The article attempts a comparison of two harbor districts, in Gdansk and in Hamburg. In 2013, a multiannual program - IBA Hamburg (International Building Exhibition) - was completed. The IBA, initiated with the a concept of the Leap over the Elbe River, part of the Growing City development agenda, addressed the problem of restructuring the port-nearby zones in Harburg and Wilhelmsburg, which have been recognised as areas of high potential in metropolitan development. The concept of metrozones (intra-peripheries or intra border zones), similarly to the term in-between City (German: Zwischenstadt), describes the current problems associated with the strive for creation of an original, but efficient and compact European city. Restructuring of the harbor districts enables new development of the urbanized, but never planned as urban space, areas. Shaped in accordance with the technological capabilities and with the regulation standards and norms of the second half of the 20th century, nowadays the areas form the resultative landscape, burdened with the image of an unfriendly or even dangerous zones. In the era of high technology, metrozones are becoming valuable intra-city developmental areas, opened to alternative urban programs, avoiding the homogenising global trends. In connection with the above, the article describes the situation of the area organized around Nowy Port in Gdansk.

The basic resource of urban planning is space, which as a result of transformation has a direct impact on socio-economic development and quality of life. The author’s purpose was to define planning solutions for urban spatial policy, which can raise the quality of living, especially in the residential environment. In connection with the above, the literature of the subject was analysed and examples of good spatial policy and urban development in the living environment were shown. Particular attention was paid to the planning solutions in Paris and Vienna, as well as to the examples of the new living environment creation in some Scandinavian cities.

Global brown coal resources are estimated to be extracted at around 512 million Mg. They are found in over a dozen countries, including primarily: Australia, China, the Czech Republic, Greece, Germany, Poland, Russia, the United States and Turkey. More than 80% of total brown coal production in the EU takes place in: Germany, Poland, Greece and the Czech Republic. This means that the majority of production still uses conventional fuels, including both hard coal and brown coal. Given the current energy needs in the context of brown coal reserves depletion and the impacts of the current climate and energy policies of the EU, it is very important that all new investments in mining and energy complexes based on brown coal resources must be prepared carefully to ensure high production efficiency and minimize negative environmental impacts. This article attempts to solve a problem involving the choice of the location of the opening cut to expose brown coal deposits. Due to the stratified nature of brown coal deposits and the associated open-cast mining technology used in a continuous mining system with bucket wheel excavators, belt conveyor systems and spreaders, the location of the opening cut is not completely random and the number of potential solutions is finite. The multifaceted technical, organizational, economic, social and environmental problems require a holistic approach to this research problem. Such an approach should take the different, often opposing, perspectives of the many stakeholders into account. These issues can be solved using mathematical tools designed for multiple-criteria decision support. With the proposed method, a ranking of alternatives can be created, depending on the predefined location of the opening cut.