Dorota Dymek

Despite the fact that urban areas have existed for millennia, no single, universal, supranational, and fully accepted definition of a city/town has been developed to date. The aim of this article is to review the criteria for identifying cities/towns in the world and their spatial differentiation. 233 territorial entities that are sovereign states or territories belonging to other states were surveyed. The analysis was based on a query from a list provided by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Population Division, which contains the definitions of cities/towns adopted by individual countries or territories when collecting data in censuses. The research carried out shows that singleor multicriteria definitions, referring to quantitative or (and) qualitative elements from the group of legal-administrative, demographic, infrastructural-spatial, and functional criteria, are most often used to distinguish cities/towns from villages. More than half of the surveyed territorial entities use only one criterion mentioned, and this is usually a legal-administrative criterion or a demographic criterion. In the process of identifying cities/towns, just over two-fifths of the surveyed entities apply a minimum population threshold (as the only or one of many criteria), set most often at 2,000 or 5,000 inhabitants. East Africa is the most diverse region in the world in terms of the criteria adopted, while Central Asia, Australia, and New Zealand are the least.

The idea of sustainable development is recognised as a basic concept for the development of communes. Its essence is based on the balance and sustainability of its three basic dimensions, namely social, economic and environmental. From the point of view of shaping the further development of territorial units, it therefore seems important to examine possible imbalances between the various dimensions, since it is recognised that sustainable development can only be achieved if there is a balance between them. The aim of the article is to identify the dominant dimension of sustainable development in rural and urban-rural communes in Poland. Special emphasis was placed on presenting differences in the distribution of these dimensions between units with a high share of protected areas (at least 50% of the area) and other units. The level of development of communes in individual dimensions was determined using the TOPSIS method based on statistical data made available in the CSO Local Data Bank for 2019. The analysis showed that there were disproportions in the level of development of communes in individual dimensions and in the spatial distribution of the dominant dimensions. Large differences were observed between the eastern and western parts of the country. Throughout Poland, the environmental dimension most often prevailed, followed by the economic dimension and least often by the social dimension. In the case of communes with a high share of protected areas, it was the environmental dimension, while in the case of the rest of the communes, it was the economic dimension. The study also showed a low correlation between the level of development of the communes in the economic dimension and the share of protected areas. However, there was no linear relationship between the share of protected areas and the level of development of the communes in other dimensions.