The Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization of the Polish Academy of Sciences examined medium-sized cities: urban and urban-rural municipalities that are not the capitals of voivodeships and have more than 20,000 inhabitants (or more than 15,000 if they have county status). As PAP reports:
The group defined in this way comprised 252 cities at the time of the study, but problems were diagnosed in only some of them. The study was prepared for the purposes of planning the EU financial perspective for 2021–2027.
Bolesławiec topped the ranking of cities “losing their socio-economic functions and widening their development gap” as a crisis city, meaning one in which “both a significant loss of functions and a strongly unfavorable socio-economic situation have been diagnosed.”
What do you think? The full ranking can be found on the PAP local-government service.
We asked the Bolesławiec municipal office for comment. We will publish its response if we receive it.