Abstract

The standard of country living was a matter of Polish elites’ concern from the eighteenth century. In different historical conditions different concepts of the rural renewal were formed. Today in rural areas of Poland some spatial processes that threaten the quality of life occur. The disadvantageous changes are the result of national or local governments spatial policy and they are an inhabitants’ response to it. The political transformation, launched in 1989, included the Polish countryside to The Rural Development Program, which involves the participation of local communities in the implementation of sustainable development policy. Participation has made the quality of life in the countryside a common problem of intellectual elite, institutions of government and other stakeholders. The bottom-up principle has given importance to the common rural landscapes. As a result, present degradation of rural landscapes informs about the need of a distinctive and collective vision of rurality to cooperate with the sustainable spatial policy as the test of individual spatial decisions. Selected cases of the countryside improvement will be presented to proove the presents of ideas level and grass-roots level in the physical landscape. It shows the ideological and social background of the renewal. Contemporary examples of rural settlements demonstrate that contrary judgments, as to what is rurality, are responsible for the unsusnainable development. Then the possibility of participation of physical and mental landscape in creating a positive, collective image of the rurality, which could interact with the sustainable development policy will be considered. The importance of sensory experiences that come from the landscape in a contemporary vision of rurality formulation will be analyzed. Grass-roots implementation of spatial policy requires ordering, social vision. Due to the facts that sustainable development remains rather a concept of intellectual elites and that the landscape is the framework of the perceptive experiences, it should be regarded as the foundation of the wanted social vision of rurality.

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