ABSTRACT
Due to the high contextual uncertainty common to all transition countries, contributions dealing with the evolution of spatial planning in Central and Eastern Europe had, until recently, mainly focused on the transitional character of the changes (Newman and Thornley, 1996; Balchin et al., 1999; Altrock et al., 2006; Cotella, 2009a). Similarly, the numerous attempts developed in the past two decades to consolidate an agreement on general spatial planning “traditions” or “styles” either ignore Central and Eastern European countries or treat them as one all-embracing category (Nadin and Stead, 2008). However, despite the similarities that emerged in the reform process, the former socialist bloc presents a high degree of heterogeneity, with each country having worked out its own path towards the establishment of a spatial planning system that could effectively perform vis-à-vis overall market economy requirements and endogenous conditions. At the end of the 1980s, Poland was characterized by a highly centralized administration, featuring a two-tier system that included 49 regions (voivodships) and some 2,450 municipalities (gminy). The Communist Party was responsible for selecting the candidates for local elections, and councilors, once elected, had to implement the Party’s national program according to central economic planning rules (Regulski and Kocan, 1994). First pressures towards decentralization occurred in parallel with the worsening of the economic crisis in the
1980s (Regulski, 1989). Overwhelmed as it was by the dramatic socio-economic situation, the government progressively abandoned the complex system of central economic planning that had characterized the previous decades (Korcelli, 2005). When the Communist government entered into discussion with the Solidarnosc opposition, local government legitimacy suddenly became a major theme. Eight Parliamentary Acts and amendments to nearly 200 other Acts were rushed through (Swianiewicz, 1992; Regulski and Kocan, 1994) and new democratic elections took place even before detailed regulations were issued through the Self-Government Act in 1990. Following the common post-socialist tendency to react against the highly centralized past, the Act adopted a very decentralized approach, transforming municipalities into completely autonomous legal entities (Regulska, 1997).1 However, the political energy released by the sudden collapse of Communism did not automatically generate either the experience necessary for actual government or the political stability needed for the effective establishment of a new institutional structure.2 The context of political experimentation led to a decision-making lock, in particular in relation to contested fields such as planning, which has often been regarded as being in contradiction with the free market. This situation contributed towards preventing the government from undertaking any regional reform for almost a decade, with voivodships that continued to exist in subordination to the central level until 1999. From the second half of the 1990s, under pressure from the EU, the government started a regionalization process aimed at both reducing the number of voivodships and providing them with self-elected government bodies (ESPON, 2006a). Enforced in January 1999, the regional reform provided the nation with a three-layer administrative division very similar to the one in force before 1975 (Figure 13.1), dividing Poland into 16 NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) 2 units that host both central government representation (the voivod and its office) and a self-government unit (the voivodship parliament, elected every four years and managed by the Marshal).3 While the role of the voivod is to ensure fruitful cooperation between the regional administration and the central government, the Marshal Office is responsible for regional development policy, acquisition of financial resources, environmental protection, culture and tourism. After the municipalities regained autonomy in 1990, the uncertainty over the legal arrangements for spatial planning needed to be sorted out, as the 1961 Planning Act continued to constitute the main reference for territorial governance despite the end of its ideological preconditions (Judge, 1994). Whereas this somehow allowed municipalities to perform their day-to-day practice, plans were rather rigid and neither suited to guiding market processes nor to performing land-use regulation under the new economic conditions. Parliament therefore started to progressively reform territorial governance activities through subsequent legal amendments until the Spatial Management Act4 was approved in 1994. The Act definitively abolished the centralized, hierarchical system of planning through the institution of a new spatial planning system pivoted on two levels and corresponding actors: the state and the municipalities. The state was responsible for spatial planning at the national level, as well as for the preparation, through its decentralized bodies, of development programs constituting summaries of state activity in a given region. Local physical planning operated by self-elected municipalities became the foundation of the planning system, with local physical plans gaining the status of legally binding documents (Sykora, 1999).
