Piotr Idczak

The paper examines the issue of whether the process of policy formulation and implementation on urban regeneration in Poland is done pursuant to the rules of a cycle of public policy-making. This is carried out through the use of the functioning cycle of public policy in Poland proposed by Zybała (2015) that stresses the specificities of Polish conditions in the public policy-making. Hence, the aim of the study is to provide an overview of public policy-making on urban regeneration in the context of legislative and institutional-administrative practices. In the light of increasingly complex challenges faced by cities, there is a need for the necessary counterbalancing regeneration measures taking a form of state sponsored public policy. Therefore, the Act on Regeneration was adopted in 2015. The paper concludes that the adoption of this Act was dominated by the legislator which, with relatively little contribution from other stakeholders, resulted in a rather unambitious set of legal provisions on regeneration that have not substantially changed the instrumental approach of local authorities to urban regeneration.

The JESSICA initiative has been set up to respond to development needs of urban areas, which are of key importance for stimulation of sustainable economic growth. It is supposed to provide a more efficient alternative to the traditional EU grants for the implementation of developmental projects. The funding available under the JESSICA framework relies on a repayable and recyclable basis. This means that it not only offers revolving funds, increasing financing capacity of EU cohesion policy, but also creates scope for cooperation between public authorities, financial institutions, and private investors to support implementation of this policy. Since JESSICA supports projects being part of an integrated plan for sustainable urban development, its primary challenge is to combine the objectives focused on urban sustainability and policy intervention with revolving financial models that assume, in principle, the long-term viability of projects. However, taking into particular consideration the needs of urban areas and the EU cohesion policy objective on the one hand, and the organisation and operation of financing engineering instruments on the other, JESSICA seems to be a very ambitious undertaking. The evaluations carried out, up to now, have been mainly focused on its legal and institutional framework, or limited to some selected project. Our study concerns the assessment of all projects implemented within the framework of the JESSICA initiative in five Polish regions, namely: Pomorskie, Mazowieckie, Śląskie, Wielkopolskie and Zachodniopomorskie, in the years between 2007-2015. To do so, we designed a methodological approach for assessing the extent to which projects implemented under the JESSICA initiative have contributed to achieving its fundamental assumptions. Subsequently, we made an assessment of the results of JESSICA through the conceptual lens of sustainable urban development. The main findings show that the range of achieving the assumptions of the JESSICA funding model by projects diverges widely. Many projects were quite well adjusted to the requirements but there were also projects that fulfilled them to a very limited extent.

The Ability of JESSICA Projects to Influence the Market Processes in Cities. JESSICA initiative as a financial engineering instrument was introduced to enhance and accelerate investments in disadvantaged urban areas. The novel aspect of JESSICA is that this instrument should not only support and promote sustainable urban development but also provide incentives that lower risk capital investments and consequently allow to overcome existing market failures. Thus, the paper aims to identify whether JESSICA projects have contributed to generating positive market effects, as well as to indicate the factors that were most responsible for the occurrence of these phenomena. The results show that 75% out of all projects generated positive market effects in form of new jobs, services or products. The generation of revenues by particular project was the most influential factor determining the capacity
of a given project to create positive markets effects.

Objective: Objectives of the article are the following: to identify 1) similarity/ dissimi-larity in Polish regions with regard to the implementation of JESSICA projects in terms of the size of JESSICA loans/ projects and the legal form of beneficiaries, 2) what factors have the biggest impact on the project capacities to generate revenues. Research Design & Methods: The authors used the logistic regression to build a model showing the association of the variables analysed on the dependent variable. In addition , to point out a relative importance from all possible orderings of explanatory variables and to show the most important one(s), ANOVA method was applied. Findings: Not all the projects co-financed under the JESSICA initiative bring revenues from their main operations. The legal form of a beneficiary plays an important role. Both projects implemented by companies and projects of a relatively high value increase the probability of generating revenues. Location of the project (capital city/ non-capital city of the region) is not significant with regard to capacities to generate revenues. Implications & Recommendations: JESSICA projects characterised with a high value and implemented by entities having the company status involve private capital and consequently generate capital backflows. They contribute to leverage effects and thereby raise the role of JESSICA as a powerful instrument aimed at rendering existing market failures. It seems that the results of the study might help to design the use of JESSICA resources in the current and the future EU financial perspective. Contribution & Value Added: The article sheds more light on a still under-researched area of the use of financial instruments in the EU Cohesion Policy. The analysis provides pioneering results and points out the vital issues for future research.

Article type: research article

The Adjustment Assessment of Projects Implemented within the JESSICA Initiative to the Specifi c Needs of Urban Areas. Regeneration – an integrated process of activities undertaken in the spatial, social and economic dimensions – should lead to the improvement of the living conditions of inhabitants of degraded urban areas. The European Union in 2007-2013 allocated fi nancial resources for this purpose in the form of JESSICA initiative which is based on fi nancial engineering mechanism. Experiences gained so far allow conclusions to be drawn that JESSICA is a highly fi nancially-effi cient instrument but, however, not always delivers the desired outcomes in the spatial and social sphere. The scope of projects often is limited to infrastructural investments and does not refl ect the complexity of regeneration process. In the article the authors analyse experiences of the fi ve Polish regions with the use of JESSICA, point out main problems and formulate recommendations for sustainable urban policy. Wstęp Miasta zajmują kluczowe miejsce w systemie osadniczym kraju i poszczegól-nych regionów. W wymiarze funkcjonalnym odgrywają rolę ośrodków wzrostu, któ-re w zależności od ich wielkości i znaczenia w układzie osadniczym bezpośrednio oddziałują na otaczające je obszary. Kondycja społeczno-gospodarcza miast, a także zachodzące w nich procesy mają istotne znaczenie dla rozwoju obszarów otaczają-cych i odwrotnie – miasta poprzez swoje ścisłe powiązania z otoczeniem dostosowują

Successful leadership in local development requires not only a vision, but good communication skills, stakeholder involvement, strategic planning and coordination and popular support via public participation. Our empirical study contributes to filling the gap in the literature about the role of non-profit leadership in urban and regional development. We study the characteristics of politicians in civil society and that of civil society’s leaders in politics as a prerequisite for successful local development. For this, we draw on the survey data of 374 local politicians from four large cities in Central Europe: Prague, Bratislava, Budapest and Poznań. The research affirms that non-profit non-governmental organisations do play an important role in local development and reveals similarities in all analysed cities, though with some variance. Local political elites are identified as engaging significantly in civil society organisations, despite low levels of general trust in these countries. About two-thirds of the local politicians who took part in the survey participate actively in civil society organisations in their respective cities but not coming from a previous non-profit non-governmental organisation employment. Not only are they active, but many of them also have positions as managers or directors, or as members of the board of directors in these organisations. Although neither membership nor leadership in non-profit non-governmental organisations appears to increase a local politician’s chance of being elected, except when those are engaged in local development or environmental issues. As spatial leadership plays an important role in the construction of new agendas and identities we have also investigated the views of local politicians on decentralisation, government service provision efficiency and the importance of several local policy topics, and found some puzzling differences across our V4 cities that possibly reflect cultural differences. Non-profit leadership in urban development is a neglected topic so far in the literature, our study adds empirical results from Central and Eastern Europe, yet there is ample room for future research.

This year, the Visegrad countries celebrate together twenty ve years since the socio, economic and political changes lead in collapse of totalitarian regimes. But the political transition brought also problems and new challenges not know previously. The rst free elections were held in the Visegrad countries that time and their inhabitants could choose their political representatives. Many of them came originally from the civil society and revolution movements. However, the political decision-making became disconnected from the civil society over time. We study the present rootedness of local political representatives in the civil society measured by their membership and leadership in civil society organisations in all four Visegrad countries. We are as well interested in engagement of activists from the civil society in an institutionalised political life, i.e. political parties and political movements. The purpose of this book is to discuss development of local democracy, local dev...

SUMMARY: The application of a dynamic generation cost indicator (DGC) as a method to evaluate the effi ciency of investments, which allow to select an investment project with the lowest possible cost. The DGC indicator consist of investment costs at the stage of implementation, and operating costs, occurring throughout the period of the economic life of the project. The comparative analysis of the three alternative solutions was made on the example of the Skórzynka catchment with the use of DGC indicator. It helped in the selection of the most optimal solution in social aspect. It has also shown that this method can be successfully used in the initial phase of the decision-making process in the selection of the most eff ective solutions which shape the retention capacity of the river catchment in urban areas.

This year, the Visegrad countries celebrate together twenty ve years since the socio, economic and political changes lead in collapse of totalitarian regimes. But the political transition brought also problems and new challenges not know previously. The rst free elections were held in the Visegrad countries that time and their inhabitants could choose their political representatives. Many of them came originally from the civil society and revolution movements. However, the political decision-making became disconnected from the civil society over time. We study the present rootedness of local political representatives in the civil society measured by their membership and leadership in civil society organisations in all four Visegrad countries. We are as well interested in engagement of activists from the civil society in an institutionalised political life, i.e. political parties and political movements. The purpose of this book is to discuss development of local democracy, local dev...

This year, the Visegrad countries celebrate together twenty five years since the socio, economic and political changes lead in collapse of totalitarian regimes. But the political transition brought also problems and new challenges not know previously. The first free elections were held in the Visegrad countries that time and their inhabitants could
choose their political representatives. Many of them came originally from the civil society and revolution movements. However, the political decision-making became disconnected from the civil society over time.
We study the present rootedness of local political representatives in the civil society measured by their membership and leadership in civil society organisations in all four Visegrad countries. We are as well interested
in engagement of activists from the civil society in an institutionalised political life, i.e. political parties and political movements.
The purpose of this book is to discuss development of local democracy, local development initiatives and local social capital in growing urban areas in post-transition countries in which the civil society was almost absent or very weak twenty five years ago. This publication comes up with overviews of the situation in four cities, one in each of the Visegrad
countries. First the Polish case of Poznan is discussed. Then three capital cities follow: Czech Prague, Slovakian Bratislava and Hungarian Budapest.

The current year 2014 allows/has allowed for the first attempts to evaluate the operations, organization and implementation of the Cohesion Policy 2007-2013. The authors have analysed one of the elements that might have an impact on the results obtained under the regional operational pro-gramme in the Wielkopolska region in Poland, namely the modes of the selection of projects. This element of the whole cycle of projects is an under-researched subject of scientific analyses even though the project selection itself has been deeply examined by (various) control institutions (the European Court of Auditors, Supreme Audit Offices etc.). The authors use evaluation concepts and a strategic management lens, and formulate five research questions on: the conditions necessary for the transparency of project selection, the main factors determining the choice of the adopted selection mode, the impact of the selection mode on the results, the quality of the work of experts, and the efficiency of the appeal procedures for beneficiaries – trying to answer all these questions in the subsequent sections of the article. The methods used comprise analyses of legislation, reports, primary data and in-depth-interviews with the stakeholders. The research has also practical implications and can be a valuable case-study for policy-makers.

Regions in the EU’s Eastern and Southern peripheries tend to perform badly across many rankings from economic development, to quality of government,social justice and innovation potential, despite the fact that the vast majorityof EU structural funding has been spent in these countries. However, these countries followed different development trajectories and reacted differently to the economic crisis. Some of them still struggle, others thrive, others, afteryears of structural transformation, are stuck in a middle-income trap.Successes and failures as a result of EU cohesion implementation are avaluable source of feedback for future plans. Southern part of the EU, and Central and Eastern Europe provide an excellent opportunity to evaluatethem, The whole implementation exercise is sometimes challenging to accomplish, as both the public and private sectors have low absorption capacity. In contrast, positive experiences also emerged. Regions in Central and Eastern European countries witnessed improvements in the form of change in GDP per capita, benchmarked against the EU average during theyears 2008-2015, while Southern Europe improved similarly between 2000-2008. In this volume, the authors cover a variety of aforementioned problems and experiences of either all member states, with special attention to peripheral countries, or to sectoral or regional problems in selected countries. The book begins with an overview of the issues of economic convergence and quality of life in all member states. It also addresses political aspects of EU cohesion policy, including involvement of civil society into this public policy, as well as relationships between cohesion policy support and EU identification. The final section discusses an important novelty in the framework of EU cohesion policy, namely the JESSICA initiative, that is, an instrument offering repayable and recyclable funding targeted at economically-viable and sustainable urban development projects. Authors are engaged in research on EU cohesion policy and represent severaldisciplines: economics, political and social sciences.

Regions in the EU’s Eastern and Southern peripheries tend to perform badly across many rankings from economic development, to quality of government,social justice and innovation potential, despite the fact that the vast majorityof EU structural funding has been spent in these countries. However, these countries followed different development trajectories and reacted differently to the economic crisis. Some of them still struggle, others thrive, others, afteryears of structural transformation, are stuck in a middle-income trap.Successes and failures as a result of EU cohesion implementation are avaluable source of feedback for future plans. Southern part of the EU, and Central and Eastern Europe provide an excellent opportunity to evaluatethem, The whole implementation exercise is sometimes challenging to accomplish, as both the public and private sectors have low absorption capacity. In contrast, positive experiences also emerged. Regions in Central and Eastern European countries witnessed improvements in the form of change in GDP per capita, benchmarked against the EU average during theyears 2008-2015, while Southern Europe improved similarly between 2000-2008. In this volume, the authors cover a variety of aforementioned problems and experiences of either all member states, with special attention to peripheral countries, or to sectoral or regional problems in selected countries. The book begins with an overview of the issues of economic convergence and quality of life in all member states. It also addresses political aspects of EU cohesion policy, including involvement of civil society into this public policy, as well as relationships between cohesion policy support and EU identification. The final section discusses an important novelty in the framework of EU cohesion policy, namely the JESSICA initiative, that is, an instrument offering repayable and recyclable funding targeted at economically-viable and sustainable urban development projects. Authors are engaged in research on EU cohesion policy and represent severaldisciplines: economics, political and social sciences.