Ten years after. Ukrainian political life in Lviv in 1928.

During the mid-war period Lviv was a leading centre of Ukrainian cultural and political life in Polish state. Despite the unfavourable political situation Ukrainian elites tried to create mythologized image of the city as a ”heart and brain” of West Ukraine. In 1928 the opportunities for such actions were, among others, parliamentary elections in March, and - in November - 1st anniversary of the outbreak of the Ukrainian-Polish war.

The global community has been overcoming the crisis of being in the city for almost a century. And we are trying to answer the problems of urban crises - how and why do they arise, which development path should the city take and is this step justified? The simplest way of overcoming the crisis by the city authorities is an irrational solution - to erase the past, and build a new one. In such cases, the historical layering of images of the city, which have a great cultural value, is not taken into account. The city government alone and the bunch of institutions interested exclusively in their own financial issues do not have the right to carry out any transformations of the urban image without the participation of the city society and persons competent in this matter. It is culturology, on the one hand, that makes it possible to implement a comprehensive understanding of transformations in the urban space, excluding the one-sided development of transformations from a technical and aesthetic point of view of urban planning. On the other hand, it allows awareness-raising activities among urban residents, teaching them a kind of literacy and critical thinking about the center of their existence. However, for this purpose there must be a certain strategy of work and social cohesion. So, having faced the problem of lack of convenient and at the same time comprehensive definition of the above-mentioned historical layering and the feasibility of transformations in the urban image, in this article I propose, in my opinion, mandatory and at the same time the main stage of work for institutions involved in urban planning. I have developed a model of systematization of concepts of the image of the city, which at this time have already formed a historical multi-layer of the city. This development demonstrated the ability to predict the “behavior” of urban transformations in the future, especially young cities, whose historical layers of images are still ahead, based on the calculation of adaptation maxima in the life of the concept of the city image.

The image of the city in the minds of young users of Rzeszów’s space

In the era of increased competition between cities, building a positive image of the city is becoming an important element of marketing strategies. The image of a city includes all subjective ideas of reality that are formed in people’s minds as a result of perception, the influence of mass media and informal information messages. The image of a city includes both physical and emotional elements. Physical elements are objective characteristics of a place, such as its size, location, spatial structure, condition of infrastructure and type of development. Emotional elements include people’s emotional attitude and sympathy towards a given place. Therefore, all promotional activities undertaken by the authorities and changes in the city space may affect these image elements. Some changes may have a positive impact while others may have a negative impact on one’s image. The aim of the article is to present the results of a study on the image of Rzeszów. The study was conducted in spring 2022 on a sample of 415 students of the University of Rzeszów. The CAWI technique was used to collect data. These are not the first analyzes of the city image phenomenon. Previous publications show that the subjective image of the city in the minds of its inhabitants is positive. Residents point out to many good changes that have taken place in urban space in recent years. The most important ones included increasing the city’s aesthetics, improving the quality of streets and expanding the city to include surrounding towns. Unlike previous studies, which were mainly devoted to measuring hard and soft quality of life indicators, this time the focus was on assessing the specificity and originality of Rzeszów in the minds of the respondents.