‘Hard’ and ‘soft’ methods in analyses of territorial structures’. This article refers to two distinct approaches to investigations of territorial structures and their changes: the ‘intuitive’ of ‘soft’ approach and a more rigid, formalized or ‘hard’ one. The examples of analyzing the regional patterns in Poland over a almost 40 year span are called to illustrate these relations between two methodological standpoints. The conclusion states that both of them are valid and useful, however their strengths can be fully exposed when both are applied in an comprehensive way, supporting each other in a difficult process of investigation multidimensional and dynamic changes of the social territorial systems.