Dynamics of residential suburbanization in post-socialist countries: The case of the Warsaw Metropolitan Area

Abstract In post-socialist countries, in recent years, scientific debate has focused on extensive and uncoordinated suburbanization, which has led to fragmented settlement expansion into rural areas increasingly distant from the core city. Although suburbanization in this part of Europe has intensified, its dynamics have become increasingly differentiated within individual urban regions. The aim of this paper is to determine the dynamics of suburbanization across the entire Warsaw Metropolitan Area and within its internal structure, as well as to identify the probable causes and consequences of the observed changes in the scale of the analyzed processes. It verifies the hypothesis that since the mid-1990s, the initially more extensive spreading of the population in rural areas of Warsaw region has gradually shifted toward greater concentration in a limited number of municipalities. In this study, the k-means classification method was applied. The findings confirmed that the majority of the WMA municipalities remained demographically active throughout the entire study period, however, a more extensive pattern of suburbanization, characterized by smaller differences between units of analysis, is shifting toward a more concentrated form. The most significant turning points that accelerated the change in the character of suburbanization towards greater selectivity were the 2009 economic crisis and the pandemic.