Abstract

The article addresses the issue of spatial planning policies in Łódź in the context of population outflow from the city centre. The study looks back to the creation of the city centre district in the 1960s when an influential and radically new spatial policy was adopted. The aim of the article is to show how past urban policies influenced internal (deurbanization) and external migration. The adopted strategy, neglecting problems in the city centre, and the decline of the textile industry in the 1980s and 1990s led to depopulation and urban decay. Within half a century, approximately 100,000 inhabitants left the city centre. Łódź, once known as the Polish Manchester, is now compared to the American city of Detroit. Today, Łódź’s individual problems need to be tackled individually so that the negative tendencies may be reversed. The study analysed previous spatial planning policies and confronted them with demographic changes in the city landscape. The results of the study provided the basis for defining the main problems and outlining the current and future prospects of the city. An analysis of solutions that may improve the state of the city centre and encourage the inhabitants to move back was also included.