Paryże Europy Środkowej? Wybrane idee urbanistyczne i czynniki w rozbudowie większych miast regionu w długim XIX w.

Paris of Central Europe? Selected urban planning elements and factors affecting development of towns and cities in the region in the long nineteenth century

Abstract: The aim of the paper is an overview of urban planning ideas and factors affecting development of towns and cities in the western part of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Greater Poland, part of Pomerania, Kingdom of Poland, Galicia) that had a real impact on the quality of life of city dwellers in the period between the demise of the Polish-Lithuanian state (1795) and the World War One (1914). In the paper I deal mainly with the restructuring of the urban fabric in the towns and cities in question in the first half of the nineteenth century, which had a decisive impact on urban development before 1914. I analyse also the main selected urban planning elements that had the closest ties with the developmental factors: the process of creating tree-lined alleys, roads and boulevards, the creation of railway districts, the impact of the military factors on urban forms and the expansion of urban greenery. It is completed by conclusions, which also discuss the urban planning regulations. Some significant elements are not mentioned: the idea of garden cities or urban land incorporations, which pertained to peripheral areas and started to change the urban landscape often only in the last years of the period. The paper is based on the existing scholarly literature and the previous research of the author, and has a review-oriented and interpretational character. It results in a new attempt at a partial, though stretching beyond the partition borders, synthesis of the urban development in the Central Europe, or – as this region is often called in the Polish literature – the East-Central Europe.