The phenomenon of churching (attendance at churches outside parishes of residence) is associated with socio-economic and cultural transformations of society, including general growth of mobility. In this paper titular issue was described against the background of the concept of the life of a city and according to the concept of place. On the ground of the data gained, the presence of churching in the Old Town area in Poznań and its dimensions were primarily proved. This work is an introduction to an empirical research, concerning spatial behaviour of churching people and possible impact of their decisions on city centre functions.

The article deals with the process of restoring life into the Elblag’s waterfront – located in the heart of the city, which is the Old Town with still forgotten Granary Island, both damaged by the second world war. The conclusions are inspired by publications about Elblag deriving from various periods, as well by international or students’ workshops. The author describes various considerations how to bring Granary Island into cultivation simultaneously with rebuilding Elblag’s Old Town, that derive from the conservation concept based on a new method named retroversion, how to create new panorama of the waterfront and what is the best way to integrate it with The Old Town, using Elblag River.