Demographic challenges of regional development of Poland. The goals of the article are dichotomous. First of all, it is the recognition of the main problems of regional development in Poland, resulting from the current and forecast demographic and settlement situation, including depopulation and population aging. An increasing mismatch between jobs, housing, education and services, increasingly scattered and inefficient settlement and inefficiency of the administrative and territorial system in terms of income and expenditure balancing and ensuring an adequate standard of services resulting from the administrative hierarchization of the settlement network, territorial delimitation and spatial accessibility have been identified. Then, in the second place, an attempt was made to formulate remedial measures related mainly to the optimization of spatial development and stimulation of innovative economic growth based in particular on endogenous poles of growth. In the article, among others the results of the author’s research and analyzes were used, which were carried out for practical purposes for government diagnostic and strategic documents in the years 2000–2017 [incl. “Report of the spatial development of Poland”, “Concept of Spatial Development of Poland 2030”, “National Strategy for Regional Development 2010–2020”, delimitation of “State Intervention Strategic Areas: Growth Areas and Problem Areas” and “Responsible Development Strategy”].

Expenditures Related to Technical Infrastructure. The aim of the study is to answer to the question what is the economic (financial) scale of expenditure and local investments related to the technical infrastructure and to what extent the investment processes are correlated with the planning coverage. The study is based on data used in the annual reports of the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization of the Polish Academy of Sciences on the state of planning work in communes. A detailed analysis of municipal budget expenditures was carried out, demonstrating large diversity of water and sewerage services, road construction and renovation, investment expenditures, etc. The research showed that a significant part of the investment is located outside local plans based on the decision on building conditions. This creates a serious risk of irrationality of spatial management and leads to increase of infrastructure service costs.

Socio-Economic Effects of the Spatial Chaos for the Settlement Systems and Functional Land Use Structure. The aim of the study is an attempt to estimate, on the basis of literature and own analyzes, how costs are related to spatial chaos, i.e. mainly dispersion of settlement. Mainly residential (housing) settlement was addressed, which contributes the most to the defective structure of the entire settlement. In particular, the analysis uses several concentration indicators and graphical methods, including the so-called minimal spanning tree (MST). Analyzes have shown that costs can amount to several dozen billion zlotys a year, resulting due to the lack of utilities, unsatisfactory condition of public infrastructure, morphological and functional chaos, excessive location of buildings in agricultural areas, oversupply of investment land with low location potential and as a result of low economic efficiency and effectiveness of settlement.

Potential Compensatory Costs Related to Invalid Spatial Planning in Communes. The purpose of the article is to compare the costs of enacted local plans and their possible repeal in the part concerning the faulty (irrational) allocation of land for various functions. It was attempted to estimate the costs associated with the hypothetical repeal of local plans in a situation where such a need arises, resulting from the overestimation of areas designated especially for housing development. These costs are primarily the need to pay compensation to landowners for those parts of the land that first changed their intended use from a lower market value to a higher one, and then there would be a hypothetical “reverse” operation (e.g. restoration of agricultural use). It was obtained that depending on the methodology, these costs could fluctuate between 135-325 billion PLN. This means that there is no possibility of ‘automatic’ repealing defective local plans across the all country.

O tym, dlaczego polskie miejscowości się wyludniają, mówi prof. Przemysław Śleszyński z Instytutu Geografii i Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania PAN w Warszawie, autor „Analizy 122 średnich miast tracących funkcje społeczno-gospodarcze”.

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