Living Space in A City - Selected Problems of Shaping Modern Housing Complexes in Cracow - A Multiple Case Studies: Part 2 – The Case Study of High Density Forms of Multi-Family Residential Buildings

Abstract

Publication synthetically characterises the situation of the population of Poland in the global context and the development of Polish cities, as well as ‘relative deurbanisation’. Cracow - the second Polish city along with its peripheral areas is a metropolis that has a over a million inhabitants. The city, burdened with the “disease of deurbanisation”, is a fitting field for the observation of phenomena that cause this process. The quality of the housing environment being offered in new large complexes of multi-family buildings that are being built within the administrative limits of Cracow, together with apartment prices, can affect the problem of urban sprawl to a significant degree. The goal of the research is the analysis of the characteristic phenomenon of the appearance of high density multi-family residential complexes in many Polish cities. Despite modern architectural forms and a higher standard regarding finishes they create a substandard housing environment. The excessive building density, and thus an excessive population density often causes the lack of the necessary functions and facilities, which should accompany residential buildings in order to provide residents with the necessary comfort and the expected quality of the housing environment. The ruthless exploitation of solutions that are allowed by current legal provisions in terms of the minimal distances between buildings or the insolation time for apartments - which are solely the result of an improper understanding of the profitability of a project - because these built residential complexes to lack the necessary common semi-public or public green spaces. In many complexes there are also no basic services - such as day care facilities, kindergartens or schools. There is also no appropriate programme of commercial services. The excessive number of the residents of these complexes, combined with insufficient access to mass public transportation, leads to a greatly increased vehicular traffic load on the road network, which is unprepared for such flows of cars. Small and mediumsized apartments dominate the apartment structure of these complexes. The magnet that attracts these residents to complexes located in the vicinity of the city centre or within downtown areas is the attractiveness of these areas of the city. Locations that are farther away - more peripheral in nature - attract residents with lower apartment prices or a close proximity to places of employment. However, it should be remembered that the young demographic structure of these complexes, combined with the known problems with paying back loans and the possibility of freely changing one’s place of residence will deepen the insufficiencies regarding the lack of necessary services and recreational spaces outlined above, permanently deepening the substandard of areas that have been blocked by this type of buildings for many years. The results of the author’s research and observations make it possible to state that this - in many ways - substandard housing “offering” becomes a product that endangers the integrity of the urban space, as well as its functional, spatial and social cohesion.