ABSTRACT
Poland recently become an EU leader in the promotion of a territorial approach within development policy. This chapter investigates the progress of the implementation of this approach in Poland at the regional level and compare this with the situation in selected other EU countries. It focuses on a place-based approach and sometimes described in the literature as the 'cream of the crop' as regards institutional approaches to policy territorialisation. The chapter compares the findings of two surveys related to the implementation of the place-based approach conducted jointly by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Development of Sopot. The consequence of acknowledging the relevance of the place-based approach is the diversification of policy in line with the needs of the existing contexts. Local governments in Poland carry out analyses of the development policies of the region in connection with the process of elaboration of the regional or local documents.
