Sustainable development of functional urban areas of voivodship’s capital cities in Poland

Abstract

Current global threats and changes undoubtedly justify conducting studies of sustainable development (SD) in different aspects. Researching this phenomenon in urban areas is important to formulate more accurate and important conclusions for urban policy. The aim of the paper is to assess the diversity of SD of FUAs of voivodship’s capitals in Poland, also with the level of development in different dimensions of sustainable development. The study, using the TOPSIS method, was conducted for 17 FUAs. This allowed us to assess that the level of differentiation of SDin studied FUAs is rather small. The highest levels of SD indices were observed in FUAs: Warsaw, Wrocław, the lowest in FUAs: Katowice-Gliwice and Łódź. Moreover, 65% of the studied units belong to the lower middle and lower-level classes of SD. It was also observed that the lowest result of SD indices was in the environmental-spatial dimension (in over 40% of studied FUAs).