Funkcjonalne różnicowanie małych miast północno-wschodniej Polski w warunkach depopulacji = Functional differentiation of small towns in North-Eastern Poland under a depopulation trend

Abstract

The changing role of small towns is a noticeable topic of contemporary research on urban and regional development in Poland. Unlike those situated within the zone of daily commuting around large cities, small urban localities in what are peripheral localities from the point of view of Poland as a whole are strongly exposed to metropolitan development backwash effects, which manifest themselves in migration outflow and population ageing, together with the loss of certain specialised functions that tend to cluster in centres at higher levels in the urban hierarchy. Going against these general trends, some of the towns in question are in a position to maintain existing activities in manufacturing or service branches of international or national market range, and/or to attract new ones. At the same time, those small urban localities that witness a curtailment of more-specialised functions experience a growing reliance on the public sector, in addition to commercial activities of local range, performing a stabilising role with regard to urban-rural functional relations at the local level of the settlement system. This article focuses on factors that underpin such polarisation trends by referring to the concepts of territorial competitiveness and territorial capital (Camagni, 2002, 2008). It illustrates their applicability using materials derived from an empirical study covering a subset of 19 small towns, of populations between 3000 and 10,000, situated in environmentally rich North-Eastern regions of Poland. Aiming to acquire primary data, the study has involved a series of extended, open-ended interviews with local stakeholders (5 to 7 per town), together with a questionnaire-based survey of 55 enterprises, in manufacturing and services of supra-local market range. As the results show (in line with the assumptions of Camagni), successful development of specialised functions, including niche-type activities in the small towns under study, can in several cases at least be linked to synergic effects between such components of territorial capital as creativity, local entrepreneurship and proactive policy on the part of local government. By focusing on the (EU Structural Fund-supported) extension and modernisation, of technical as well as social infrastructure, the latter have contributed to a general improvement in living conditions locally over the last fifteen years. This has in turn created some potential for attracting new residents, first of all from the surrounding rural areas; and – as a more distant prospect – also returning migrants from both abroad and other localities (typically Poland’s large urban centres). Thus, even in the face of prevailing depopulation trends, the small towns presented here (including local service centres) may enjoy certain opportunities to expand their place-of residence functions of both local and supra-local scope.