Spatial transformations stemming from urban sprawl are evident not only in the USA or Western Europe but also in Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland. Urban sprawl materialises mostly in land-cover and land-use change involving an increase in the proportion of urbanised areas and discontinuous urban fabric in the total area. The paper’s objective was to identify the degree of urban sprawl based on the area of discontinuous urban fabric. The spatial analysis was aimed at finding differences in land-cover ratios by individual urbanised land categories. The analysed data for 2006, 2012, and 2018 were retrieved from the Urban Atlas. The method employed was NUASI (normalised Urban Atlas sprawl indicator). A series of computations revealed that urban sprawl is found in Poland as well. Changes caused by the increase in the discontinuous urban fabric in the total urban fabric were the most pronounced from 2006 to 2012. From 2012 to 2018, the pace of the increase stabilised, but its dynamics declined. The study demonstrated a strong spatial variability of the indicator. Urban sprawl was found to be the most intense in southern and southeastern Poland.

Precisely determining agricultural land abandonment (ALA) in an area is still difficult, even with recent progress in data collection and analysis. It is especially difficult in fragmented areas that need more tailor-made methods. The aim of this research was to determine ALA using airborne laser scanning (ALS) data, which are available in Poland with 4 to 6 points per square metre resolution. ALS data were processed into heat maps and modified with chosen kernel functions: triweight and Epanechnikov. The results of ALS data processing were compared to the control method, i.e., visual interpretation of an orthophotomap. This study shows that ALS data modelled with kernel functions allow for a good identification of ALA. The accuracy of results shows 82% concordance as compared to the control method. When comparing triweight and Epanechnikov functions, higher accuracy was achieved when using the triweight function. The research shows that ALS data processing is a promising method of detection of ALA and could provide an alternative to well-known methods such as the analysis of satellite images.

The aim of the paper is to develop a method to evaluate and monitor environmental spatial order to delimit problem areas. The method was tested on the carefully chosen suburban areas as natural valuable areas located in suburban and peri-urban areas are particularly prone to intense and chaotic development. The number of methods of spatial order evaluation is scarce. The paper is an attempt to fill this gap. We have used following indicators: afforestation rate, landscape diversity level, density of the total road network, rate of compact development, as well as the building intensity. Indicators used in the method have been chosen based on the literature and modified to adjust it to the available data. Our findings confirm that the method gives reliable results. It can be used to evaluate the efficacy of Local Spatial Development Plans and Environmental Protection Plans. Moreover, we delimited areas in which environmental spatial order could be improved.

In this paper, we reflect on the evolution of place-based governance from a long-term (15 year) study of rural development initiatives undertaken in a region of Poland as part of its accession to the European Union. We decompose the recursive process of institutional learning arising from initiatives for heritage preservation and rural economic development. In our analysis, we elaborate a typology of unavoidable development dilemmas that must be explicitly managed in order to allow place-based governance to effectively harness the cultural value, social context, and developmental needs of certain locales or landscapes. Although creating and sustaining local value remain contingent on broader realities of governance, proactive management of these dilemmas can help prevent many of the usual contestations around goals and identity from becoming intractable in later periods. Our proposed approach to enabling place-based governance emphasizes conflict recognition and engagement as important complements to more common prescriptive models of governance.

Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie możliwości praktycznego wykorzystania narzędzi Systemu Informacji Przestrzennej (SIP) oraz podkreślenie znaczenia SIP jako środowiska do wykonywania analiz przestrzennych, w tym oceny stanu ładu przestrzennego. Szczególną uwagę zwrócono na możliwość łącznej, automatycznej analizy danych pochodzących z różnych źródeł, przekazujących informację na różnych poziomach szczegółowości. Ocena stanu ładu przestrzennego jako jeden z przedmiotów analiz przestrzennych jest zadaniem szczególnie podatnym na subiektywne opinie, zatem istotne jest określenie merytorycznych zasad ww. procesu oraz dążenie do jego automatyzacji. W artykule przedstawiono przykłady wykorzystania SIP do oceny stanu ładu przestrzennego.