Skip to main content

CASE News:
New CASE report on the city of Walbrzych

Published/Broadcast 24 September 2020

Opportunities and good practice which can drive social and economic regeneration in a small post industrial city are explored in this recent report from CASE. Funded by the European Investment Bank as one of their "Advisory Hub" commissioned projects, it explores the problems of the Polish city of Walbrzych, in Lower Silesia. Walbrzych is a "Green City" nestling in the Sudety Mountains, with a historic centre and major tourist site of the Ksiaz Castle. But it also has extensive and degraded ex mining housing, derelict land, and residual mining sites, and in 2009 was alleged to be "the most revolting town in Poland". Falling population and concentrated neighbourhood poverty, as well as high historic city debt are amongst the continuing challenges, even with a dynamic and green focused city President and administration.

The LSE team - including two Polish regeneration experts - conducted extensive interviewing and document review to identify the main problems and issues. The EIB brief was to identify good practice which could be helpful to Walbrzych in moving forward, and this culminated in four workshops involving nine cities and three European experts meeting City senior officials - but due to COVID this was all done by means of Zoom meetings.

Extensive documentation including the report, five case studies of similar cities, the background presentations and documentation to the workshop meetings, and recordings of the workshops can be found on the Walbrzych city website.