Koluszki jako miasto przyszłości. O polskiej drodze do planetarnej urbanizacji

The main thesis of the text is that the contemporary discussion of ‘planetary urbanisation’ skews towards megacities – large urban centres which are hardly representative of global urbanisation. Quantitative data shows that nearly half of the world’s urban dwellers live in medium-sized and small cities (towns). The author analyses the genealogy of Poland’s path to ‘planetary urbanisation,’ showing how during the long decade of the 1960s Poland experienced a transition from centripetal to centrifugal urbanisation. The result was the creation of industrial towns, a pillar of Poland’s urbanisation structure. Understanding this genealogy will help to better realise the potential of these – long in the making – ‘15-minute cities.’ The analysis reveals that Poland is not lagging behind the West, for it is going through similar processes (albeit of different nature) at the same time. The case of Polish towns shows that urbanisation cannot be analysed in isolation from the study of labour and its spatial organisation.