QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE POLISH URBAN CENTRES. AN ATTEMPT TO EVALUATE LARGE CITIES

Abstract

The article presents current and, from the point of view of the Au-thors, important problems of quality of life in the large Polish cities. In contem-porary concepts of socio-economic development, improving the quality of life is considered one of the main strategic goals and a key element of sustainable development. Quality of life is one of the factors affecting the city’s attractiveness for potential investors and residents. One of the most important perspectives of thinking about development is to ensure the highest standard of living for all residents of a given territorial unit. This is to lead to stability of the socio-economic system and maximum expansion of the group of beneficiaries of economic development. There were analysed eighteen largest urban centres. The subjects of the study are provincial cities. The presented comparison is a static approach, taking into account only one year. The purpose of this article is an attempt to evaluate the quality of life in selected Polish cities in 2018. The employed research methods are primarily a comparative analysis method and simple statistical methods that have allowed to compare and aggregate selected indicators on the quality of life in urban centres. On this basis, cities were ranked with the assumption that the cities with the highest indicator values (assuming that the given feature is a stimulant) are at the top of the ranking. An additional objective of the study is to present the condition of Polish cities in terms of population and their area, taking into account the situation in Polish regions. Finally, the study presents an analysis of the quality of life of the large Polish cities based on selected 13 indicators. The best results were achieved not only by large economically significant cities, attracting investments and residents, but also those located on the eastern wall of the country, which can be described as “more intimate” in terms of area and population, such as Rzeszów, Lublin or Olsztyn.