The authors attempt to diagnose the contemporary situation of demographic development in Polish cities after the fall of socialism in 1989. The paper focuses on selected issues and processes related to major urbanisation tendencies during the period of Poland’s centrally planned economy. The depopulation of cities and urban shrinkage are presented in the context of suburbanisation, some aspects of internal migration (job migration in particular) as well as international migration. Special attention was paid to rates of population change in cities, which allowed the authors to distinguish several types of rates. Moreover, a variety of factors underlying demographic changes are also discussed.

When Poland entered the European Union in 2004, the ethnic composition of Great Britain experienced a rather sudden change. The large number of immigrants from Poland made Polish immigrants a key ethnic group in Great Britain within a few years after enlargement Poland to the European Union.The purpose of the paper is to describe the principal areas of concentration of Polish immigrants in Great Britain as well as to describe the key factors determining the distribution of Polish immigrants. The paper is based on data obtained from British population registries and survey data collected in London in 2010. Research has shown that most Polish immigrants have settled in major cities, with London being the main concentration area. The main reason for this distribution is the presence of migration networks in major cities and more job opportunities as well.

Local indicators of spatial association (acronym: L I S A) were used to identify regions of high and low poverty in Poland. Poverty is defined as the percentage of individuals on welfare – mean values for the period 2007 – 2009. Each region was assigned a name based on location. Twelve indices commonly associated with poverty were analyzed – 4 of the 12 describe financial status, next 4 social and demographic diversity, and last 4 the standard of living. The authors considered the selected indexes and the way they indicate poverty in some regions and are not related to poverty in other regions. The paper concerns cities, suburban gminas and rural gminas.

In this paper methods for measuring susceptibility to social and landscape degradation in large post-socialist housing estates (L H Es ) are proposed. This type of housing was especially popular in post-war Central and Eastern Europe run by communist regimes. As a result, L H Es today constitute a significant part of this region’s housing stock, therefore, their eventual decline would affect millions of people as well as considerable urban areas. This paper is designed to have an applied dimension. The research included a survey of the residents of six housing estates in Katowice (Poland), fieldwork, and statistical analysis using the chi-squared test. On this basis, several factors are evaluated according to their ‘degradation potential’. This leads to the creation of a model illustrating degradation processes taking place at L H Es . The decline in the quality of life is used as an analytical starting point. Research has shown that the large size of a given estate appears to be the most significant factor stimulating its decline. Other key factors are: low aesthetic qualities, poor maintenance of public spaces, weak social bonds, relative lack of public safety, and insufficient social infrastructure. In contrast, issues such as pollution, noise, undesirable surroundings and general management of the area appeared to have the least importance. The final result of the research procedure is a rating of the six studied estates on the basis of their susceptibility to degradation.

Based on an analysis of personnel flows (managerial and employee ), the authors show that knowledge flows in the biotech sector in Poland are strongly concentrated in space. With respect to managerial intra-metropolitan flows, Warszawa has a similar position to Cracow and the Tri-City (Gdańsk – Gdynia – Sopot conurbation ). Cracow is characterised by strong isolation with respect to personnel flows from the outside. On the other hand, within the scope of inter-metropolitan flows, Poland’s capital is dominant, in particular in terms of flows to the Tri-city, Poznań and Łódź. In the case of employee flows, the most important features of the examined issue are: dominance of intra-metropolitan flows and strong relationship between flows and the headquarters of the largest biotechnological companies. The conducted studies have shown that in the context of the Polish biotech sector, the concept of “local buzz, global pipelines” is corroborated, in line with which local and global knowledge flows are complementary with respect to each other.

The paper explores the issue of competitiveness in the field of tourism. Assuming an economic perspective and basing on a discussion of the issue with respect to tourist destinations, the paper looks at this type of analysis in the field of the geography of tourism. The paper utilizes systems analysis to create a competitiveness research model for multifunctional tourist destinations, which factors in a spectrum of determinants driving local tourist development.

Air travel has increased rapidly in Central Europe in the first decade of the 21st century thanks to the admission of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to the European Union and the liberalization of their air travel market. Rapid increase in the number of air travelers in Central Europe created new challenges for Central European airports, which had to expand, modernize and better connect to urban cores. The best solution of the last problem is to organize rail transport, which can handle considerable high passenger volumes, avoids traffic jams, and exerts a relatively small impact on the natural environment. The creation of rail transportation systems increases the airports competitiveness of making cities and whole geographical regions more accessible in general. Another benefit of this transport is that the construction of airportrail links includes metropolitan areas which had no efficient transport systems.

The paper is an attempt to critical discuss of the evolution of transport planning notion in the research literature – including the geographical one. The author presents key points of this discipline and reviews the difficulties associated with qualitative research on mobility – a field usually characterized by rational behavior prompted by external factors and economic factors. The social sciences suggest that mobility results in outcomes driven by social and psychological needs. The author suggests that geography is an important element of the interdisciplinary approach needed to analyze transport behaviors in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Finally, the author discusses space syntax theory and its applicability in research on the effects of geographic space on mobility.