The role and the presence of the United States in the navigation of the Mediterranean Sea.
More...
Keywords: globalization; ius gentium; just war; world order; communication.
In this essay I try to draw some parallelisms between the 16th century, the beginning of the process of globalization, and that of the 21th century, which can be conceived as the beginning of its definitive termination. The comparison is made on the basis of a 16-century Spanish theologian, Francisco de Vitoria. My main argument is that two of his key-concepts – the ius gentium and the just war, respectively – provided a well-founded basis to treat properly the most serious conflicts in that century, whereas in our age we lack even these concepts to tackle properly the fundamental problems of our age.
More...
History of the Slaves in Santo Domingo at the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century.
More...
Keywords: user charges; own revenues; local governments’ budgets
The aim of this paper is to identify trends in the marketization of selected public tasks implementation in large cities. An analysis of the implementation of selected public tasks in the form of budgetary units, local budgetary establishments and through the involvement of large cities in companies was made. The profitability of the introduction of user charges for selected public services in large cities in Poland in 2012-2014 was analyzed. This made it possible to identify key areas of marketization with the proceeds generated through user charges for services and their impact on cities’ finances. It was indicated that user charges for services in the surveyed cities, as a rule, were calculated at the level that did not allow for balancing spending on these tasks, particularly in the case of social tasks. At the same time these tasks for which self-financing was possible were separated organizationally to be implemented by municipal companies.
More...
Keywords: council housing; social premises; evictions; compensations
The purpose of the article is an analysis of the current housing situation in cities with poviat rights in the Silesian Voivodeship and evaluation of operations of local self-governments in the realization of evicted housing needs. An answer to the question is a research problem of the work: what participation has a council housing in the investment structure in chosen communes and whether it is sufficient in proportion to the number of people waiting for the housing unit from the housing stock of the city. In order to validate research hypotheses and to solve the research problem in the article a diagnosis of the housing situation will be made in 19 cities with poviat rights in the Silesian Voivodeship. Based on conducted analyses it is possible to state, that in the majority of cities, in spite of the statistical surplus of flats in total, a deficit of social premises is appearing. The scale of the council housing is not connected with the number of people waiting for social premises and with the number of adjudged court decisions for eviction with the right to social premises.
More...
Keywords: revitalisation; development; socio-economic vitality
The article refers to issues linked with the planning and execution of revitalisation processes along with evaluation of revitalisation projects. It aims at verification of new economic development’s concepts applied in revitalisation projects in the light of their impact on a socio-economic vitality of crisis areas as well as on a level of public intervention. The evaluation of relations between development’s concepts underlying the revitalisation projects and the level of public intervention, as well as gained socio-economic vitality allows for arguing about the effectiveness of undertaking activities. In empirical aspects the paper refers to contemporary theoretical and normative assumptions of revitalisation notions by confronting them with the case studies analysis linked with revitalisation projects realised in selected Polish cities. Applied methodology includes tools such as desk research studies, focus group interviews and portfolio analysis.
More...
Keywords: financial condition of communes; spatial autocorrelation; global Moran I statistic local Moran I statistics
Local development hinges on keeping financial condition of a commune in good standing. Income potential of a commune may be affected by the presence of natural resources that foster certain type of economic activities, and by human resources, as in vicinity of large urban centers. The aim of the article was to identify spatial effects in the evaluation of financial condition of the Wielkopolska Voivodeship communes. The synthetic evaluation was carried out by TOPSIS method, and the spatial effects were examined using global and local Moran I statistics. The study found a moderate positive spatial autocorrelation. Clusters of high values were detected around Poznań metropolitan area, around other large cities (Leszno and Kalisz), in the lignite basin, and in tourist districts.
More...
Keywords: spatial planning; spatial order; interests
The declared sense of existence of spatial planning is to balance and harmonise activities of various entities in space to achieve spatial order. Reality, however, shows that in general it is a tool to achieve the interests (especially economic) of certain entities. Various political systems are dominated by the interests of different groups of entities. In Poland, for several decades of communist economy public interest was the most important, and now preponderance of private interest, especially of property owners, is visible. This, however, always leads to distortions of space development, unfavourable from the viewpoint of spatial order. It seems that in Polish realities it is necessary to create a completely new spatial planning system in order to eliminate such distortions.
More...
Keywords: eco-cities; smart cities
Such negative phenomena as global warming, air polution, quality of life leading to the growth of stress, genetically modified foods and large amounts of chemicals will not favor as a remedy for the concept of eco-cities. Changes in the direction of the ecological city thus appear to be a necessity. In fact, there are not fully ecological cities so far. Most relevant to the broader concept of “eco” are villages located in natural surroundings, primarily rural communities. They can be created from scratch and include a different vision of ecological solutions. Existing urban areas should plan and implement concepts on the one hand referring to the past, namely the existence of so-called uncontrolled biosphere, on the other, using a solution of “smart” urban infrastructure.
More...
Keywords: regional development; Concept for National Spatial Planning; National Development Strategy; Białystok; Gorzów Wielkopolski; Kielce; Olsztyn; Opole; Rzeszów and Zielona Góra; metropolitan areas
The article contains an analysis of practical consequences of division of voivodeship capitals into two separate categories. Mentioned “other regional centers” are those which were not included in the category of metropolis. A classification in government policy documents is important for such aspects of development policy as infrastructure, transport accessibility, metropolitan areas, location of social infrastructure, and location of scientific and knowledge-based economy. The study leads to the identification of conditions for the development of “other provincial centers” resulting from the distinction between the two categories of regional capital cities.
More...
Keywords: municipality; low emission; households; tasks of municipalities
One of the countries that has the biggest problems with the purity of the air is Poland, which has the most polluted air in the European Union. The main source of air pollution is low emission. Therefore, the article deals with the issues relating to air pollution caused by low emission and the ability to limit the negative effects by reducing pollution from households.
More...
Keywords: municipal waste; separate collection; regression analysis
The aim of the work is to present the conditions of spatial diversity of separate collection of municipal waste. The hypothesis has been verified that municipal waste collected selectively in households is strongly correlated with own revenues of gminas per capita and population density. The higher Gross Domestic Product per one inhabitant, disposable income and own revenues of gminas per capita are, the more communal waste and resources for organization of their receiving system and selective collection arise. The larger density of population, the easier and cheaper, according to the concept of “urban sustainability”, to organize a system of selective collection of communal waste. In areas with a dispersed network of settlements, selective collection of municipal waste, as well as the construction of technical infrastructure network, is unprofitable.
More...
Keywords: integrated territorial approach; urban functional area; delimitation; regional development
Functional approach for the development of urban areas founding departing from the perception of problems and challenges only by the prism of administrative borders becomes more and more important. In practice, however, there are different approaches to the criteria and principles of delimitation of urban functional areas related to eg. the regional centers, including Jelenia Góra. New instrument – Integrated Territorial Investment (ITI) is dedicated for towns and their functional areas in the perspective of EU programming (2014-2020). In practice ITI contributes to the realization of integrated strategies of urban development and plays a decisive role in the development of towns and urban functional areas.
More...
Keywords: smart city; inteligent city; local development; technologies
The smart city concept is in theory well recognized, but there is no clear definition of this term and a different approach to the factors affecting the inteligent city development causes that in practice the label of smart city is misused. The smart city development is connected with a particular strategy of urban development that results in the implemention of various projects based on advanced technologies. The purpose of this article is to identify and evaluate specific initiatives and programs implemented by local authorities in Barcelona in the context of smart city development.
More...
Keywords: growth factors; county capitals; peripheral area; strategic planning; economic development; development strategy; Pomorskie Voivodeship
The paper refers to the research study of problems of development of peripheral areas (i.e. outside metropolitan areas) conducted by the author since 2009. The author hypothesizes that the development of towns which are capitals of poviats (county) can contribute to the economic revival of their surroundings. In 2013 the author studied developmental factors listed in strategic plans of poviat capitals in peripheral areas of Pomeranian Voivodeship (region). Nowadays the strategies of these towns in terms of economic development and the factors in documents updated have been studied. The aim of this study is to verify, whether strategies use recognized factors. The sources of information are the strategic plans of the towns studied, the method – the analysis of these plans. The answer for these questions in most cases is positive. A lot of content is far too general, not exposing the town specifics. Some contents are formulated incorrectly, some contents are questionable.
More...
Keywords: special economic zone; investments; investments budgeting; investment expenditure; return on the investment
The article presents problems of investments planning in Polish special economic zones (SEZs) and is based on legal regulations referring to this issue, classical methods of capital budgeting, as well as on the author’s participant observations gained while providing consultancy services for investors. Firstly, basic information about SEZs is presented, next variants of obtaining regional aid by entrepreneurs investing in SEZs and conditions which they have to meet for this purpose are discussed. The article also provides information regarding costs related to entering and functioning in SEZs. The main body of the article focuses on method for budgeting of the above aid, which the author has worked out. Its essence is presented with detailed examples. In conclusion the author points to many recommendations for practical applications of the said techniques. The methods of this kind have not been presented in the literature so far, despite the fact that SEZs have been operating in Poland for a dozen years.
More...
Keywords: local governments; fiscal sustainabilty; spatial policy
In terms of decentralization of public tasks, poor fiscal capacity of local revenues and limited possibilities of financial support from central government, the crucial problem seems to be achieving long-term fiscal sustainability by local budgets. One of the most important determinants of the current and future fiscal stance of self-governments is local spatial policy. It is therefore particularly important to forecast direct and indirect budgetary impact of local spatial plans. The aim of the article is to evaluate the actual role of forecasts of fiscal consequences of local spatial policy as accurate and reliable prediction tools.
More...