Kształtowanie się miejskiej sieci osadniczej województwa łódzkiego

The article presents the process by which the urban settlement network of Łodź Voivodeship was shaped in geo-graphical, historical and geostatistical terms. For this reason the descriptive statistics and spatial analysis were used in the research, including Wroclaw dendrite, centrographic methods and density function (kernel function). Data were processed in order to apply them using GIS methods and tools. The paper presents a quantitative, spatial and dynamic analysis of changes in the urban settlement network of the Łodź Voivodeship. To this end, information about cities within the borders of the modern Łodź Voivodeship was used, such as: the date of granting of city rights, and the number, geographical location and number of inhabitants of cities. The obtained results provided the basis for indicating the role played in this network by the main city, i.e. Łodź (the capital of the voivodeship) and other cities included in the Łodź agglomeration, and enabled the presentation of processes taking place in the structure of the cities and their distribution.