Teresa Czyż

Abstract

The article analyses regional differences in Poland within the framework of the core-periphery concept. The method employed in the study is that of the ratio of income potential to population potential, which is a systemic measure of the level of socio-economic development of regions.

Keywords: regional structure, core regions and peripheral areas, potential ratio, Poland

Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of changes in the level and character of unem-ployment in Poland in the years 1990-1998 on the basis of a national and a regional approach. It embraces: (1) relations between national unemployment and changes in the economy, (2) a classification of regions on the basis of relative unemployment, and (3) the testing of the process of petrifaction of the regional structure of unemployment using the T-technique of principal components analysis.

Keywords: Poland, national unemployment and stages of transformation, regional vari-ation in unemployment over time, T-technique of principal components analysis

Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland
Paweł Churski [chur@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland
Jan Hauke, Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland

Abstract

The application of population potential in the research procedure employed to arrive at Poland's structural régionalisation allows three main tasks to be solved: (1) determining the interaction in the urban system, (2) establishing macroregional nodes, and (3) delimiting peripheral zones of macroregions. The configuration of the potential surface and membership functions indicates the spatial structuring of socio-economic reality at the level of population interaction. It helped to distinguish 9 macroregions in Poland in 1992.

Keywords: structural régionalisation, spatial interaction, population potential, macroregions of Poland

Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland

Abstract

Unemployment is a new social phenomenon in Poland brought about by aradical reconstruction of the socio-economic system. It is highly diversified spatially andgrows fast. In this paper a study is carried out of the dependence between the unemploymentlevel and the socio-economic structure and its transformation in Poland's regional(voivodship) system. The research procedure includes the application of principal componentsanalysis to the identification of significant structural dimensions.

Keywords: regional unemployment differences, the socio-economic structure and unemployment, principal components analysis, Poland

Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland

Zbyszko Chojnicki, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan
Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland

Zbyszko Chojnicki, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan
Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland

Zbyszko Chojnicki, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan
Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland

Abstract

The subject of this analysis is the total socio-economic space of Poland.Geographical theory contains two approaches to an operational definition ofsocio-economic space. Firstly, the ontological approach conceives of socio-economicspace as a mode of existence of economic processes; secondly, the mathematicaland economic-geographical approach considers socio-economicspace as a set, or subset, of geographical objects with specific inter-dependences.This study of Poland's socio-economic space consists of defining andexplaining the regularities in the spatial occurrence of economic processes byanalysing the properties of sets of objects and their vertical and horizontalinterdependences. Thus conceived, the analysis of socio-economic space isclosely linked to the study of the level of the country's economic development.

The present study is based on the assumption of a latent structure ofsocio-economic space. The total socio-economic space may be viewed as a setof partial socio-economic spaces comprising different features of socio-economiclife, for example, demographic, industrial and agricultural and these relatingto transportation and services. In spite of its plurality, this set is finite.The partial socio-economic spaces, though comprising different socio-economicphenomena, refer to the same reality in that they are reflections of some ofits different aspects. Such partial spaces are interdependent, though clearlynon-identical (Dziewoński [2], p. 37). The total socio-economic space isa resultant of all partial spaces that together constitute the latent structure oftotal space.

Zbyszko Chojnicki, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan
Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland

Teresa Czyż [tczyz@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Space Economy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań, Poland