Small towns are an important element of settlement network. They change their status depending on, among others, the development of industry, and changes in the transportation system. Some of them lost civic rights, then regained them, and sometimes were incorporated into the neighboring agglomerations. Some small towns have merged together to create new structures in the settlement network. This article investigates this phenomenon on the example of south-west of Poland. It was also found that in several cases, a small town subsequently separated from the urban area and created a separate urban unit of its own.

The category of small towns is progressively polarized under the impact of metropolitan development. There is a growing diversification of such places with regard to functions performed and the overall position in settlement systems at regional and national levels. Aside from the division line which separates these towns that are located within, from those situated beyond the commuting range of large urban centres, this is increasingly related to local, territorial capital held. In general, however, the flattening of urban hierarchy and the decreasing importance of hierarchical linkages affect in particular the role of local service centres, especially in sparsely settled peripheral areas. Concerning the future, three alternative development paths are discussed in the article against the relevant conceptual background. These refer to the cyclical nature of urbanization processes, assume an extrapolation of trends observed or, alternatively, consider a containment of metropolization phenomena. With respect to policy related questions, changes in small town networks in peri-urban zones are identified as a specific, sensitive issue.

The article is part of the trend of research on revitalization. It presents the methodology of the process of diagnosis and separation of the degraded area from the revitalized one, for the needs of the Local Revitalization Program. The article describes the stages of the process, the examples of used measures, as well as problems appearing at diff erent stages of the study. The methodology is presented on the example of the small town of Wojkowice from the Śląskie Province.

The Lublin region has a rich history of coexistence and interpenetration of different traditions, cultures and religions, witnessed by its cities and towns. Small towns of the Lublin region are now facing a variety of spatial problems which are related to, among others, the organization and revitalization of public spaces, progressive scattering of housing development or changes in the organisation of traffic. The aim of this article is to present problems connected with landscape design and the revitalization of small towns of the Lublin region as exemplified by Frampol.

Trade is one of the key factors determining sustainable city development and its surroundings. City development is a result of provision of goods and services to city inhabitants, and residents of its surrounding areas. Retail trade in Poland belongs to economy sectors in which the processes of market changes were started the earliest. Discount stores that apply the strategy of low prices in the in the process of market conquering are currently one of the most dynamically developing selling formats. These shopping facilities are located in many Polish cities, including small towns and rural areas. The aim of the article is to show the scale of investments in new discount shops in small towns and rural areas in Poland in 2012–2015. Research focused at devoted to this field is important from the point of view of choosing the location of new investments related to discount chains and of the small towns and rural areas development strategies. Identification of consequences of discount chains operations in chosen rural areas and small towns can impact the verification of the policy adopted by local authorities in relation to spatial planning and forming the functional structure of the space. It will result in more conscious (rational) decisions in terms of localizing new discounts, which will reduce the number of local conflicts related to location of such facilities.