Degraded towns and urban abandonment

Summary, in English

One important element in the interaction between the natural and the human environment is the negative impact of the first on the latter when seen through the prism of urban destabilization. Within this scope, the issue of urban abandonment and disappearance holds an important place, the indirect cause of which are the specifics of local and regional natural subsystems. Small towns are especially susceptible to the negative forces of the natural environment. Since most cases of urban abandonment have happened in historical times, there is a linkage between abandonment and formal degradation, but this linkage, until now, has not been systematically approached in research. The aim of this chapter, hence, is to elaborate on the impact of environmental factors on the phenomenon of urban abandonment in the context of degraded towns in Poland. We draw that in order to avert unnecessary urban degradation we must pay greater attention to the dangerous relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past.