Between Interdependence and Subordination. The Relationship of Spatial Planning Law and Economic Planning Law in People’s Poland

The paper presents the results of research on the evolution of the relationship between legal regulations on economic planning and spatial planning in People's Poland from 1945 to 1989. Spatial planning law is a discipline of public law present in all modern legal systems, regardless of the economic system. Economic planning law is a discipline of public law specific to countries in which the economic system is based on central planning. In the first years after World War II, legal solutions were designed in Poland, through which spatial planning and economic planning were supposed to be two separate divisions of state activity, with cooperation between them. Separate structures of administrative bodies were created for them. However, during the Stalinist period, spatial planning was in practice subsidiary to economic planning – partly through amendments to regulations, partly simply by not applying the existing law. In the 1960s, the status quo was sanctioned, with the introduction of regulations in line with it – spatial planning became one of the sub-fields of economic planning, which had already gained complete official supremacy. In the 1980s, in an attempt to save from collapse a state plunged into a deepening crisis, reforms were made as a result of which spatial planning again became a separate area of state activity. It was bound with economic planning (henceforth called “socio-economic planning”) by a bilateral relationship of interdependence.