Warsaw: Revival and realignment

Wojciech Dziemianowicz, Jacek Szlachta, European Investment Bank

• Publisher: European Investment Bank
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9789286138621
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Public Finance
• Index: Economics

With 3 million residents, the Metropolitan Warsaw region is today the ninth most-populated capital city in the EU. It has undergone a series of far-reaching changes to its economic structure over the past 50 years to attain this status.This essay reviews how Poland's capital went from environmental and infrastructure degradation to the wealthiest capital city in Eastern Europe.

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How Poland’s capital went from environmental and infrastructure degradation to the wealthiest capital city in Eastern Europe

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1. Introduction

With 3 million residents, the Metropolitan Warsaw region is today the ninth most-populated capital city in the EU. It has undergone a series of far-reaching changes to its economic structure over the past 50 years to attain this status.

When Warsaw returned to a market economy in the 1990s, it inherited a unique set of conditions. These included poorly organised and poorly integrated public transport, ubiquitous pre-fabricated housing blocks, a distinct lack of single-family homes, numerous empty spaces, a very complex ownership pattern with hundreds of historic property owners demanding restitution from the new state, and almost no legal or regulatory instruments to prevent sprawl. [1] This in turn led to a cycle of haphazard development, sprawl, and a proliferation of low-density suburbs, particularly as the previous planning office was replaced by private companies that lacked planning experience.

Over the past 20 years or so, however, Warsaw’s economy has bounced back. This recovery is primarily due to a cycle of investment in infrastructure that emphasised the metropolitan scale of development and avoided the car-dependent model of growth. It also benefited from Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004, which facilitated free movement of European labour and capital into the city.

Key interventions have included investment in the construction and modernisation of sewage treatment plants and railways, the procurement of new modern rolling stock for the metro network, and the construction of a ring road to relieve congestion and link the city to other major European centres, including Helsinki, Berlin and Gdansk. [2] The European Investment Bank (EIB) has been instrumental in enabling such interventions. Since the beginning of EIB activity in Poland in 1994, over 40% of its loans have focused on transport. Over time, investment has also emphasised improvements to the city’s health care, social and education services. [3]

Today, Warsaw is recognised as an alpha global city, a major international tourist destination and a significant cultural, political and economic hub. It is expected that by 2019 the city’s GDP will be 50% higher than in 2008, making it the wealthiest capital city in Central and Eastern Europe, alongside Berlin. [4] Warsaw is also currently in the middle of a surge in new commercial development and has some of the best medical facilities in East-Central Europe, including one of the largest and most modern oncology institutions in Europe. [5] The imminent extension of the city’s second metro line is unlocking major opportunities for housing development, while a series of densification projects triggered by universities and other cultural anchor institutions, such as the new Powisle project, is reactivating the street-life of key riverside districts. [6]

2. The backstory of Warsaw’s recent development

1939 – 1989

As a result of the Second World War, Warsaw lost the position of a leading cultural metropolis that it had held within Europe during the interwar period. This was caused, among other things, by the catastrophic destruction of the city’s physical infrastructure, the extermination of large parts of the population during the two uprisings in 1943 and 1944, and the degradation of the quality of human capital.

For these reasons, the idea emerged to relocate the Polish capital to the city of Łódź, which had been damaged to a much lesser extent. But from January 1945 people started to return to the ashes of Warsaw, and Communist authorities decided to join them in efforts to rebuild the city as the capital. Eventually, reconstruction of Warsaw within the confines of a centrally planned economy had its limitations, as a consequence of the existing political structures, which included weak municipal economic management, the abolition of territorial self-governments and cancelation of participatory decision-making in city planning. There was also the wider impact of the political division of Europe into two opposing military blocs and the resulting degradation of the international position of the capitals of Central and Eastern European countries, along with their gradual cultural and political marginalisation and socio-economic isolation.

The socio-economic structures of the capital of Poland were shaped in accordance with the binding Soviet political doctrine, which assumed the following: priority for industrial rather than service or cultural economy; the underdevelopment of services, including finance; the overexploitation of natural resources; limiting the role of the private sector; underestimating the importance of technical infrastructure; and the development of bureaucratic structures inhibiting entrepreneurship and creativity. As a result of attempts to adopt solutions designed for the urban planning of the USSR, spatial structures far from the human scale of urban management were often promoted.

Ideology also entered the sphere of spatial planning, resulting in the elimination or modification of various economic categories related to shaping land prices, land use rents, and so on. One of the changes adopted for ideological reasons after the Second World War was the decree of 26 October 1945 on ownership and use of land in the area of the capital city of Warsaw, which resulted in the seizure of city centre properties. According to the ideology then in force, this was meant to facilitate a new socialist metropolitan space on the territory of the country’s capital. The lack of democracy hindered the creation of modern spatial structures in the city area and the functionally related suburban areas. The political isolation of Poland translated into spatial isolation, an infrastructure deficit and a lack of international connections and relations. As a result, until 1989, there was no inflow of urban and metropolitan best practices from the outside world.

1989 – 2004 – 2018

The geopolitical changes around the world resulting from the disintegration of the socialist system provided a very strong development impulse for Warsaw. Since the empowering of territorial local governments that occurred at the beginning of the 1990s in connection with the system transformation towards a market economy, and Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004, Warsaw has become one of the fastest developing cities in Europe. However, despite the effective national implementation of a number of solutions related to overcoming the negative consequences of a centrally planned economy, in Warsaw itself, reprivatisation issues have not been effectively addressed, constituting a barrier to wider development. In addition, a number of pathologies have emerged in relation to the management of real estate in the downtown area of the city.

Changes in the theory of regional development have played a significant role. Soviet economic theory was aspatial, while in recent decades significant scientific trends have emerged that enhance the territorial dimension. These include a new economic geography (Krugman), place-based policy (Barca) and spaces of flows (Castells). [7]

It is worth noting the fundamental changes in the economic, social and spatial theories concerning the importance of the metropolis for socio-economic development. In the 1970s and 1980s, big cities were seen as areas generating high costs and socio-economic problems. However, the World Bank documented a fundamental change in the position of big cities that took place at the turn of the century and that has been reflected in the treatment of cities – especially the large cities – as a resource with considerable potential to drive development, rather than as a barrier to it. [8] The OECD has developed studies on a number of metropolises worldwide, documenting their leading role in changes in the global economy. [9] The EIB has actively participated in activities aimed at overcoming the development barriers of many European cities, as well as generating development potential. Urban policy has started to be successfully programmed by the European Union as part of its cohesion policy. [10] The EIB has also documented its important and growing role in the socio-economic development of EU cities. [11]

In many countries, the foundations have been laid for national urban policy, implemented in partnership with national, local and provincial governments and individual city authorities. In 2015, the Council of Ministers in Poland also adopted a National Urban Policy 2023. [12]

The largest urban centres have once again become catalysts for development, the high-level services concentrated in big cities have generated income and employment, and changes in spatial trends have led to the return of people and economic activity to city centres. The current dominant megatrends in the global economy are generally beneficial for big cities. Technological progress is conducive to the effective adoption of territorial accessibility deficits, and environmental problems no longer constitute a barrier to the development of the biggest cities. Among other things, the concept of a circular economy has emerged, which has been key to the development of these cities. In recent years, big European cities have been characterised by high-quality development processes and, under favourable conditions, spatial diffusion into the surrounding areas.

3. Strategic thinking about the development of Warsaw

Unfortunately, at a city and municipal level, the culture of strategic planning and its connection to the realisation of development objectives is still in its initial phase in Poland. The same cannot be said for the strategies of voivodeships [13], whose documents created in 1999 have already been updated three times, increasingly defining real needs and connecting plans with the implementation of European socio-economic programmes. [14]

At a local level, there is no systematic translation of the city’s strategy into implementation programmes (including those financed with European funds), although the strategies of the Integrated Territorial Investments implemented in the European Union since 2014 have been a harbinger of the direction of desired changes. In Poland, they are implemented by every provincial capital, including Warsaw. It should also be emphasised that urban strategies in Poland are not obligatory documents; nevertheless, most cities have one, w...

Table of contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. The backstory of Warsaw’s recent development
• 3. Strategic thinking about the development of Warsaw
• 4. The importance of EIB financial support for the development of Warsaw
• 5. What does the future hold for Warsaw?
• Bibliography
• References