Poznan post-industrial areas, still with some remains of industrial buildings from the turn of the century, are slowly disappearing as the sites are being converted, they are “no man’s land”, filled with vacant space and ruins. This paper presents the situation as it is today in the city centre, it attempts to locate the sites and buildings, where production was conducted. Poznan industry in the nineteenth century primarily involved small factories producing food, household chemicals, ferrous products, mechanical products as well as railway and urban infrastructure. The symbols of the situation are the biggest monuments of the industrial architecture of Poznan, the sad fate of which is known only to the citizens of Poznań as well as the Old Brewery, known to the whole Poland.

The article presents the author’s views on the role of science in the architecture and urban planning and the importance of the existence of the architects’ creative attitude as a factor significantly influencing the future shape of the city. The author indicated to the risk involved in replacing the system approach with empirical methods in architecture and negative effects of this phenomenon in the city spatial planning. Against the above mentioned background he discussed the importance of the architects’ creative attitude as a factor determining the city’s future.

The economic and environmental conditions, which change at an unparalleled pace, bring about a search for new agricultural technologies. The increasing human population needs new methods of food production. For the time being, open and closed multistorey vertical farms meant for urban areas, making one of the elements of urban agriculture, lie mostly in the realm of futuristic ideas. Designed objects present unprecedented architectonic forms. They are energy self-sufficient, use renewable energy sources, recycle water and other materials. We must ask the following question: Is the existence and development of the earth’s civilization possible in the decades to come without the implementation of the (so far) visionary concepts of food production? Agriculture in tall buildings located in the city is the measure of the dreams of scientists and architects all over the world. Nowadays, it is becoming reality.

In the post-industrial time, the process of transformation and growth of the city assumes new names that are very different from those traditionally taken into account by urban history: terms such as New Towns, mega-cities, city/region, Global City, Hyperville, StadtLand, Technopolis, urban archipelago, Urban Islands, New Urbanism, Smart City and others, testify to how population displacement caused by de-industrialization and the computerization of communication in everyday life are evident phenomena of a urban and social reality that comes to the fore with the strength of rapid change and powerful, widespread economies of scale. Among the phenomena that in the last twenty years of the 20th Century created a genuine revolution in the urban structures of the world’s industrial cities, two should be considered crucial: the gradual closure of many productive activities that occupied large parts of urban territory, linked to the abandonment of various obsolete public infrastructures, and the progressive formation of an extended city spreading out along the major lines of communication, also in areas not physically connected to the traditional urban periphery. Also in Italy, the question of re-using land already built on and abandoned constructions provided the opportunity to reintroduce the three themes of urban and architectural research that were typical of previous decades: the morphology of the compact city, the architectural typology as an element of shared civil rules, the conversion and restoration
of existing buildings, which includes the historical querelle between ancient and modern. At long last, the need for projects to include urban
and architectural quality has started to become an objective that is publicly acknowledged, one that is sought after through the medium of public
and private design contests.

In order to be able to continue functioning within the “capability of the Earth”, the sense of our development must be understood in the spirit of a completely different philosophy: we need to shift focus from the growth in quantity to the growth in quality. Growth in wisdom, knowledge and common sense, so that we can take good care of everything and everybody on the Earth, and this will be emanation of the new pan-human sense of responsibility. If the urbanised environment, being the basic one, is also to become a full-value environment for human existence, it will require continuous and universal improvement of its quality as well as new strategies, methods and scenarios for rational organisation of urbanised space that will be able to meet new challenges. It seems that ‘dramaturgically consistent logic of composition’ may, if the directorial structure, presented in this article, is to be used, become an original formula of creating city spatial scenarios, and a new, consistent and comprehensive form of urban public space. Scenarios built on the basis of the city “genotype”, in which urban “layers of memory” are the basis for adaptive transformations.

The idea of sustainable development is being intensively extended with issues related to social participation. The society’s share in the formation of its own places of residence assumes various forms – from the immaterial dimension of interpersonal relations to entirely measurable participation in the process of designing, realizing and maintaining houses and estates. The future brings many more forms of such participation developed on the basis of communications, technical and technological potential that is less and less limited. However, we should ask ourselves the following question: which of these forms can be used to an extent under defined conditions in certain countries, regions and districts?

The hereby work represents an diagnostic & prognostic analysis, concerning a creation of cities - an actual, and a pointed towards the near future. A basis of the method constructed for research is an extraction of two most important types of conditions. The first of them is/are: a subject/subjects, and the other are: an object/objects. Subjective condition/s are human being/people, hence objective condition/s are projects/real implementations made in scales of: physical/spatial planning, urbanism and architecture. The research upon subjects remains in the sphere of humanist sciences as: philosophy, philosophy, social psychology, sociology, economy, etc. The research upon objects remains in the sphere sciences dealing with a physical space, e.g.: regional, urban and architectural - analysis, theory and design ‒ all of them including aesthetics as a philosophical bridge between theory and praxis. Logical overlapping and mutual penetrating of subjects and objects, reflect in a quality of a city as a place of humans. In the perspective view between: from one side the contemporary crisis in the planning and urban design, and from the second side inevitable growth of cities - hereby field of survey seems to be worth a care, widening and deepening.

Subcentres are dense concentrations of employment and services that appear across contemporary metropolitan areas, the resulting urban pattern is called polycentric. Polycentrism has become the keystone in a major number of regional and urban policies, since it has been seen as a sustainable and equilibrated urban model. In this paper, using as case study the biggest metropolitan areas in Spain we test whether employment subcentres effectively structure mobility patterns around them, and at the same time whether polycentric urban patterns reduce land consumed around subcentres. For this reason we use effective urbanised area and travel to work mobility matrix to assess whether polycentrism increases the efficiency of urbanisation. The results suggest that effectively employment subcentres do structure travel to work patterns, reducing urban mobility, and consequently being structural places. Nevertheless, from the perspective of land consumption little effect is detected after controlling other urban factors affecting this vector such as orography and urban fabric fragmentation.

The paper is an attempt of applying the urban history criteria for the deliberations on the future of cities. On the basis of historic and contemporary urban design the hypotheses and reflections on the future directions of cities’ development are discussed. They are presented in six basic groups referring to six factors of the creation and evolution of cities in the past, which were determined by Tadeusz Tołwiński. In the future the factors are likely to maintain their importance, although with certain change of their image and contents. The principle of a number of urban factors sharing their influence to induce city’s balanced development will remain unaltered, too. The harmony of functional and spatial transformations is desirable in urban evolution and the harmonious evolution of theoretical basis of urban design features positive impact on the future of cities likewise.

This paper proposes a series of questions on how recent cities’ eco-programs and design ideas could (or not) contribute towards reducing air pollution in future cities while creating vibrant and livable environments. Design Strategies related to a series of European, American and Asian cities affected by poor air quality condition, are critically discussed. Because effective policies to reduce carbon emissions take a long time to initiate, urban planners and architects have the unique opportunity to creatively re-examine city streets, landscape and buildings as active solutions to inspire sustainable living and combat poor air quality.

The crisis of urban space in medium towns, noticeable in the form of uninhabited apartments and business premises in many tenements, means the necessity to search for new spatial solutions which will be adequate to the contemporary reality of social life. Unfortunately, we cannot do much to stop natural expansion in towns and cities. Contemporary medium towns are losing their “attractiveness” because they are devoid of diversity and richness related to urban structures as well as the variety of social life. The unattractiveness of urban areas causes the unwillingness to live there. The flow of people from the cities to the suburbs leads to a number of unfavourable phenomena observed in the city and outside it. Lifestyles created in such a way become pathogenic creating sick personality reflected in man’s space. We must emphasize the fact that traditional spatial values are not protected in many cases, whereas their condition requiring considerable financial resources does not interest developers who seek for pickings.

Contemporary dynamic processes of transformation of city form, especially public spaces, contribute to create solutions, which at present belong to future, because of many features: expressive identity, durability and simultaneously functional flexibility. Important component of public spaces is green, which according to principles of sustainable development should be treated in the same way as built environment. According to this assumption there are required various researches concerning every kind of green form in cities, especially analysis of spatial composition of urban complexes. The paper presents contemporary town planning solutions in European cities (mostly public spaces), which are outstanding examples of application of basic green spatial elements in urban composition.

This paper presents problems concerning the possibility of realizing the idea of a city integrated with the natural environment through the development of energy-efficient concepts for architectural and urban solutions. In order to define contemporary tendencies, optimal solutions and patterns that could be continued while shaping future cities, this article shows the historical background of the energy-efficient principles of construction as well as experiments and models which have been created within this scope in recent decades. The specified problems are of importance considering the search for various forms of action for the development of the concept of a sustainable urban space.

In today’s development projects on urban space can be observed some clear trends, with relate to the natural environment and cultural heritage, the social environment, and economic conditions. In studies conducted in different research centers adopted similar criteria for determining ecological towns, cities, green, smart cities and towns intelligent community. The alignment of the trends, concepts, implementation of the European cities of the future of trends, concepts and implementation of urban planning in Poland is the main objective of this paper.

The article discusses changes to planning and designing of urban landscape, in particular, green areas and public parks, seen as component of the composition of a city, public space as well as important element of urban landscape and spatial order. It also focuses on a function performed by a landscape architect in these investments. The article includes references to concepts and ideas born in the last fifty years, including Urban Ecology, New Urbanism, Green Urbanism, Landscape Urbanism and green infrastructure. Factors important for the composition, designing, perception of nature and areas shaped by the greenery were also analysed. These days, the concept of planning urban greenery system is construed as a combination of requirements resulting from planning-related issues and pursuit of improvement in terms of quality of place and life.