Miasto zwarte, rozproszone, zrównoważone
A compact, a dispersed, and a sustainable city

Summary/Abstract: Sustainable development is a conception of development that takes into account the necessity to meet the needs of the present and future generations, limitations imposed on the economy by the natural environment, as well as intra- and inter-generational social justice. Its principal assumptions have to be adopted at all the various levels of territorial organisation, also that of a city. What decides about the efficiency of measures taken by the authorities of a city to ensure this type of development is largely its spatial form. It determines the possibility of meeting everyday needs of inhabitants concerning access to various types of services (the shopping and service network, public transport, educational, health, sport and tourist services, public spaces, etc.) and social justice in this field (eliminating social exclusion), as well as an improvement in the relations between socio-economic development and the state of the natural environment, especially concerning higher energy efficiency (in construction, transport, etc.), rational management of resources (including land) and waste, protection of nature and the landscape, the economic efficiency of a city’s spatial form, and its impact on the quantity and quality of environmental resources. Thus, the city’s sustainable development requires its spatial form to be properly organised, since the consequences generated for this type of development by a compact-city conception will be different from those of a dispersed city. It is an open question, however, whether any of those forms allows putting the assumptions of sustainable development into practice, or whether a city well-balanced in its spatial form is one that is a resultant of a compactand a dispersed city.

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