Narzędzia ustawowe rewitalizacji a kontekst małego miasta. Wybrane zagadnienia
Statutory tools of urban renewal and the context of a small town. Selected issues

Summary/Abstract: For many years, urban renewal had been rather chaotic. As a result of discussions of experts who demanded the creation of a legal basis for the revitalization of degraded areas, the Revitalization Act was established in 2015. Its task was to organize concepts and define procedures. Moreover, it provided the commune with tools enabling the implementation of revitalization in practice. It also allowed for the integration of revitalization activities with the commune’s spatial policy. The aim of this article is to analyze the tools offered by the Revitalization Act and an attempt to evaluate them in the context of their possible application in the revitalization of a small town. The authors focus on the main problems and limitations that may arise at the stage of programming the revitalization policy (designating degraded areas and revitalization areas, establishing a municipal revitalization program) and its implementation (establishing a special revitalization zone and adopting local revitalization plans). The conclusions were developed on the basis of an analysis of the applicable legal acts as well as programmatic and strategic documents taking into account the revitalization intervention, individual in-depth interviews with selected representatives of small town offices of the Lodzkie Voivodship and employees of design studios (town planners and architects) who are involved in the renewal processes of towns. The conclusions also result from the authors’ own practice (participa-tion in the preparation of planning documents) and the experience gained as a result of developing a conceptual project of a local revitalization plan for Wieluń (theoretical in nature, which was created as a master’s thesis). They can be useful for local authorities and, as a result, contribute to the im-provement of revitalization processes, in particular the use of planning tools at the level of managing spatial structures of the city. The conducted research shows that carrying out revitalization with the use of the full range of tools offered by the Revitalization Act, in particular with the use of the local revitalization plan, is a complex, multi-stage and complicated process in terms of formal and legal, as well as demanding in terms of competences. Moreover, the considerations concerning the solutions offered by the act constitute a voice in the discussion regarding the possible degree of interference in the existing planning order. The presented catalog of comments does not exhaust the topic, but it is an attempt to highlight selected issues arising from design practice and may contribute to changes in the existing spatial planning instruments, as well as strengthen the planning system in the future.

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