| 1. |
- Kantor-Pietraga, Iwona, et al.
(author)
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Environmental hazards as a driver of urban abandonment in Poland
- 2014
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In: Unraveling the logics of landscape. Eds.: Stenseke, M., Dymitrow, M., Saltzman, K. et al.; 26th session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape, 8–12 September, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg & Mariestad, Sweden.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The modern society is often perceived robust enough to withhold the calamities of adverse natural forces, while the phenomenon of complete settlement abandonment might seem as a thing of the past. However, due to an increased rate of environmental change, the issue of human vulnerability becomes all the more pertinent. In this presentation, we focus on the emergence of rural landscapes as a result of urban abandonment due to environmental hazards, here seen as an element in the functioning of the concept of environmental drivers. The underlying assumption is that a characteristic of environmental hazards is their spatial and temporal constancy of impact, whereby processes and phenomena having taken place in the past have their analogies in the present. In order to generate considerations for future research and policy development, there is a need to pay greater attention to the dangerous relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past. The presentation clarifies the dynamic interactions of drivers and their progression through various stages of urban abandonment with both an analysis of some general trends and an in-depth examination of three selected case studies from Poland. It has two objectives. The first one is to identify the historical role of environmental drivers in the process of urban abandonment, while the second one is to contribute to the typology of environmentally related processes of urban abandonment in order to better identify future calamities. In the first respect, the findings reveal that the relation between environmental hazards and urban abandonment is pertinent in regions with specific geographic conditions and pertains only to certain categories of urban settlements. In the second respect, by drawing on these findings, we propose some alterations and amendments to McLeman’s comprehensive model of settlement abandonment in the context of global environmental change.
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| 2. |
- Krzysztofik, Robert, et al.
(author)
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Environmental hazards and urban abandonment: Case studies and typological issues
- 2015
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In: Geografiska Annaler. Series B. Human Geography. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0435-3684 .- 1468-0467. ; 97:4, s. 291-308
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The article discusses the phenomenon of urban abandonment as a result of environmental hazards. Seen as an outcome of environmental drivers, the underlying assumption is that a characteristic of environmental hazards is their spatial and temporal constancy of impact, whereby processes and phenomena having taken place in the past have their analogies in the present. In order to generate insights for future research and policy development, there is a need to pay greater attention to the precarious relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past through the study of historical cases. The article clarifies the dynamic interactions of drivers and their progression through various stages of urban abandonment. This is done by recourse to an analysis of some general trends and an in-depth examination of three selected case studies from Poland. It has two objectives. The first is to identify the historical role of environmental drivers in the process of urban abandonment, while the second one is to contribute to the typology of environmentally related processes of urban abandonment in order to better identify future calamities. With respect to the former, the findings reveal that the relation between environmental hazards and urban abandonment is pertinent in regions with specific geographic conditions and pertains only to certain categories of urban settlements. With respect to the latter, by drawing on these findings, we propose some alterations and amendments to McLeman’s comprehensive model of settlement abandonment in the context of global environmental change.
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| 3. |
- Szmytkie, Robert, et al.
(author)
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Degraded towns and urban abandonment : Miasta zdegradowane a procesy opustoszania
- 2015
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In: Krzysztofik, R., & Dymitrow, M. (Eds.): Degraded and restituted towns in Poland: Origins, development, problems / Miasta zdegradowane i restytuowane w Polsce. Geneza, rozwój, problemy. - Göteborg : University of Gothenburg. - 9186472763
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- One important element in the interaction between the natural and the human environment is the negative impact of the first on the latter when seen through the prism of urban destabilization. Within this scope, the issue of urban abandonment and disappearance holds an important place, the indirect cause of which are the specifics of local and regional natural subsystems. Small towns are especially susceptible to the negative forces of the natural environment. Since most cases of urban abandonment have happened in historical times, there is a linkage between abandonment and formal degradation, but this linkage, until now, has not been systematically approached in research. The aim of this chapter, hence, is to elaborate on the impact of environmental factors on the phenomenon of urban abandonment in the context of degraded towns in Poland. We draw that in order to avert unnecessary urban degradation we must pay greater attention to the dangerous relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past.
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| 4. |
- Szmytkie, Robert, et al.
(author)
-
Degraded towns and urban abandonment
- 2015
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In: Degraded and restituted towns in Poland: Origins, development, problems. - Göteborg : University of Gothenburg. - 9186472763 ; , s. 185-187
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- One important element in the interaction between the natural and the human environment is the negative impact of the first on the latter when seen through the prism of urban destabilization. Within this scope, the issue of urban abandonment and disappearance holds an important place, the indirect cause of which are the specifics of local and regional natural subsystems. Small towns are especially susceptible to the negative forces of the natural environment. Since most cases of urban abandonment have happened in historical times, there is a linkage between abandonment and formal degradation, but this linkage, until now, has not been systematically approached in research. The aim of this chapter, hence, is to elaborate on the impact of environmental factors on the phenomenon of urban abandonment in the context of degraded towns in Poland. We draw that in order to avert unnecessary urban degradation we must pay greater attention to the dangerous relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past.
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| 5. |
- Szmytkie, Robert, et al.
(author)
-
Miasta zdegradowane a procesy opustoszania
- 2015
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In: Degraded and restituted towns in Poland: Origins, development, problems. - Göteborg : University of Gothenburg. - 9186472763 ; , s. 189-207
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Jednym z istotniejszych elementów interakcji pomiędzy środowiskiem naturalnym, a środowiskiem antropogeograficznym jest problem destabilizacji systemów miejskich. Autorzy rozumieją tą destabilizację zarówno jako czasowo istniejące zjawiska, ale także jako przestrzenne konsekwencje ścierania się obu sfer – przyrodniczej i antropogenicznej. Interakcja ta w odniesieniu do osadnictwa, szczególnie w przeszłości, ale nie tylko odzwierciedla się między innymi procesem opustoszenia miasta. Zbadanie tego zjawiska na terytorium Polski było zasadniczym celem tego opracowania. W rozdziale tym wskazano także na relatywność miast opustoszałych względem miast zdegradowanych, wskazując, że te pierwsze stanowią specyficzny typ tych drugich. W rozdziale zaprezentowane zostały mechanizmy degradacji dawnych miast, w tym przypadku nie tylko tej prawno administracyjnej, ale także przestrzennej i społecznej. Jakkolwiek wskazane przykłady (Stara Łeba, Drohiczyn Ruska Strona, Wapno, Miedzianka) z uwagi na wielkość dawnych miast nie mają przełożenia do współczesnych zagrożeń środowiskowych, to jednak niektóre elementy negatywnych oddziaływań mogą wyjaśniać współczesne oblicza niebezpieczeństw na jakie narażone są tereny osiedleńcze.
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| 6. |
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Degraded and restituted towns in Poland : Origins, development, problems
- 2015
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Editorial collection (peer-reviewed)abstract
- One of the less known problems in settlement geography is the issue of so-called degraded and restituted towns. This lack of reconnaissance, however, is perhaps less the result of the towns’ scarcity than their specificity of being ‘awarded’ or ‘deprived of’ an urban label by means of strictly socio-political actions. Degraded and restituted towns, hence, are spatial units made ‘urban’ or ‘rural’ instantaneously, irrespective of their de facto state along what is widely considered a gradual path of (de)urbanization. Instead, they become compartmentalized into two constructed spatial categories that have survived the onslaught of material transformations and philosophical repositioning through different whims of time. While ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ are conceptual binaries that certainly need to be treated with caution, their cultural salience may cause tangible consequences within national administrative systems that abide by a formalized rural-urban distinction. This issue becomes particularly important for settlements that clearly transcend any imagined rural-urban divide, i.e. those, whose material and immaterial characteristics seem counterfactual to their assigned category. It is also crucial in formal practices designed to avert such counterfactualities, but whose ran-domness of approach more creates confusion than helps straighten out a historical concoction. Both processes, nonetheless, lend ‘urbanity’ and ‘rurality’ a resonance of objectivity, justifying their use as guides for a host of developmental endeavors, despite subverting a much more intricate reality. Degraded and restituted towns are direct derivatives of this. Drawing on the above-mentioned irreconcilabilities, the aim of this book is to present and scrutinize degraded and restituted towns through the example of Poland, where these towns occupy a special niche. For one, Poland, due to its chequered and variegated history, is home to a conspicuously large number of degraded (831) and restituted (236) towns; for another, Poland’s relentlessness of formalizing ‘urbanity’ as a category of statistical, political and cultural guidance has a direct bearing on the lives of the towns’ residents. Realizing the intricacy of degraded and restituted towns in the face of commonplace ru-ral-urban ideations, the editors and the 17 contributing Authors of this book have made an effort to capture the towns’ complexity with special foci on their shrouded origins, developmental specificity and incurred problems. Owing to the involvement of researchers from different scientific disciplines and subdisciplines, the undertaken project has helped elucidate the problem from multiple perspectives: spatial, social, demographic, economic, environmental, historical, architectural, cultural, legal and philosophical. Allocated into 17 chapters, not only have the presented interpretations allowed for a first interdisciplinary synthesis on the topic, but they also helped outline some prospective directions for future research. Moreover, collecting materials of such diversity into an amalgamated whole has helped identify specific discourses that enwrap the concept of “urbanity” when seen through its oscillations within formal contexts, and to which degraded and restituted towns serve as expendable game pieces. By combining knowledge arrived at through ontologically and epistemologically different approaches, the incremental contribution of this book as a whole could be summarized in two attainments: a) extending theoretical frameworks used to study degraded and restituted towns in terms of definition, conceptualization and assessing predispositions for future de-velopment on account of their spatial, legal, socio-economic and historical charac-teristics; b) initiating an anticipated discussion on a number of important and current topics re-lated to the practices of degradation and restitution that have not received adequate attention, e.g., the urbanity-vs.-rurality paradox, the changeability of human settlement forms vs. the consequences of rigid spatial categorizations; the role of various actors in shaping the socio-economic reality under the guise of an ossified binary; or identifying spatio-conceptual conflicts as future challenges for local, regional and national policy.
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| 7. |
-
Degraded and restituted towns in Poland: Origins, development, problems : Miasta zdegradowane i restytuowane w Polsce. Geneza, rozwój, problemy
- 2015
-
Editorial collection (other academic/artistic)abstract
- One of the less known problems in settlement geography is the issue of so-called degraded and restituted towns. This lack of reconnaissance, however, is perhaps less the result of the towns’ scarcity than their specificity of being ‘awarded’ or ‘deprived of’ an urban label by means of strictly socio-political actions. Degraded and restituted towns, hence, are spatial units made ‘urban’ or ‘rural’ instantaneously, irrespective of their de facto state along what is widely considered a gradual path of (de)urbanization. Instead, they become compartmentalized into two constructed spatial categories that have survived the onslaught of material transformations and philosophical repositioning through different whims of time. While ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ are conceptual binaries that certainly need to be treated with caution, their cultural salience may cause tangible consequences within national administrative systems that abide by a formalized rural-urban distinction. This issue becomes particularly important for settlements that clearly transcend any imagined rural-urban divide, i.e. those, whose material and immaterial characteristics seem counterfactual to their assigned category. It is also crucial in formal practices designed to avert such counterfactualities, but whose ran-domness of approach more creates confusion than helps straighten out a historical concoction. Both processes, nonetheless, lend ‘urbanity’ and ‘rurality’ a resonance of objectivity, justifying their use as guides for a host of developmental endeavors, despite subverting a much more intricate reality. Degraded and restituted towns are direct derivatives of this. Drawing on the above-mentioned irreconcilabilities, the aim of this book is to present and scrutinize degraded and restituted towns through the example of Poland, where these towns occupy a special niche. For one, Poland, due to its chequered and variegated history, is home to a conspicuously large number of degraded (831) and restituted (236) towns; for another, Poland’s relentlessness of formalizing ‘urbanity’ as a category of statistical, political and cultural guidance has a direct bearing on the lives of the towns’ residents. Realizing the intricacy of degraded and restituted towns in the face of commonplace ru-ral-urban ideations, the editors and the 17 contributing Authors of this book have made an effort to capture the towns’ complexity with special foci on their shrouded origins, developmental specificity and incurred problems. Owing to the involvement of researchers from different scientific disciplines and subdisciplines, the undertaken project has helped elucidate the problem from multiple perspectives: spatial, social, demographic, economic, environmental, historical, architectural, cultural, legal and philosophical. Allocated into 17 chapters, not only have the presented interpretations allowed for a first interdisciplinary synthesis on the topic, but they also helped outline some prospective directions for future research. Moreover, collecting materials of such diversity into an amalgamated whole has helped identify specific discourses that enwrap the concept of “urbanity” when seen through its oscillations within formal contexts, and to which degraded and restituted towns serve as expendable game pieces. By combining knowledge arrived at through ontologically and epistemologically different approaches, the incremental contribution of this book as a whole could be summarized in two attainments: a) extending theoretical frameworks used to study degraded and restituted towns in terms of definition, conceptualization and assessing predispositions for future de-velopment on account of their spatial, legal, socio-economic and historical charac-teristics; b) initiating an anticipated discussion on a number of important and current topics re-lated to the practices of degradation and restitution that have not received adequate attention, e.g., the urbanity-vs.-rurality paradox, the changeability of human settlement forms vs. the consequences of rigid spatial categorizations; the role of various actors in shaping the socio-economic reality under the guise of an ossified binary; or identifying spatio-conceptual conflicts as future challenges for local, regional and national policy.
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| 8. |
- Dragan, Weronika, et al.
(author)
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Between history, politics and economy : The problematic heritage of former border railway stations in Poland
- 2019
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In: Mitteilungen der österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. - : Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. - 0029-9138. ; 161, s. 229-250
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper deals with the issue of former border railway stations (FBRSs) in Poland in the context of their problematic heritage. Since the creation of those borders coincided with the development of the railway network in the 19th century, the FBRSs, now deprived of their past function, remain scattered throughout the landscape as confusing components of a troubled history in an even more confusing contemporaneity. This article assiduously analyses the FBRSs in their capacity as offensive hallmarks vested in inoffensive elements of technical culture, often with high aesthetic value. This is done by departing from a number of analytical lenses: unwanted history, competitive heritage, utility vs. economy, politics and money, and the ‘here and now’ policy. These competing perspectives reveal the intricacy of heritagisation, especially in times of greater ease of obtaining monetary funds aimed at revitalisation: what to revitalise, why and how?
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| 9. |
- Dragan, Weronika, et al.
(author)
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Between history, politics and economy: The problematic heritage of former border railway stations in Poland : Zwischen Geschichte, Politik und Ökonomie: Das problematische Erbe der früheren polnischen Grenzbahnhöfe
- 2019
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In: Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. - : Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. - 0029-9138. ; 161, s. 229-250
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper deals with the issue of former border railway stations (FBRSs) in Poland in the context of their problematic heritage. Since the creation of those borders coincided with the development of the railway network in the 19th century, the FBRSs, now deprived of their past function, remain scattered throughout the landscape as confusing components of a troubled history in an even more confusing contemporaneity. This article assiduously analyses the FBRSs in their capacity as offensive hallmarks vested in inoffensive elements of technical culture, often with high aesthetic value. This is done by departing from a number of analytical lenses: unwanted history, competitive heritage, utility vs. economy, politics and money, and the ‘here and now’ policy. These competing perspectives reveal the intricacy of heritagisation, especially in times of greater ease of obtaining monetary funds aimed at revitalisation: what to revitalise, why and how? .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... In diesem Beitrag wird auf das Thema der polnischen Bahnhöfe an den ehemaligen Grenzen (Grenzbahnhöfe) im Kontext ihres problematischen Erbes eingegangen. Da die Entstehung dieser Grenzen mit der Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes im 19. Jahrhundert zeitlich übereinstimmt, sind jetzt die Grenzbahnhöfe, die ihre ursprüngliche Funktion verloren haben, als verwirrende Relikte einer bewegten Geschichte in einer noch bewegteren Gegenwart über die gesamte Landschaft verstreut. In diesem Beitrag werden die Grenzbahnhöfe in ihrer Eigenschaft als offensive Kennzeichen in Rahmen von nicht offensiven Elementen der technischen Kultur, oft mit einem hohen ästhetischen Wert, analysiert. Dies erfolgt mittels verschiedener analytischer Ansätze: ungewollte Geschichte, konkurrierendes Erbe, Nutzen vs. Wirtschaft, gefährliche Beziehungen und die Politik „hier und jetzt”. Diese konkurrierenden Perspektiven offenbaren die Komplexität des Aufbaus vom Kulturerbe, insbesondere in einer Zeit, in der Geldmittel für Revitalisierung einfacher zu beschaffen sind: Was und wo soll man revitalisieren, und warum?
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| 10. |
- Dragan, Weronika, et al.
(author)
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Between history, politics and economy: The problematic heritage of former border railway stations in Poland
- 2020
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In: Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. - 0029-9138. ; 161, s. 229-250
-
Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper deals with the issue of former border railway stations (FBRSs) in Poland in the context of their problematic heritage. Since the creation of those borders coincided with the development of the railway network in the 19th century, the FBRSs, now deprived of their past function, remain scattered throughout the landscape as confusing components of a troubled history in an even more confusing contemporaneity. This article assiduously analyses the FBRSs in their capacity as offensive hallmarks vested in inoffensive elements of technical culture, often with high aesthetic value. This is done by departing from a number of analytical lenses: unwanted history, competitive heritage, utility vs. economy, politics and money, and the 'here and now' policy. These competing perspectives reveal the intricacy of heritagisation, especially in times of greater ease of obtaining monetary funds aimed at revitalisation: what to revitalise, why and how?
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