The article presents empirical material obtained in sociological surveys conducted in the Wejherowo area in the year 2014. The purpose of the survey was to record the residents’ opinions on the needs and problems relating to selected functioning aspects of the town and its downtown district, the perception and valuation of the area, the town’s revitalization investments, both planned and in progress, and the perception of the changes taking place in selected spheres of the town’s life. The survey reveals that the dwellers of Wejherowo are capable of responding to the problems the town faces in intellectual and personal dimensions, they follow the postulates related to the ideas and concepts of a creative town more or less consciously, and have a preference for the town ensuring access to the broadly construed culture and entertainment. This encapsulates a vision of developing town cultures, with the focal point evidently shifted from the concept of a town as a place accumulating specimens of architecture and a symbolic space to the town construed as a complex of better facilities and solutions which make everyday life more convenient. More frequently than ever before, town identity becomes the function of negotiations between what is local and what is global. The quality of town life and the features of its ‘town-like character’ appear to be the outcome of continuous and subtle dialectics between the residents and the physical form in which they live, i.e. the town.

The article describes the relationship between the local community and the primary school considered as “place” within the meaning derived from the book by yi-Fu Tuan “Space and place: The perspective of experience”. The article compares the cases of two schools in the city of bielsko-biała (the city has a population of 175 thousands inhabitants). One school is overcrowded, yet its future existence has been secured. The second school, however, was first transferred to another location and it eventually went into liquidation in 2012. The article demonstrates then underlying reasons and consequences of losing the school as place. Moreover, it indicates potential problems emerging in such cases altogether with a set of possible solutions.

This paper presents a synthesis of research in the field of social activity in development of urban public spaces. Interest in social participation in which many groups sees a remedy to the problems of the city - including spatial chaos - has many causes. One of them is the lack of trust in the social side to the profession of architecture. The article indicates the possible cause of this state for which it was flawed legislation and the planning system, which in practice is not conducive to the formation of order, harmony and beauty, but facilitate the implementation of the narrow groups of interests, bringing the rank of designer as creator of the role of the investor's decision executor.

The Baltic Sea has always played a vital part in the history of Poland. In the light of the resolutions of the Yalta Conference, Poland’s boarders were shifted, including Western Pomerania in its territory. In 1945 Kołobrzeg was the most severely destroyed city on that territory. The city was either already ablaze or set on fire by German gangs active at that time. All its pre-war functions were non-existent. The harbour was immobilized, the economic basis fell apart. The city was devoided of water, power and food delivery was problematic. The newly-arrived Polish settlers perceived Kołobrzeg as a tragic and overwhelming image of a “dead city”. The area was dominated by debris, the stench of decomposing bodies of German soldiers and looters arriving from central Poland. The Wehrwolf pursued sabotages and the most terrifying Red Army committed crime and rapes. In the light of the population records and files of the Registry Office the inflow of people was rather slow during the first months, only to increase the pace in the following years. Many of them believed they would find employment rebuilding the city or in the harbour. The settlers had long been insecure about the temporary character of Poland in Western Pomerania and on the Baltic coast.

The aim of the article is to consider current global and European trends in ensuring a sufficient level of energy efficiency, to provide an analysis of the institutional environment for energy security, and the development and justification of a conceptual and analytical model of energy generation and consumption at the regional level in decentralization reform in Ukraine. The current trends of world energy consumption are illustrated, the forecast of renewable energy development is built and an analysis of energy efficiency of the national economy is performed. The article presents a study of the formation of an integrated municipal energy-management system of Ukrainian communities and municipalities depending on their urbanization and offers the use of conceptual analytical model of generation-consumption. A number of normative and organizational-institutional proposals on the standardization of energy-efficiency improvement processes are provided. Analysis of the energy efficiency of communities can be modeled at the conceptual level with the study using an analytical model: a) energy-efficiency factors of this model, financial instruments for its effective functioning as a mechanism of interest budget revenues and specialized funds functional dependence of the target function of the energy generation-consumption model, taking into account the generation methods and the main consumers at the appropriate levels; b) the risks and shortcomings of this process, which propose a number of regulatory and institutional changes to improve the effectiveness of effective energy efficiency policies of communities and energy security of the state on the basis of energy cooperation and organization of the biofuel exchange. The model of organization and functioning of the cooperative for generation and consumption of solar energy, which is based on the regulatory framework, is represented as a model structural and functional solution. This allowed the development of scientific and applied recommendations for improving the legal provisions, which would allow the community to become an effective player in the wholesale energy market, selling it at a “green” tariff.