Classification of rural areas in Poland as an instrument of territorial policy

The subject matter of the report is the typology of rural areas, which may be used as an instrument of territorial policy. One objective of this report is to review and assess the cognitive and applied usefulness of the contemporary typologies and classifications of rural areas, with a special emphasis on Poland. The authors concentrate on the methodological procedure of the new typology, which accounts for three aspects: development dynamics, economic structure, and transport-wise accessibility. This approach generated the synthetic image of the spatial differentiation and the state of development of rural areas. The individual types of rural areas can be assigned definite sets of undertakings in the framework of territorial policy.