Spatial changes of central parts of the Polish biggest cities after World War II
Tomasz FIGLUS, University of Lodz, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Department of Political and Historical Geography and Regional Studies, Poland
Lukasz MUSIAKA, University of Lodz, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Department of Political and Historical Geography and Regional Studies, Poland
Robert SZMYTKIE, University of Wroclaw, Institute of Geography and Regional Development, Department of Human Geography, Poland
In the mid - 20th century process of spatial transformations of many Polish historic cities faced enormous morphological and functional change due to the scale of WWII damage. After the war urgent need to rebuild the cities in a new political and economic realities of communism era occured. The reconstruction of the largest cities of great economic, administrative, population and prestige importance, was undertaken in the first place. The aim of the presentation is to demonstrate determinants, character and main results of the urban changes in the centres of the biggest Polish cities. A comparative analysis of the scale of spatial transformation was presented on seven examples of Warsaw, Cracow, Lodz, Wroclaw, Poznan, Gdansk, Szczecin (cities with population over 400 000 inhabitants). The starting point of the analysis was the pre-war city spatial structure. The following stages compare the changes after the war destruction, during the communist period, the socio-economic transformation after 1989 and the contemporary situation. City centres were divided into almost completely preserved initial spatial layouts with minimal, orthomorphic transformations; partially preserved layouts with considerable semi-metamorphic scale of spatial reorganisation; and totally destroyed and transformed spatial layouts of metamorphic transformation level. As a result of the macro-scale analysis, authors present the conceptual model of the city centres spatial transformations, depending on the influence of many external and internal factors. The proposed concept of changes of the city centres is based on Conzenian approach of urban morphology.
Mots clés : war damage|cities|urban morphology|urban transformation |Poland
A103405TF