INTERNATIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF POLISH URBAN PLANNING

SŁAWOMIR GZELL

It is not easy to judge, which contemporary Polish urbanist efforts are achievements of international stature. Necessary are assessment criteria, but these will never be sufficiently obvious and accepted by all. That is why it is better to present a simple review of works considered to be icons of Polish urban planning, with the annotation whether they are known abroad. For better presentation one can introduce a division in line with the definition that urban planning is the science and art of city building. And so, in the domain of science, it is an achievement to have introduced into general use threshold analysis as done by B. Malisz and later J. Kozłowski (1963). In respect of studies from the borderground of science and design, then indisputably one must mention the design of Functional Warsaw by J.O.Chmielewski and Sz.Syrkus (1933). Noticed laureates of urban planning competitions are J.M. Chmielewski, J. Kazubiński and K.Kuraś with their team, authors of the design for Espoo township, Finland (1967), and K. Domaradzki, O. Dziekoński and Z. Garbowski with team, authors of the reconstruction project for New Belgrade in Yugoslavia (1986). Among the successes can be counted the work of many Polish urban planners in UN bodies and with projects related to such cities as e.g. Singapore (K. Olszewski), or the rebuilding of the Old Town in Warsaw, acknowledged by Ch. Jencks to be one of the (many) sources of postmodernism. This is not much. One may particularly regret failure to bring to the world's notice of the theory of elements of urban composition by K. Wejchert, the pre-war development of Gdynia and the Central Industrial Zone, the post-war initiative of simplified planning on the Recovered Lands done under the direction of K. Wejchert and H. Adamczewska, and construction as of 1952 of the new town of Tychy in Silesia, designed by the same authors, or the Continuous Linear System of O. Hansen. Do we nowadays have the prospect of making the annals of urban planning in the world? This may prove difficult, considering the fact that urban planners are held in disregard, the best specialists in urban planning as a science and art of construction, by those who are today responsible for the shape of Polish space.

Key words: polish urban planning