The smart city concept is becoming more and more popular as a direction for further development of cities in the European Union.

The main goal of the article is to determine the relationship between the concept of a smart city and the competitiveness of a modern city, understood as a standard of living of city’s inhabitants. The research method is a case study, based on a selected example of the city of Mannheim in Germany.

The author assumes that the results of the research, in addition to the contribution to the still developing knowledge on smart cities, will be able to fulfill the practical task – support the development and increase of competitiveness of contemporary Polish cities.

The paper concentrates on the possibilities of checking the extent to which cities meet the smart city concept. The presented concept concentrates on one of the main smart cities characteristic: smart environment. This paper is a result of joint work of specialist from two diff erent areas: management and environmental protection. The interdisciplinary character of the paper is characteristic for smart cities.

The work concerns city parks in Poznan and their importance in the structure and landscape of the city. The research included 38 park objects of various origin , size and nature . There were evaluated the uniformity of parks’ distribution within the agglomeration, the shape of the outline of the plan ( the nature of the border line) and their surroundings.

The paper is an attempt at reviewing the classical theory of externalities and club goods in the new context of flow economy and network relations, as well as the role of human capital connected with high quality surroundings (urban environment), which is a catalysing factor, and allows the formation of new resources and new competitive advantages for cities and busiensses.

Józefa Dietla street in Kraków has been constructed in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was a pioneering urban design solution, meant to act as a sort of ventilation duct for the city, so that its climate could be improved. An important element of this system of ventilating the city is the area currently occupied by a football pitch of the "Nadwiślan" sports club, which allows the breeze of the Vistula river into the city. This idea is evidence of the modern and forward thinking approach to urban planning in Kraków during those times. The role of Józefa Dietla street as a ventilation duct has currently been all but forgotten and is underappreciated despite the fact that the amount of air pollution in Kraków has greatly increased in comparison to the times when the street was being constructed. A measure of this disdain for the role that Józefa Dietla street and the area of the "Nadwiślan" play in keeping the sanitary conditions within the city at acceptable levels is the current layout of the area, which has significantly reduced the ventilating capacity of the street. The planned construction of a residential apartment building in place of the current football pitch will definitely hamper the capacity in which the street can be used for ventilation purposes. In this manner, the evidence of pro-ecological thinking of the urban planners of the XIX century is being wasted by their XXI century counterparts.

The starting point of the study on the problems, dilemmas and hopes for effective implementation of revitalization projects in Polish cities was the conviction that revitalization is one of the processes affecting the development and changes in the spatial and functional fabric of cities. Revitalization is defined as a deliberate and purposeful process, the effect of which is to restore life in the dysfunctional and degraded parts of cities. Taking up such a topic required an answer to the question about the nature of revitalization and its aspects. The focus of the study was on the problems of revitalization that stem from the legal and socio-economic situation and the dilemmas faced by local government authorities of Polish cities. The introduction to these considerations is the brief outline of the revitalization of Polish cities in the period after World War II, while the conclusion deals with the fears and hopes related to revitalization activities that are presently initiated. The discussion takes into account the existing, critically assessed, legal regulations on revitalization.

This article sheds light on the advent of online platforms and the way it is reshaping urban enviroment, breaking down traditional axes of both social interaction and commercial power, shifting the structure of traditional services. The platform revolution is radically transforming an array of many functional cities’ areas, like transportation, accommodations and personal services. Thus current concerns as strong urbanization, industrialization and world population growth, enable sharing economy firms to flourish as a reaction against the frictions of urban life exploiting such exacerbation, in order to fulfill demand for appropriate services. After a critical analysis of these issues, the article deepens innovative transportation services, moving on to illustrate the Italian rulemaking process as a chance to provide a solution to the ongoing problem of striking the right balance between competing priorities, such as market access and preservation of sustainable mobility. It suggests to reflect upon the best approach able to face the complexity of urban transport systems, in order to break in a new culture for urban mobility, comply to EU legislation too.

This article takes up the matter of contemporary threats to cities and urbanity, setting the problems cities face today against the background of the two categories of the resilient city and the city developing sustainably. The author describes and presents the evolution of the sustainable development concept as such, as well as the generational change in priorities that has taken place where the development of urbanised areas is concerned, given the way the concept has undergone a certain devaluation, in the light of its failure to achieve fulfi lment. The challenges cities face today require multi-faceted activity, in respect of increased inclusivity, robustness and resilience, and flexibility. This leaves today’s idea of the resilient city embracing old elements of the sustainable city, but also augmenting them in various ways.

The objective of the study was to analyse the theoretical model of development, ‘smart slow city’, based on two concepts of development of modern cities, i.e. ‘smart city’ and ‘slow city’. Conclusions mainly rely on the performed reference literature studies, which allowed for a synthetic presentation of the characteristics of the two discussed models of development, which are the basis for characterizing the hybrid model of the ‘smart slow city’. The comparison of city development models was made on the basis of the following characteristics: the genesis of the city development idea, the rate of changes and the model of life related to it, key city development factors, the main objective of changes, key actors, activity areas, specialization, scale of urban centres, city image, level of development policy, significance of cooperation etc.

Self-government districts in the minds of the city residents on the example of selected districts of Cracow, The article demonstrates the problem of perception of auxiliary units of the city by its residents. The history of the creation of self-government districts in Cracow was presented, the results of the survey conducted among the residents of three districts were shown (n=1433) and they were referred to the observations of other authors outlined in the subject literature. The study revealed that the self-government districts, which have been functioning for more than a quarter of a century, are poorly embedded in the consciousness of residents and do not play a significant role in their lives. Most of the respondents were not able to give the name of their own district correctly and did not know its spatial extent. The former administrative divisions and historical settlement units (former villages) were still deeply rooted in their consciousness. Most of the respondents did not take part in public life of the districts, nor did they participate in the initiatives taken at their level.

In the 17th century were functioned in England two types of public spaces: piazza type of squares, devoid of plants’ composition and green city squares of a garden nature, designed for the residents of the nearby houses. Both of these presented the high-class type of public space, which with the time became popular in many cities in Europe. The aim of the paper is to define the importance of these arrangements in urban landscape, including the identification of functions which they perform today in urban tissue of cities.

Cities play a special role in the process of sustainable development of the country. The city management plays a fundamental role in this challenge. The mayor should become a manager and manage the city based on a strategic marketing management model. Thanks to this, it can optimally use available financial instruments that give the opportunity to achieve strategic development goals of the city.

On “blue-green” aspects of climate change adaptation in cities.

The article indicates the potential of revitalization activities in the process of building the image of the city, associated also with its “brand”. It shows the role of city-marketing to create a city product, connected to the development of the cultural industries and the urban tourism. The article indicates common areas between the revitalization process and the creating the city brand, focusing on Gdańsk. Two main documents are taken into account: Brand Strategy Gdańsk until 2013 and Program for the development and promotion of the product off er of Gdańsk and the region in the 2014-2020 perspective. The article shows different types of revitalization activities aff ecting the image of Gdańsk, including: the spectacular investments in postindustrial areas, as well as residents’ and independent organizations’ activities, aiming to transform and to promote neglected, but valuable, areas of the city.

The article connects two issues: the city as text and neoclassical trends in urban design in the second half of the 20th century. These issues are presented on the examples of ideal cities: Washington 2000 – a design of Leon Krier, Nowa Huta and the residential complex of Ricardo Bofill in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. As a continuation of the ideal European city Shanghainese Lingang is presented designed by GMP.

The essay is meant to be a reflection, a conclusion of sorts regarding the topic proposed by the organizers of the "Towards beauty." It is meant to be about the problems of introducing aesthetics to public spaces. From the point of view of many disciplines. This academic event took place in the April of 2014 at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk. The Author assumed the perspective of an architect when contemplating the problems being discussed. This approach emphasizes the role that is played by the concept of the urban landscape. The work is composed of an introduction, which illustrates the reasons for adopting this perspective. This part is followed by a classification of the stances and academic research that has been presented in the delivered lectures and essays. This generalization has the form of a typology composed of five points, which describe the general issues that were discussed. The overarching thesis of this is essay is the statement that the choice of problems that have been discussed at the conference are the result of a contemporary model of thinking about the management of space, which results from a much too liberal approach that has been adopted after the socioeconomic changes that occurred in 1989. This begs the question whether the issues that are important in the context of the aesthetics of cities are effects the causes of which could lie in society's approach to its reality. Due to the aim of this essay being a commentary on the academic event that was the Gdańsk conference and a sort of reflection on the issues that were being discussed there, the Author decided not to provide it with a conclusion at the end. The Author's comments contained in this work are only a voice in the discussion and a complementation of the opinions that have been presented during the conference. The article is supposed to elicit a familiarity with the presented issues so that the reader can form their opinions, and, what is perhaps even more important, provide the foundation for future academic discussion on the topic of the beauty of the cityscape.

Nowadays, the Internet connects people, multimedia and physical objects leading to a new-wave of services. This includes learning applications, which require to manage huge and mixed volumes of information coming from Web and social media, smart-cities and Internet of Things nodes. Unfortunately, designing smart e-learning systems able to take advantage of such a complex technological space raises different challenges. In this perspective, this paper introduces a reference architecture for the development of future and big-data-capable e-learning platforms. Also, it showcases how data can be used to enrich the learning process.

Port cities are having diff erent spatial structure than those located inlands. As a result of their seaside location, they face specifi c administrative and functional problems on a daily basis. In the economic and settlement structure of the country, they usually play the role of a “gate” through which streams of cargo are distributed further over the whole hinterland. It is the transport and logistics function of port cities, as well as the water bodies located in their area, that determine their spatial character to the greatest extent. The confi guration of the two above- mentioned factors, together with other development conditions, determines the model of spatial changes taking place in port cities. Additionally, evolving shipping technologies aff ect the contemporary development of the ports’ and port cities’ spatial structure.

The Cracow districts have the status of auxiliary self-governing units within this city and, generally should be communities of residents living in particular parts of the city, close to them, in which they implement their daily practices. In theer article, the authors, by examining the sense of belonging to the district, undertook to identify its perception by residents and relations between the residents and their auxiliary units, on the example of two such districts this of VIII Dębniki and X Swoszowice. Attitudes of their residents towards self-governing districts were identified on the basis of 1141 questionnaires, obtaining during surveys conducted in 2017. The authors have found relatively weak relations of residents with their auxiliary units, as evidenced by small involvement in initiatives taken for the benefit of this districts. The analysis, however, showed also considerable differences in the detailed assessment of the attitudes of residents at the level of their division according to their age groups, period of the residence, as well as to the type of housing a single-family, multi-family or mixed ones.

Experiences of subregional cities in programming of urban renewal. The aim of the article is to analyze and evaluate the experience of selected subregional cities in revitalization programming. At the beginning, the strategic policy of the state towards subregional centers was defined. The guidelines from the National Spatial Development Concept, the National Urban Policy and the Strategy for Responsible Development were pointed out. Then, examine in detail the activities carried out so far in 4 cities, which as a result of the administrative reform in 1999 lost the status of the provincial city, i.e. in Ciechanów, Legnica, Piła and Przemyśl. Current documents have been characterized, in particular, the specificity of areas covered by revitalization has been described. Next, the leading directions of transformations of these areas were presented, resulting from the adopted revitalization policy. This allowed for the formulation of certain generalizations about the specificity of the process of renewal of degraded areas in subregional centers in Poland.

The social, economic and environmental zone is constantly changing in terms of factors aimed at improving the quality of life, economic and technological development of the city while at the same time rational use of resources of the natural environment. Change as a dynamic factor is an impulse for creating new behaviors of residents and interactions between them and public and private sector entities. The article attempts to systematize selected contemporary concepts shaping the city, emphasizing the coherence of their assumptions and the scope of the issues discussed. Looking for features that characterize the city, which balance the needs and expectations of its users.

There are more and more new development challenges emerging in Polish cities and regions recently. Because of those challenges we can observe an increase of the role of cities and associated environments. The concept of cities’ impact on the environment is a result of many processes, such as: suburbanization, reurbanization, increasing population mobility, development of transport systems, innovation, or entrepreneurship. A city is a complex entity, it is a subject to dynamic changes, to understand which we need interdisciplinary knowledge or the combination of many different approaches along with an attempt to draw many conclusions. We can find numerous theoretical examples describing city-regional environment relations in the literature. In general, these models explain the relationship between economically strong cities (metropolis) and the regions. However, there is not much literature and research explaining the nature and strength of relationships with medium-sized cities. There are also very few ideas for developing the potential of medium-sized cities in polish national policy. The aim of the article is to present disproportions in the development of medium-sized cities in voivodships of Eastern Poland in 2010-2017. The author will also present the possibility of using a synthetic measure to assess and recognize the spatial diversity of medium-sized cities development.