Z badań nad przeobrażeniami struktur osadniczo-agrarnych w południowej Polsce

Abstract

The study contains the results of research carried out on the transformation of agrarian and settlement structures in Southern Poland, founded upon selected examples from different theses written by students for their Master's Degree between 1958 and 1965 and the authoress's own investigations conducted in the districts of Proszowice, Sandomierz and Tarnobrzeg. It has been found that in industrialized regions the most essential changes in agrarian structure are associated with the inflow of population and the quick rate of comminuting peasants' fields and allotments. Thus the large farms were transformed into small farms and working plots. Upon agricultural areas the greatest transformations were due to agrarian reforms, i.e. land integration and parcelling out. There labourers' farms were not too much comminuted, since the process was checked by the considerable outflow of population from the villages to the towns. As to changes in the spacial forms of settlement, they comprise: the expansion of the particular villages under the effect of parcellation, dispersion due to land integration, and the growing density and length of the building-up along roads as a result of land being divided among the different family members. The fact that former labourers obtained jobs outside agriculture, as well as industrial development on the spot resulted in the quick expansion of living quarters of suburban character, located near working places or at the roads and highways leading to them. In the case of suburban villages, this leads up to an incorporation of villages into the main town organism.