Rozwój osadnictwa i jego wpływ na krajobraz na przykładzie Ziemi Krakowskiej

Human activity turns natural landscape into cultural landscape. In extreme situations, when this results in devastation, it is more proper to speak about devastated than cultural landscape. The processes of landscape changes may be divided into historically-conditioned phases, and the transformations that occurred in Krakow Province (Ziemia Krakowska) are representative for the entire country. The most ancient phase to be sufficiently traceable in archaeological sources (8th.9th century AD) included the construction of graves and baileys (especially Wawel and Okół), and establishment of necropolises accentuated by man-made mounds (kurgans). The first centuries of Christianity brought about significant changes. The geography of the baileys (except for Wawel) began to change in the middle of 11th century with the arrival of first stone constructions. The settlement based on German Law played a key role here. After the initial phase in first half of 13th century, the process intensified in the latter half of 13th and in 14th century. The geometrical plans of most towns and villages were developed according to the principle of full divisibility of the land; they included settlement centres (urban grid-based solutions, central squares in villages) and their economic backgrounds, inscribed precisely into strictly defined borders of all towns and villages: surveying of agricultural lands (divided into Franconian manses (laneus franconicus), earmarking sites for meadows, pastures, and forests. Systemically conducted, such actions resulted in the settlement base that is still legible in contemporary plans. In this way threedimensional spatial systems were shaped over the centuries. The connection between settlement structures with the natural landscape resulted from strategic reasons: protection from floods, and soil quality. Late Middle Ages and modernity (from 15th to mid-18th century) marked secondary changes in the planned settlement systems: the development of suburbs and hamlets rather than isolation of new settlement systems from earlier ones, and major transformations in the development itself. Krakow cityscape, dominated by multi-storey, solid (brick or stone) developments was an exception already towards the end of 14th century The .standard. development consisted of single-storey, wooden houses, with regional differentiations perceptible already in 18th and 19th centuries. Church towers provided dominant elements, manors surrounded with parks developed in the places where charters located the seats of district leaders (Polish wójt, Latin: advocatus) and headmen (Polish: sołtys, Latin: scultetus), holy figures were put up on borders and along roads among especially planted trees, valleys served the development of fishponds (present in great numbers in the Duchies of Zator and O.więcim), and mills. The countryside of the turn of the period was glorified in 20th century as an epitome of the native village and town. The time of Enlightenment brought certain corrections. Following the achievements of the Great Sejm (Sejm Wielki), the shaping of modern Krakow began by incorporation of satellite towns and independent villages. The reforms introduced by Emperor Joseph II (1780.1790) in Galicia brought about a few rationally planned urban systems (Podgórze, the new centre of Biała) and rural systems (colonies) and charting of .the Imperial Route., which straight, avenue-like sections differed from the winding medieval roads. Parks provided a new element in city programmes from the 1st half of 19th century onwards. Since mid-19th century a necessary condition for city existence were railway lines that introduced new elements into the countryside: bridges, embankments, buildings. The time of Galician autonomy not only brought the development of brick buildings to the cities and towns of Galicia but also greatly expanded their sizes. Rural landscape would, nevertheless, change only to a lesser degree: late in 19th and early in 20th centuries diminutive, historical churches were began to be replaced by new .giants.. The medieval lay of the land in the Russian Partition was obscured by demarcation of new property divisions resulting from the repressions that followed the uprisings. The period between the two world wars was the time of developing structures that harmonised with the landscape, as e.g. the industrial and settlement complex of Mo.cice near Tarnów. A reflection of Nazi occupation in the landscape are the proofs for criminal racial segregation: districts for Herrenvolk, the walls of Jewish ghettos, and concentration and death camps including KL Auschwitz. The Stalinist variation of totalitarianism led to .ideal. compositions to the like of .socialist. urban developments and the architecture of Nowa Huta and its panoramic relations to the Steel Mill. The mushrooming and sprawl of industry enforced the development of concrete jungles so typical for the People.s Republic of Poland. These mockeries of the idea of .the garden city. destroyed the panoramas of nearly every city, with Kraków in the lead. The contemporary transformations of rural architecture resulted in elimination of traditional development in favour of .cube-like. houses scattered in the landscape from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Carpathians in the south. Unmanaged legacy of the People.s Republic was aggravated by contemporary threats including commercialisation of space, pressure of major developments offering no more than banal architecture, increasing threat to the greeneries and recreational areas, and transformation of authentic elements of heritage into their caricatures (as in the case of Tropsztyn castle). Lack of heritage conservation awareness among the decision makers is mirrored by urban zoning plans that do not define heritage protection zones.