Throughout decades Polish cities struggled with the lack of financial means, unfavorable conditions for development, and legal regulations hampering local activity and people’s entrepreneurship. The cities’ inhabitants could only enviously watch the metropolises of the Western Europe, actively seeking solutions to their own problems and ways to improve quality of life of local communities. Until lately all initiatives taken by Polish cities had little chance of changing the appearance of the largest cities in our country.
Today we watch the situation change. In the last few years some events took place that created favorable conditions for breakthrough transformation in Polish cities: effective reforms that sparked off citizens’ vigor, new legal solutions which turned self-government authorities into true managers of their own establishments, and the accession to the European Union. But it is only the European Union funds available since 2007 that truly open a new chapter, because they eliminate the problem of the lack of funds as the main obstacle to Polish cities’ growth.
Meanwhile there is another challenge – to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses of the cities and to choose an optimal strategy aiming to make up for what was neglected in the past as quickly as possible. Such a well thought-out assessment is indispensable in order to forge the great opportunity facing Polish cities into a true success.
While analyzing the situation of major metropolitan centers in Poland on the threshold of breakthrough changes, one has to remember that the potential for growth with which cities enter the new stage of development derives from three elements:
- historical legacy,
- natural assets and weaknesses of a given city,
- quality of management in the last dozen years.
PricewaterhouseCoopers created reports on seven major cities of Poland to aid in the proper diagnosis of the situation. This is a kind of an “opening report” – the first general view of the potential for development of these cities, from which some preliminary observations and conclusions can be drawn.
This is not a ranking of cities – there are too many differences between them in terms of their historical legacy and peculiar local strengths and weaknesses for such a comparison to be useful. Rankings and comparisons, especially in terms of quality of city management, will make sense in a few years’ time, when we are able to evaluate how cities planned their development and how they made use of the significant European Union funds available in 2007-2013.
The analysis is based on seven areas – “capitals”, which, in our opinion, determine the development potential of large cities. We believe that this analysis might help to put finishing touches on the existing strategies of cities – thus contributing to the success that major cities of Poland deserve.
Full versions of the reports in English (PDF format) can be downloaded below:
(2680 kB)
