Lviv and Łódź at the Turn of 20th Century

The turn of the 20th century has been a time of big changes in cities of Central and East Europe. The transition from planned to free market economy has initiated a lot of socio-economic, demographic and functional processes. The intensity of these processes depends on the internal potential of a city, which is largely determined by economic conditions, the role of the city in the national and international settlement network, and its investment attractiveness. It is also conditioned by external factors, such as political and economic situation at the national level and the dynamics of integration processes with international trade markets.

The book is dedicated to the economic structure of Lviv and Łódź. The volume consists of three parts, each containing two texts – one about Lviv and one about Łódź. Each of the parts deals with one economic issue: technical infrastructure and housing, spatial structure of the city’s economy, and socio-economic linkages.

Łódź and Lviv are cities which differ in respect of the economic structure, but are similar in terms of population, negative trends in the demographic situation and important role in the settlement network. Both cities are also, in their respective countries, significant academic and cultural centres.

Identification of changes observed in the economic structure of both cities during the last two decades offers important insights into diversity of their development path, with regard not only to the dynamics of their development in quantitative terms, which is a derivative of different development paths of the country, but also to the changes occurring in the spatial organization and living conditions in each of the cities.

This book is a valuable, from the cognitive and scientific point of view, set of texts, whose great advantage is comparative analysis of two important metropolises in Poland and Ukraine.

Bartosz Bartosiewicz

Mykola Habrel