Dezurbanizacja niweczy ład przestrzenny

• Autorzy: Chmielewski J. M.

Warianty tytułu

EN

De-urbanisation destroys spatial order

• Języki publikacji: PL

Abstrakty

EN

De-urbanisation is a phenomenon depicting changes within the spatial development of settlements whose characteristic features include dispersed development in suburban areas, especially those of big towns. This tendency was noticed earliest of all in the U.S.A. where the deconcentration of towns progressed spontaneously from the end of the second world war. It was expressed by the disappearance of residential function from the city centres of even small and medium towns as well as the transition of this function to the suburbs. Next the same happened with production enterprises, storehouses, technical services and, finally, services intended for the residents, spanning from trade to culture. Such was the course of the realisation of "the American dream" of a free society, which outside the urbanised sphere expected to find more privacy, mobility, security and a feeling of ownership. As may be deduced from published studies on urban development in the U.S.A., in multiple domains of social and economic life the "American dream" proved to be an unattainable dream. Alltold, its realisation denoted growing costs of the functioning of settlement structures and, as a consequence, increasing financial burdens borne by households in the form of transport and housing expenses. The effects of de-urbanisation progressing in the American mode are discernible also in Europe. The phenomenon also threatens Poland, especially in the wake of political transformations when the core of developmental investments shifted to the weak and fragmentised private sector. From 1990 to 1998 urbanised terrains grew by 8,7%, while the population growth totalled only 1,27-1,31% in the towns. A phenomenon characteristic for large in the number of residents of the central town, and the population growth in the surrounding communes. Owing to the current economic situation Poland has found herself in a hopefully, transitory period of rising deurbanisation tendencies. The latter are the reason why spontaneously emerging development structures degrade landscape qualities and successively disclose negative symptoms, similar to those recorded in the United States. Those processes, favoured both by local planning within the communes and the regulations of national law, entail a totally unjustified spread of building sites at the cost of farmland. The population density of the sites diminishes, and the percentage of areas not encompassed by the infrastructure, both technical and services, increases. The new statute on physical planning and development in 2003 opened equally novel legal gateways for diffused development in the countryside. They entail cut-rate treatment of agrarian settlements whose localisation does not have to be hampered by the so-called principles of good neighbourliness. In the already developed terrains de-urbanisation does not favour restructurisation and modernisation. The users of those terrains protest particularly against strivings towards intensified development. Polish legislation lacks efficient instruments enabling economical spatial development. Completed studies on the conditions and trends of development in the region of Warsaw show that 47 communes foresee increasing the area of construction land by about 300 sq. kms. In conditions determined by a small rise in the number of inhabitants, announced in demographic prognoses, this means a further fall in population density. In 1936 this density in the Warsaw area totalled on the average ca. 58 inhabitants / hectare, in 1986 it dropped to 34 residents, and in 2030 it is to fall to 26 inhabitants / hectare. De-urbanisation also acts contrary to the recognised principles of sustainable development by contributing to an accelerated reduction of natural ecosystems, and in the future will induce high maintenance costs of the resources constructed as its consequence. The future generations will, therefore, have at their disposal lower access to natural substance than the present generations, and will be encumbered by higher maintenance costs, as has been recorded already in the USA. Taking the above into consideration it seems worth indicating one of the crucial truths evidenced by the crisis of the natural environment. Space is a limited good; furthermore, spatial development is of a global dimension. In other words, developing the space which man might have at his disposal calls for its economical application for assorted purposes. In shaping the environment it is not important "whether we shall modify Nature or not, but the way in which we shall do so" - as Rene Dubos wrote correctly in his book In Praise of Diversity. De-urbanisation leads to the scattering of development, and thus undermines spatial order, a process whose aesthetic outcome can be noticed already in the contemporary landscape, and whose economic consequences we shall experience in the near future.

Słowa kluczowe

PL

dezurbanizacja; ład przestrzenny

EN

de-urbanisation; spatial order

• Wydawca: Komitet Architektury i Urbanistyki PAN ; Politechnika Warszawska, Wydział Architektury
• Czasopismo: Kwartalnik Architektury i Urbanistyki
• Rocznik: 2002
• Tom: T. 47, z. 3
• Strony: 243--250
• Opis fizyczny: fot., rys.

Twórcy

autor

Chmielewski J. M.