Conflicts, Barriers, Thersholds during the Process of Transformation - Agglomeration of Tri-City

Paper in proceeding, 2006

In the current environment of rapid global change, the ability to achieve stable sustainable development is a difficult challenge. This is due to often uncontrolled and spontaneous social, economic and environmental change in cities. Sustainable Development is socially desirable because it is rightly assumed to be a positive evolution. Yet the realities behind achieving such goals contain many limitations as well as conflicting and contradictory interests. As a result of democratic and free market economic changes in Poland since 1989, Polish cities and urban settlements seem to be overcoming inherited environmental, economic and social limitations and moving towards more integrated development. However, ongoing conflicts, barriers and the inability to realize desired development thresholds continue to remain significant challenges.Successful development planning is severely constrained when undertaken without recognizing all relevant environmental, social and economic limitations. While the process of planning is neither completely determinate nor absolute, these limitations do cause discontinuities. These breaks in the development process often result in delays or even the inability to complete projects. This strategic planning would tie up structural conditions, strategic goals, development directions, rules and the space management. This planning must follow a search for more appropriate methods and tools to select solutions that reduce barriers to successful development, methods that allow planning with the lowest economic, environmental, and social costs (i.e. the threshold analysis developed by Bolesław Malisz in the 1960's).