THE DEGREE OF DEVELOPMENT SUSTAINABILITY AT A LOCAL LEVEL: EVIDENCE FROM MAZOVIAN COUNTIES IN POLAND

Abstract

he aim of this study was to determine the sustainability degree of local development for counties of the Mazowieckie (Mazovian) Voivodship in the years 2006-2015. Research was conducted on a population of 42 counties (territorial units at NUTS 4 level), including 5 town counties (towns possessing county status) and 37 land counties. Basing on data from the Local Data Bank of the Central Statistical Office, three dimensions of development were investigated: economic, social and ecological (environmental). The author’s conceptual approach, incorporating dimensional indexes of development and Euclidean distance analysis, was applied to capture the interactions between and balance across the three pillars of sustainability. Through the results of the study, it is observed that the highest degree of local development sustainability was achieved by counties located up to 50 kilometres from Poland’s capital city Warsaw (i.e. grodziski, grójecki, nowodworski, otwocki, sochaczewski, wołomiński and żyrardowski), while the lowest by towns with a county status (Ostrołęka, Płock and Warsaw) and by peripheral counties of the east and south part of the Mazovian Voivodship (siedlecki, przysuski, lipski and zwoleński). In the 2015 ranking, according to the sustainability degree of counties, the first three spots were taken by ciechanowski, przasnyski and sochaczewski counties. The following town counties took the last three positions: Ostrołęka, Płock and Warsaw.