzenny i wspólzaleznoici oirodków 
dojazdów do pracy. (The spatial patern of and interrelations hetween commuting centres.) In- 
stytut Geografii i Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania PAN, Prace Geograficzne, 140, 213-233. 
LESZCZYCKI, S., 1973: Podstawowe pojecia dotyczace aglomeracji. (Basic notions concerning 
agglomerations.) Komitet Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania Kraju PAN, Biuletyn, 79, 11- 
122. 
Plan przestrzennego zagospodarowania kraju do roku 1990. (The National Plan of Physical De- 
velopment ti l l  1990.) Komitet Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania Kraju PAN, Biuletyn, 85, 
1974. 
RYKIEL, Z., 1978: Miejsce aglomeracji wielkomiejskich w przestrzeni spoleczno-gospodarczej Polski. 
(The place of urban agglomerations in the socio-economic space of Poland.). Instytut Geografii 
i Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania PAN, Prace Geograficzne. 128. 
RYKIEL, Z., ZURKOWA, ., 1981: Migracje miedzy miastami: systemy krajowe i regionalne. (In- 
terurban migration: national and regional systems.) lnstytut Geografii i Przestrzennego Zagos- 
podarowania PAN, Prace Geograficzne, 140, 138-188. 
Resumen: Relacion de las aglomeraciones urbanas en un sistema 
de asentamiento nacional. El caso de Polonia. 
Se han previsto hipótesis sobre aglomeraciones urbanas dentro de un sistema de asentamiento 
nacional. En el trabajo se ha planteado la hipótesis de que las aglomeraciones forman un subsis- 
tema integrado dentro del sistema de asentamiento nacional polaco. 
Los resultados indican que las aglomeraciones individuales están fuertemente arraigadas en sus 
- - 
respectivas regiones y, adicionalmente, integradas con el sistema nacional, como un todo. Las in- 
terrelaciones de las aglomeraciones son demasiado difíciles para confirmar las hipótesis. 
Resume: Rapport des agglomerations urbaines dans un systeme 
d'emplacement national. Le cas de la Polonie. 
On a prévu des hipotheses sur des agglomérations urbaines dans un systeme d'emplacement 
national. Dans le travail on a pensé l'hypothese qui formule la formation d'un subsysteme intégré 
par les agglomérations, dans le systeme d'emplacement national polonais. 
Les résultats indiquent que les agglomérations individuelles sont fortement enracinées dans 
leurs régions respectives et additionnellement, integrées avec le systtme national, a mode d'un 
tout. Les interrélations des agglomérations sont trop difficiles pour confirmer les hypotheses. 


Relationships of urban agglomerations in the national settlement system: a Polish case study

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert