Poles Apart

This is the second in a series of articles on the changing face of cities in TOL’s coverage area.

Polish cities are changing. Old factories are being carved into picturesque lofts, 19^th-century mills are becoming museums, old cellars are being transformed into trendy bars.

Entire districts that were once degraded and unkempt, such as Kazimierz in Krakow or Warsaw’s Praga, have become fashionable places-to-be, with cafes and museums springing up like mushrooms.

Some of these changes have been driven by private investors, but others were programmed by local authorities, often backed by European Union money. As a result, towns all over Poland have developed their own renewal plans, from maritime Szczecin to highland Zakopane, from small Olecko to metropolitan Warsaw.

These projects can boost the standard of living for locals, but they can also exclude them, bringing benefits to tourists, well-to-do transplants, or high-rolling investors who might not even live in the towns they are remaking. Some critics say towns’ plans too often focus on infrastructure – revitalizing a particular square, street, or building – rather than comprehensively assessing the community’s social and economic needs. Others worry that even economically beneficial revitalization efforts can come at the price of historic local character.

“We have to assess the balance of losses and benefits,” says Wojciech Klosowski, a revitalization expert, formerly with the World Bank, who has written plans for several European cities.

“Remember that Kazimierz used to be a district of extreme poverty, crime, and social degradation,” Klosowski says of Krakow’s old Jewish quarter, considered one of Poland’s signal successes. “Everything has changed. It could have gone toward complete ruin, a ghetto of social problems, which also destroys local color, or toward a district that is a bit of a tourist trap but with some of its beauty intact.”