The study of urban form in Poland

Abstract

Research on the historical geography of settlements in Poland has its beginnings in studies by economic historians at the end of the nineteenth century. During the inter-war period research on the geography of cities and on their historical geography in particular was developing slowly. Among works devoted to settlement geography, as many as nine out of ten were concerned with rural settlements. After the Second World War urban studies advanced considerably. Today the morphology of cities is a subject of interest to a relatively small group of researchers in Poland, Wroclaw and Łódź being the only significant research centres. Morphogenetic studies of urban centres predominate. Metrological-historical studies have lost favour.