Considering the level of socio economic development of rural areas in the context of infrastructural and traditional consolidations in Poland
Abstract Agricultural land consolidations help solve structural problems caused by land fragmentation. The FAO classifies the impacts of land consolidation at three levels: firstly, there is the micro level, where land consolidation aims at changing the farm structure. Secondly, there is the meso level where land consolidation has broader aims of changing rural communities by improving the infrastructure, the natural environment, and the management of natural resources, landscape and, consequently, the spatial distribution of economic activities. Finally, there is the macro level where the focus is on changes which can positively affect the whole country by reducing the disparities between rural and urban areas. Therefore, one of the advantages arising from the implementation of consolidations should be positive socio economic changes in rural areas, resulting from the implementation of agricultural land consolidations. In this study, the Authors took on an assessment of the effects of consolidations at the meso level. Another aim of the study was to identify the effects of consolidations on changes in socio economic development of rural areas. A question was raised as to whether there is a correlation between the rate of changes in socio economic development of rural areas and the implementation of agricultural land consolidations in this area. The level of socio economic development was assessed based on an indicator of the rate of changes, calculated as the difference between the levels of commune development indicator for the years 2004 and 2016. In order to determine the synthetic indicator, one of the taxonomic methods, namely Hellwig's synthetic measure of development, was applied. The study concerned communes of Lubelskie and Malopolskie Voivodeships in which both traditional and infrastructural consolidations had been implemented over an area of at least 15% of the commune's area. The study indicates an increase in the level of socio economic development of the communes in which traditional consolidations were implemented. The study results indicate that the implementation of traditional consolidations of agricultural land is one of the factors contributing to an increase in the level of socio economic development of rural areas. At the same time, it was found that infrastructural consolidations understood as a corrective tool, implemented at the time of the construction of linear infrastructure projects, do not always serve their function of an improvement in the land layout in rural areas. The conducted study indicates that in the communes in which infrastructural land consolidations have been implemented, no improvement in the conditions of socio economic development has taken place.