Dilemmas for Regional Development in the Concepts Seeking to Develop Poland's Spatial Structure

Banski J. Dilemmas for regional development in the concepts seeking to develop Poland's spatial structure, Regional Studies. Post-War Poland has seen work done on three spatial development concepts. The first - from the late 1940s - had as its task the decentralization of industry and the strengthening of regions whose development had been lagging behind. The second - drawn up in the 1970s - promoted the system of moderate polycentric concentration and a shifting of part of the country's industrial potential to more weakly developed areas. In turn, the third concept - from the 1990s - again concentrated on balancing regional development, albeit through the idea of priority being assigned to efficiency over equality. The aim of this paper was to analyse the aforesaid three concepts as regards the approach taken to the evening out of regional development. The primary thesis here is that the concepts studied strived in their various different ways to reduce regional disparities, but never actually had the ideas they came up with put into effect properly.