The Province of Silesia, in Poland, is an area where many railway connections, of mostly local importance, have been closed recently. In some cities, they have been eliminated altogether and passenger rail transport has been replaced by bus transport. For this research, a sociological study was conducted using the diagnostic survey method and the questionnaire technique. A transversal testing strategy was also used. The aims of the study were to illustrate the function of abandoned railway areas in the landscape and to present possible recommendations for their development from the point of view of the needs of society. The research population included 1,685 people who were students at the University of the Third Age and adult residents. The surveys focused on the possibility of exploiting the natural potential of railway areas. The respondents’ answers provided suggestions for the development of unused railway areas, which included creating bicycle lanes, alleys with a high biodiversity of both flora and fauna, and walking tracks. The analysis of the study’s results can be useful to both local authorities and the Management of the Polish State Railways (PKP S.A.) in their decision-making processes concerning the revitalization of unused railway areas. Similar revitalization efforts have already been undertaken by various cities and communities.

Street art increasingly reshapes aesthetic hierarchies by introducing previously marginalised media into the public sphere. A compelling example is the artistic practice of the Polish artist NeSpoon (Elżbieta Dymna), whose work merges the visual language of traditional lace with the communicative strategies of contemporary urban art. Active since the late 2000s, NeSpoon combines stencils, ceramic lace imprints, and large-scale murals to translate the intimacy of handcraft into the visibility of public space. Her works function as both aesthetic interventions and acts of civic pedagogy. This study employs a qualitative visual research design combining multi-site digital inquiry, iconological and semiotic analysis, and mini focus group (N = 22). Three purposefully selected cases: Łódź, Belorado, and Fundão, were examined to capture the site-specific and cultural variability of lace murals across Europe. The analysis demonstrates that lace functions as an agent of cultural negotiation and a medium of heritage literacy, understood here as embodied and place-based learning. In Łódź, it monumentalises textile memory and women’s labour embedded in the city’s industrial palimpsest. In Belorado, micro-scale responsiveness operates, strengthening the local semiosphere. In Fundão, lace enters an intermedial dialogue with azulejos, negotiating the boundary between craft and art while expanding local visual grammars. The study introduces the conceptualisation of the monumentalisation of intimacy in public art and frames heritage literacy as an embodied, dialogic, and community-oriented educational practice. Its implications extend to feminist art history, place-based pedagogy, urban cultural policy, and the preventive conservation of murals. The research elucidates how domestic craft once confined to the private interior operates in public space as a medium of memory, care, and inclusive aesthetics.