Zróżnicowanie rozwoju miejskich obszarów funkcjonalnych ośrodków wojewódzkich w Polsce

Abstract

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities. Also, in Poland, urbanisation processes are still progressing. Moreover, the impact of an urban zone itself does not end with administrative boundaries. There are a number of functional connections between a given urban centre and its surroundings. Thus, functional urban areas begin to play a more important role in development policy. In particular, this aspect has gained importance in the face of the introduction, in 2014, of new territorial instruments of the EU cohesion policy, such as Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI). The introduction of ITI was associated with formalising the operation of functional urban areas in Poland (FUA), mainly in the area of voivodeship centres. After a few years of their functioning, it is worth taking a closer look at their diversity. The aim of the study is, therefore, to determine the differentiation in the level of development of functional areas of voivodeship capital cities in Poland and their classification. The research was carried out with the use of the TOPSIS method on the basis of available, selected data from the Central Statistical Office. As a result of the research, FUAs were assigned to various classes of the level of socio-economic development and ranked in terms of the value of the synthetic indicator of socio-economic development that was constructed under the TOPSIS method. As a result of the study, it was found that, in general, studied units are characterised by rather small differentiation in the level of development; however, there are quite large discrepancies in the level of the synthetic indicator of socio-economic development between FUAs with the highest and the lowest value of this indicator.