Metropolizacja bez metropolii : perspektywy upodmiotowienia polskich obszarów metropolitalnych na przykładzie konurbacji górnośląskiej

Abstract

The economic crisis, which caused the reduction of local governments’ budgets, accelerated the reforms of the territorial organization in many European countries. The said reforms were aimed not only to limit spending and simplify structures, but also to make governments the engine of economic growth. In Polish conditions we rarely talk about reforms of local government in the context of overcoming the results of the crisis. Since the regional reform of 1999, there has been no sign of deeper and braver reform of local government, which is particularly noticeable in the absence of metropolis in the structure of territorial units. The importance of metropolitan areas and their consistent management has been noticed only recently, which is reflected in the Act Amending the Act on Local Government in force since 1 January 2016. A response to the challenges of large urban areas were to be Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI), the realization of which, however, does not seem optimistic as far as the social capital deficit of Polish government elites at concerned. At the moment we can therefore speak about the conditions of metropolization without the metropolis. This state of affairs is unlikely to change quickly by another project of “metropolitan act” that has been prepared and that emerged in the course of the election campaign preceding the general elections at the end of October 2015.