This article sought to present a process of abrupt transition where technological innovation is concerned. The matter taken up in particular was accelerating digitalisation, in the wider context of digital transformation, and in this case, in reference to spatial planning issues. This article offers an assessment of the level of digitalisation and digital transformation of spatial planning, with this, in turn, making it possible to define the potential at the disposal of rural areas, as they seek to bring in the idea of smart rural development. The empirical analyses present herein are founded upon secondary statistical data as well as our own primary data on the subject of geoportals and their functionality in rural parts of the Łódź region (Poland). The assessments of both planning coverage and geoportal functionality reported herein provide insight regarding the potential for rural areas to implement the concept of GeoDesign, as an integral part of “smart rural development”. The research carried out made it clear that only a fifth of rural gminas in the region are of high potential where GeoDesign is concerned, while every third gmina has only very low potential. A further key conclusion is that rural gminas heading along the path of “smart development” may break out of a spatial order existing thus far on the basis of disparities, and a division of regions into a centre and peripheries. This is of major significance in the context of the diffusion of innovation that digitalisation and digital transformation represent.

This paper presents a methodology to assess the internal and external coherence, and the robustness to future uncertainty, of place-based interventions addressing spatial (in)justice. The methodology merges elements of Theory of Change (ToC) and mechanism mapping with scenario planning. It was designed based on analysis of a range of European interventions (public policies and bottom-up initiatives), selected to highlight the ways spatial injustices have been tackled across different scales. The first phase of the methodology uses a ToC mechanism map to illustrate the logic of the intervention, including its baseline assumptions (internal) and contextual conditions (external). In the second phase, scenarios for the locality are developed based on potential states of global and local macro-trends, revealing how the contextual conditions are expected to change, and whether the intervention's baseline assumptions are likely to hold. This then allows the elaboration of spatial justice trajectories, and for the ToC mechanism map to be updated. To effectively illustrate the methodology, we show how it has been applied using a case study intervention implemented in a territorially disadvantaged area. We present the methodology as a flexible tool allowing detection of more general stylised facts, and spatial comparisons between a broad range of interventions.

This article addresses the problematic county of Wieruszow-a peripheral area of Poland, constituting a classic case of historical development away from urban agglomerations, additionally burdened by the stigma of a former near-border location, and later (including today) functioning at the fringe of an administrative district. The area in question exemplifies structural transformations associated with changes in patterns of accessibility to large urban agglomerations following the coming into operation of a key expressway. The work detailed here has sought to analyse the aforementioned area’s position vis-a-vis accessibility, as set against the background of factors justifying the description of “inner periphery”. An essential element in accounting for any strategy for overcoming this peripherality takes the form of the results of in-depth interviews carried out by the authors. Joint consideration of the two perspectives mentioned, i.e. the structural (showing the position of a given area in relation to its proximate (regional) and ultimate (national) environments), and the social (i.e. the expert assessment), ultimately allowed for an assessment of opportunities and threats as far as the overcoming of peripherality in its geographic and social dimensions is concerned.

The article is seeking to analyse the coal transition in three Polish lignite regions as part of the scientific discussion on a just transition, which is a big challenge, especially in the regions and countries dependent on their own coal deposits as the main source of energy. Polish lignite mines are now entering the phase-out of coal, which results from implementing the assumptions of the Green Deal and the Paris climate agreement. The article answers the following question: what is the socio-economic resilience of coal regions in the context of the projected closure of mines in the coming years? The empirical analyses are based on secondary statistical data. The analysis and comparison of basic statistical data, i.e., the level of employment and lignite extraction in three lignite regions in the period from the end of the Second World War to 2017, allowed the authors to determine the phases of the adaptive cycle in which the individual regions are. In the second part of the study, the indicator evaluation method was used in order to calculate the Socio-Economic Resilience Index for individual areas (poviats) included in the coal regions, which made it possible to assess the current resilience and its intra-regional differentiation. The obtained results, which indicate that the regions under analysis are in different phases of the adaptive cycle and reveal their territorial heterogeneity, allow us to assume that the possibilities of a just energy transition of regions depend on the diversity of local conditions and resources, emphasising at the same time the territorial dimension of the issue of the energy transition.