Sustainable Spatial Development of Multifunctional Villages: A Case Study of Eastern Poland

Abstract

The decline in the role of agriculture as the basis for the livelihood of rural residents has led to the development of new directions for rural transformation. In Poland, the concept of multifunctional development has gained the most popularity. However, it does not have a defined spatial development model. There has also been no research into how the development of non-agricultural functions affects spatial development and to what extent this development is sustainable. Therefore, the aim of this study is to show and compare the changes that have taken place over the last 40–50 years in the spatial arrangements of development in traditional agricultural villages and in villages with different non-agricultural functions (tourist, industrial, and service functions). At the same time, we want to indicate which of these functions have contributed to the development of the most sustainable spatial arrangements. To this end, we selected three indicators of sustainable development of rural space: compactness of buildings, continuation of traditional rural layouts, and availability of services, and then carried out an analysis of changes in these indicators on the basis of archival and current cartographic materials and data on service facilities. We conducted the research for four municipalities in eastern Poland (50 villages). The results indicate the predominance of negative spatial phenomena such as the deterioration of the accessibility of services and spatial development contrary to historical spatial layouts. There is a spillover of development in the form of discontinuous, chaotic clusters of buildings often having the character of suburbia and, consequently, the disappearance of village centres, worsening walkability, and blurring of village boundaries. The only positive change is an increase in the compactness of buildings—mainly in villages that previously had a dispersed character. It is difficult to identify village functions that would unequivocally favour spatial sustainability. The service villages showed slight advantages in terms of social (availability of services) and environmental (compactness of buildings) factors. In contrast, the development of agricultural villages was more favourable in cultural terms (traditional village layouts). In all aspects, negative changes were recorded in industrial villages and (the worst results) in tourist villages. However, the trends were similar in all municipalities, which draws attention primarily to the lack of a rational spatial policy related to multifunctional village development.

1. Introduction

In the development of rural areas, we have witnessed the clash of various, often contradictory phenomena over the past few decades. Depopulation and land abandonment in some areas are balanced by intense urbanisation in others. The decline of many, especially small, agricultural farms is paralleled by the growth and improved productivity of others. Deagrarisation leads to unemployment on one hand but also fosters the development of new rural functions on the other. In response to advancing globalisation, localism and the renewal of local rural communities have emerged [1,2,3,4]. All these phenomena occur simultaneously but with varying intensity depending on location, current socio-economic conditions, and changing natural circumstances. This results in instability in rural areas and uncertainty about their future development and functioning. This situation also raises numerous questions about the direction in which rural areas should develop and how the ongoing changes fit into the concept of sustainable development.

The response to this complex situation involves creating scenarios and development concepts for diagnosing and planning the development of specific areas. Most researchers agree that rural areas will develop in a diverse manner, with the main determinant being their location relative to major urban centres [1,5]. An example is the division of rural areas in Sicily applied by [4], where the author distinguishes: (1) areas of slow growth; (2) transitional villages experiencing both economic growth and depopulation; and (3) declining territories. However, other researchers emphasise the crucial role of residents and their attitudes towards rural development. They largely determine the directions in which individual areas are heading. An example can be found in the four types of English villages identified by [6]: (1) the preservative village, focused on protecting natural, aesthetic, and architectural values; (2) the contested village, where urban dwellers contest the exploitative approach to local resources; (3) the paternalistic village, dominated by large landowners; and (4) the clientelistic village, which links its development to public assistance. Ref. [7] also assumes four post-productive rural development scenarios, stemming from different visions and expectations of the main actors in rural development. He distinguished (1) the super-productive village associated with agribusiness development; (2) the concept of consuming idylls related to leisure spaces and counter-urbanisation; (3) the village of diversified functions heading towards urbanisation; and (4) the village of radical renewal, which ties rurality with social renewal, locality, alternative lifestyles, and relative self-sufficiency.

In Poland, following systemic changes and the marketisation of the economy post-1989, the response to rapidly advancing deagrarisation was the introduction of the concept of multifunctional rural development. According to [8], this is a concept of economic activation of rural areas and agriculture, involving two types of actions: creating non-agricultural jobs in rural areas and developing multifunctional agriculture. Of course, multifunctionality can have different faces depending on local conditions. Ref. [9] identified five basic types of multifunctional settlements of a transitional nature: (1) service villages, combining agriculture with services for both the agricultural and non-agricultural population; (2) recreational villages, fulfilling functions related to tourism, recreation, and health protection (spa villages); (3) satellite villages, serving as residential areas for non-agricultural workers commuting to work; (4) industrialised villages, hosting industrial plants; and (5) agricultural towns. In recent years, the concept of smart villages has emerged as an extension of multifunctional rural development. It does not have a clear definition or detailed rules for implementation. It is not a one-size-fits-all concept. Its implementation, like multifunctional development, requires a place-specific approach [10]. Generally, as understood by most researchers and European institutions, a smart village means using smart technologies and social entrepreneurship to develop innovative services aimed at counterbalancing the decline of rural communities and overcoming their traditional dependence on agricultural activities and subsidised public services [11]. The smart village is therefore a separate concept focused on the use of new technologies—but by providing support for the development of new services and village functions, it fits into the broader concept of multifunctional development.

A common feature of most described scenarios and concepts is the search for new functions for rural areas and adapting them to local conditions. Their proponents are eager to describe their actions as opportunities to realise the idea of sustainable development. According to [8], “multifunctional development of rural areas should ensure a balance between productive, social, and ecological spheres, thus implementing the principles of sustainable development”. Ref. [12] also describe multifunctionality as an opportunity for sustainable rural development. Similarly, the concept of smart villages, linked by [13] to sustainable development and smart specialisation, is described by other authors as a component of sustainable development, fulfilling specific sustainable development goals set by the United Nations [14,15].

However, both in the concept of multifunctional development and in the idea of smart villages, it is difficult to find specific guidelines regarding their spatial forms. Can we, therefore, assess the sustainability of these concepts without knowing how they fit into rural space and their relationships with the surrounding landscape? These doubts particularly concern multifunctional development, which in Poland has developed mainly as a response to economic problems. Is it also the right response to social and environmental issues? This question is justified by the fact that post-1989, no overarching or grassroots vision of rural spatial development has been created in Poland, which has contributed to increasing spatial chaos, constituting, in spatial terms, the antithesis of sustainable development [16]. Historically, various agricultural economy models were associated with specific spatial arrangements of villages. Most of them were optimally adapted to the prevailing way of farming and local natural conditions. Currently, the progressing deagrarisation of villages has forced a new direction of development (multifunctional), which, however, lacks any ultimate or proposed spatial form in Poland. As a result, villages pursuing multifunctional development take on various spatial forms spontaneously adapted to the dominant function. Researchers of changes in settlement and the rural landscape point to a number of negative phenomena generally observed in the modern countryside. These are primarily: the progressive dispersion of development; increasing land consumption, causing the disappearance of open spaces, valuable ecosystems, and ecological links; and making people dependent on the car [17,18,19,20,21,22,23]; the development of linear layouts—along roads, but with a lack of continuity of development [21,24] and undefined village boundaries ([18]; the formation of a second development belt, with poor access to a public road [24] and a general increase in road density [21]; the disappearance of traditional rural spatial arrangements, which not only represent local tradition, identity, and uniqueness [21,25,26]), but are also best suited to local natural conditions [27,28]; the enclosure of traditional rural agricultural development with new residential development, making it difficult for farmers to function [29]; low levels of centrality in spatial organisation [21,23]; lack of services, difficult availability of services, or inefficiency in the provision of basic public and commercial services [23,25,26,30,31]; the lack or poor availability of high-quality public spaces [23,26,32]; the deterioration of walkability [17,19,22]; the chaotic mixing of various forms of development (single-family and multifamily) [21]; and the monofunctional nature of rural settlements [17,19,22,23].

However, we do not know whether the phenomena listed here are universal to the modern countryside, or are they exclusively related to the development of new functions? Nor do we know which of the new functions of rural areas cause the greatest intensity of these negative phenomena, and which are the most beneficial from the point of view of spatial change and the quality of rural space? In short, we lack knowledge about whether the spatial development of multifunctional villages differs from that of a traditional agricultural village, and, more importantly, which village functions are most conducive to sustainable spatial development. In this article, we have attempted to fill this research gap by analysing examples of municipalities in Poland, where a very liberal spatial planning system has prevailed for more than the last two decades, not imposing too many requirements on investors but rather responding to their requests and needs. Changes in spatial layouts are therefore not the result of a conscious spatial policy, but rather the result of a spontaneous and bottom-up adaptation of a municipality’s development to its functions (including new non-agricultural functions). Thanks to this, our research can have a universal character, showing “natural” trends of spatial changes.

The aim of this study is therefore to show and compare the changes that have taken place over the last 40–50 years in the spatial arrangements of development in traditional agricultural villages and in villages with different non-agricultural functions (tourism, industry, and services). At the same time, we want to indicate which of these functions have contributed to the development of the most sustainable spatial arrangements. In order to achieve this objective, we have selected four municipalities, located in one region, which, over the study period of the last few decades, have developed with very different functions. Three of the selected communes represent different types of multifunctional villages distinguished by [9] (recreational villages; industrialised villages; villages with service and residential functions) and one represents a typical agricultural village with minimal additional functions. We carried out the analyses on the basis of archival and current cartographic material and data on the location of service facilities.

To assess the sustainability of the spatial arrangements resulting from the development of specific functions, it was necessary to define the spatial characteristics of a village that define its sustainable development. These characteristics were determined based on a literature review related to rural spatial planning. The results of this analysis are presented below.

Spatial Characteristics of a Sustainable Village

The spatial aspect of sustainable development is often described using rather general and expansive terms. As [33] note, different groups, representing various visions of rural development, interpret this concept in their own ways, sometimes leading to contradictory interpretations. Nonetheless, by analysing the literature on rural spatial development, certain features can be identified that most authors agree best reflect the idea of sustainable development. Many of these features are also indicators of the so-called new urbanism—one of the most important contemporary planning movements addressing the problems of urban sprawl and car dependency [20]. New urbanists aim to create compact, walkable, mixed-use, traditional, and human-scale communities that are both functional and sustainable [17,19,22]. This movement has faced criticism, primarily concerning the outcomes of some implementations [34] or its lack of openness to change [35]. Ref. [36] argue that while new urbanism is not synonymous with sustainable development, it certainly provides a more sustainable model than conventional sprawl. Furthermore, [37] suggests that the decline in interest in the new urbanism concept is not due to its rejection but because it has permeated the mainstream, becoming a standard solution rather than something new and unusual. Below, we present the features of rural spatial development that various authors (not only new urbanists) have indicated as conducive to sustainable development.

Ref. [38] explicitly list compactness as one of the three main sustainability factors. In many countries, this type of development is promoted or even mandated by the state, as seen in the UK, Ireland, and Sweden [39,40]. This is typically motivated by improving access to services and infrastructure, ensuring walkable spaces, reducing car dependency, enhancing community connections, minimising land consumption, and protecting the climate, water, and landscape. Some sources cite broader motivations for compact development, such as curbing climate change, improving community viability, and saving costs [41], directly referencing the three components of the definition of sustainable development. From a community development perspective, besides compactness and density, a defined nucleus and identifiable edges are also important [23]. These features counteract the main problems of contemporary rural spatial development, such as urban sprawl around cities and scattered rural development [20,21,23,24].

The availability of public transport and the consequent reduction in individual car use and CO₂ emissions is another crucial aspect. The significance of this factor stems from the fact that mobility is one of the three main processes in European rural development (alongside vulnerabilities and sustainability), which can potentially diverge [6,42]. Balancing these processes involves reducing commuting strain and car reliance [43] and promoting Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), which encourages densification near public transportation nodes [44]. Besides good external transportation access, the internal penetrability of morphological structures through a clear, paved-road system is also important [21].

Most authors discussing sustainable rural development mention access to both public and commercial services [19,23,45]. The range of services should be as broad as possible, including cultural, service, educational, health, business, office, religious, or sports centres [46]. However, the presence of at least basic services, such as a primary school or grocery store, is crucial. These not only serve supply functions but also act as meeting places, enhancing the village’s significance and liveability [30,31,47]. Spatially, it is essential that a wide range of service facilities be centrally located within the village core and accessible on foot to most residents [19,45].

Access to services is closely linked to mixed use and walkability. The first addresses the problems associated with developing monofunctional residential areas. Functional diversity is a key indicator of new urbanism [17,19,22] and rural design [48], integrating housing, employment, services, and recreation into mixed-use complexes. These functions should be within walking distance. Studies on compact urban development show that an acceptable walking distance for most people is around 400–500 m [49] or up to 800 m, equivalent to a 10 min walk [50]. Similar studies on dispersed rural development indicate that people only walk to shops within a 10 min distance [31]. In rural areas, ensuring walking access to all services is challenging. Therefore, sustainable development must consider bicycle or public transport access and, as a last resort, individual transport. Polish spatial planning law assumes that residential development in rural areas should be located within 3 km of primary schools to ensure access to public services [51].

Attractive and well-located public spaces are another essential feature. The presence of intentional and well-defined meeting places is crucial for the proper functioning of the local community [21,22,23,26]. However, public spaces in rural areas should retain their rural specificity, characterised by grassroots creation and a lower level of formalisation in their development [32]. They should also maintain typical rural forms and landscape values, particularly connections with open landscapes [52,53]. For effective social functioning, the central location of main public places and their close connection with service facilities are key, as is good linkage to the village centre for recreational spaces [23,32].

The protection and safeguarding of cultural and natural heritage are critical goals of sustainable development [54]. Spatial development in rural areas should ensure the protection and continuation of historical spatial arrangements, which are crucial for historical and cultural reasons and because they are often best suited to local conditions [27,28]. Continuation of tradition is also a hallmark of “new urbanism”, referred to as “traditional urbanism” in the British context [17,19,22,55]. In Poland, many researchers highlight the problem of degradation, homogenisation, and blurring of historical spatial features, leading to spatial chaos and reduced functionality [56,57]. Issues include uncontrolled development along roads (including field roads), the emergence of scattered development, transformation of solitary farmsteads into new dense clusters of single-family homes, creation of a second row of buildings in roadside layouts, surrounding traditional agricultural villages with new single-family homes that hinder farming activities, and the blurring of village boundaries due to merging with neighbouring settlements [21,24,25,29]. To address these issues, clearly defined boundaries should be maintained at all stages of development [17], with these boundaries consisting of open spaces surrounding the village [23].

The final feature of sustainable rural spatial development is the protection of open spaces. Development and infrastructure expansion should occur in a manner that preserves open landscapes, particularly compact agricultural areas and ecologically valuable areas and connections [18,23]. These actions directly align with many sustainable development goals, including efficient use of natural resources, access to green spaces, and reducing habitat degradation [54]. Additional arguments for protecting open spaces from development include inefficient use of already-committed resources, threats to groundwater, and negative impacts on the landscape’s appearance [58]. As [23] aptly stated, large landscapes surrounding villages allow them to “breathe”.

From the eight spatial features of a sustainable village listed above, we selected three for our analysis that are best suited to the purpose of this study: compactness of development, protection and continuation of historical spatial arrangements, and access to services. These indicators are highly universal, easily measurable, and comparable based on uniformly obtained data across all surveyed municipalities. They also effectively reflect the ideas of sustainable development in both social and environmental aspects.

The compactness of development is a very concrete indicator that also largely determines the protection of open spaces, the changes of which are difficult to determine unambiguously due to the lack of objectified data on the value of open spaces in individual municipalities. The compactness of development is therefore a very important indicator concerning environmental and ecological issues corresponding to objectives 11.4, 15.5, 8.4, and 11.3 of [54]. The protection and continuation of historic spatial layouts is in turn an indicator concerning the protection of cultural heritage (objective 11.4) but, by adapting traditional layouts to local conditions, is also important from an environmental point of view (objective 8.4). The last of the three selected indicators is access to services. A key indicator for social reasons, defining in a very objective way the quality of the built environment. Its value also reflects to a large extent the trends associated with other indicators that are much more difficult to quantify and compare, such as accessibility to public transport, public spaces, or walkability. This indicator therefore relates directly to target 11.1 but also indirectly to targets 11.2 and 11.7 of [54].

2. Materials and Methods

The area we chose for the study includes four rural municipalities located in eastern Poland in Lublin Province (Figure 1). According to the classification of [21], all of the municipalities lie in Zone II and thus in the zone of influence of a large city (so they are neither suburban areas of Zone I nor peripheral areas of Zone III). From this zone, located outside the functional area of the provincial city of Lublin, we selected 4 municipalities with diverse but clearly defined functions for the study [59]; we chose one that is typically agricultural (Abramów) and three municipalities in which there has been intensive development of non-agricultural functions for several decades: Puchaczów—industry (most of the residents work in mining); Uścimów—tourism (leisure at lakes and very intensive development of second homes); Garbów—services and housing (development of services along the important Lublin–Warsaw road and development of suburb-like housing in Lublin). Of course, also in the last three municipalities, the agricultural function, which is an important branch of their economy and the basis for the livelihood of many residents, still persists, but for simplicity we will abbreviate them as municipalities: industrial, tourist, and service. Each municipality includes between 11 and 15 villages. All analyses were conducted for entire municipalities and for individual villages.

The method consisted of comparing the results of spatial analyses carried out in two periods: in late 1970/80 and now. The work (both analyses and result maps) was carried out in QGIS 3.36.1-Maidenhead software. The analyses concerned three selected indicators illustrating the direction of changes in spatial arrangements. These are compactness of development; protection and continuation of historical spatial layouts; and access to services. The basis for the analyses were cartographic materials (a current topographic map at a scale of 1:10,000 and an archival topographic map at a scale of 1:10,000 drawn in 1977, 1978, 1984, and 1985 for which we use the generalised term “1970s/80s” in the text) as well as data on service facilities obtained from municipal offices, archival statistical data, and a search conducted among village heads of individual villages. A list of indicators is presented in

Table 1. List of indicators used with type of measurement and source of data (own elaboration).

Indicator	Type of Measurement	Source of Data
compactness of development	the share of compact development in the total number of residential and service buildings in a village	1:10,000 archival and actual topographic maps
The protection and continuation of historic spatial layouts	the share of residential and service development in the areas of continuation of traditional spatial arrangements	archival and actual topographic maps 1:10,000; author-designated areas of continuation of traditional spatial layouts
access to services	the proportion of residential development in a given village in isochrones 800 m and 3000 m from primary schools. Same measurement for food shops and for religious buildings	1:10,000 archival and actual topographic maps; data on archival and current service facilities from municipal offices and interviews with village heads

.

The analysis of compactness of development was carried out by examining the share of compact development in the total number of residential and service buildings in a village or municipality. A compact development was considered to be “a grouping of not less than 5 buildings, with the exception of outbuildings, between which the largest distance of adjacent buildings does not exceed 100 m”. This is the definition adopted in Polish law [60], which is at the same time consistent with scientific works where distances of 100–150 m are usually assumed [9,61]. The DBSCAN clustering tool was used to calculate compactness. The minimum cluster size (MIN_SIZE) was taken as 5 points, representing the location of residential buildings. Since our analysis was based on a point layer, we increased the maximum distance between cluster points (EPS) to 120 m. The points, classified as a cluster, were described as “compact development”, the others were labelled as “scattered development”. Clusters were calculated separately for 1970/80 and for 2024. The results were aggregated to the level of the village and municipality and presented as a percentage of compact development.

The analysis of the protection and continuation of historical spatial arrangements was carried out based on specially designated areas of continuation of traditional spatial arrangements (on maps signed as areas of continuation of traditional rural spatial arrangements). For this purpose, an analysis of archival historical and cartographic sources and an analysis of existing planning documents was carried out. On this basis, for each village, an area was designated that included the historical layout of buildings, together with gaps in these buildings, and a reserve of land for the development of buildings in this village, which would be a continuation of the historical layout and would be part of the evolution of the development layouts typical of the area. These areas were designated in an expert manner, adopting the same principles for each municipality. Then, for each period, the share of development (residential and service) that fits into the areas of continuation of traditional spatial layouts was calculated (in the same way as for the compactness of development).

Analysis of accessibility to services was carried out for three types of service facilities. The first two are grocery stores and elementary schools—so the two most basic types of commercial and public services that residents use on a daily basis. The third type is religious facilities—so in the case of this area, Catholic churches. These are not facilities used on a daily basis and are only used by a portion of the local community. However, these are the only service facilities whose number and distribution did not change during the period under review. At the same time, these are facilities located in the traditional centres of the most important localities. Thus, the analysis of their accessibility makes it possible to trace not so much changes in the distribution of service facilities as changes in the distribution of development in relation to service facilities. The analyses consisted of calculating the share of residential buildings in two zones of accessibility to particular types of service facilities. These were the 3 km zone (the maximum distance to schools in rural areas recommended by Polish law) and the 800 m zone (considered by many researchers to be the maximum walking distance to service facilities—see literature review). For this purpose, 800 m and 3000 m isochrones were generated for each service using the ORS Tools plug-in. Then, using the Select by location tool, points belonging to a given isochrone were selected and ‘YES’ information was assigned; ‘NO’ information was given for points not lying there. Then, using Processing → Processing toolbox → Aggregate, data by column, e.g., churches_800, for socio-cities and municipalities were merged and the occurrences of ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ were counted. The results were exported to Excel to calculate the number of residential developments in the socio-district or municipality. The percentage of development in a given accessibility zone was then calculated. The results of all analyses are given in summary tables for the municipalities and in summary maps for all socio-districts.

3. Results

The cartographic analyses carried out showed very large differences in the dynamics of quantitative changes regarding buildings in the four studied municipalities. Taking into account only residential and service buildings, in the agricultural municipality of Abramów, the number of buildings increased by 6% between 1970/80 and 2024. In the service and residential municipality of Garbów, this growth was much higher, at 48%. In the industrial commune of Puchaczów, the number of buildings increased by 65%, while in the tourist commune of Uścimów, the number of buildings increased by as much as 124% (with most of the buildings under construction there being second homes).

Very significant changes have also occurred in the number of service facilities. In all municipalities, the number of elementary schools has significantly decreased. With the exception of the service-oriented Garbów municipality, the number of grocery stores also declined. These changes are shown in

Table 2. Changes in residential and commercial development in the period 1970/80–2024, by municipality (own elaboration based on cartographic analyses) *.

Municipality (Function)	Number of of Buildings in 1970/80	Number of of Buildings in the Year 2024	Change Number of Buildings	Change Number of Primary Schools	Change in the Number of Grocery Stores
Puchaczów (industrial)	1383	2278	+65%	−44%	−8%
Uścimów (tourist)	1104	2478	+124%	−25%	−31%
Garbów (service)	1961	2899	+48%	−33%	+20%
Abramów (agricultural)	1291	1372	+6%	−67%	−23%

* the colouring of the table is indicative (red indicates negative changes, green positive changes) and is intended only to improve the readability of the table.

, while the spatial aspect of these changes is discussed in the following subsections.

3.1. Changes in the Compactness of Development

Analyses of the changes that have occurred in the last 40–50 years show that in all municipalities the total share of compact development is increasing. This is most pronounced in the municipalities of Garbów and Puchaczów, but there is no clear relationship with function but rather with the share of dispersed development in the 1970s. Villages that were dispersed increased compactness. And villages that were compact slightly increased dispersion. That is, overall, new development is mainly compact development and to a much lesser extent dispersed development. Paradoxically, therefore, the most favourable changes (increase in compactness of buildings) occurred in villages that had the worst initial state. Negative changes, on the other hand, affected villages that in 1970/80 had only compact buildings. The directions of these changes are similar in all municipalities, and their intensity (shown in

Table 3. Changes in the share of compact development, in the period 1970/80–2024, by municipality (own elaboration based on cartographic analyses).

Municipality (Function)	Share of Compact Development in 1970/80	Share of Compact Development in 2024	Change
Puchaczów (industrial)	74%	88%	+14%
Uścimów (tourist)	88%	94%	+6%
Garbów (service)	61%	78%	+17%
Abramów (agricultural)	74%	78%	+4%

and Figure 2) depends mainly on the multiplicity of construction traffic and the aforementioned initial condition.

In agricultural villages, dispersed development is almost not being built; instead, quite a lot of development is disappearing—mostly dispersed—hence, the share of compact development is increasing. The increase in dispersion occurs only where a lot of houses in compact developments have disappeared. In general, new houses are being built mainly in large compact housing complexes.

In service villages, a lot of scattered villages have become dense to compact. It should be noted that the service–residential municipality already had a relatively large share of dispersed development in 1970/80. A lot of new areas of compact development are also being created in the vicinity of existing villages—especially along roads but also in compact settlements with an urban character. In the industrial villages it is similar—there is a densification of dispersed and compact villages, and completely new areas of compact development are being created. But there is also little new dispersed development. In the case of villages in the immediate vicinity of coal mines, there has been the disappearance of a large part of the development, so that the village has transformed from compact to dispersed.

In recreational villages, mainly new areas of compact development and new scattered development are being created. In addition, the same phenomena as in service and industrial municipalities are taking place, that is, the densification of dispersed villages—but to a lesser extent. In general, compact villages dominated in the tourist municipality so the increase in compactness had less intensity here.

Taking into account the sustainability of spatial development, however, it is worth emphasising that the positive direction of change alone (and therefore the increase in the share of compact development) does not necessarily mean an improvement in the quality of space. It is also worth analysing the scale of these changes, which is well illustrated in Figure 3. It shows a clear increase in the amount of compact development while the share of dispersed development has decreased. From the point of view of spatial order and environmental load, however, the changes that have occurred here can hardly be regarded as positive. Therefore, the total assessment of the degree of sustainability must be based on a number of factors.

3.2. Preservation of Traditional Rural Spatial Arrangements

The second of the analysed indicators of sustainable spatial development of villages is the share of development that fits into traditional rural spatial arrangements. Again, the intensity of change (shown in

Table 4. Changes in the share of development embedded in traditional rural spatial layouts, in the period 1970/80–2024, by municipality (own elaboration based on cartographic analyses).

Municipality (Function)	Share of Development in Traditional Layouts 1970/80	Share of Development in Traditional Systems in 2024	Change
Puchaczów (industrial)	84%	71%	−13%
Uścimów (tourist)	87%	44%	−43%
Garbów (service)	76%	71%	−5%
Abramów (agricultural)	78%	79%	+1%

) is highly dependent on the volume of construction traffic. What are important, however, are the directions of these changes, and these very clearly show a positive trend in the agricultural municipality and negative trends in municipalities where non-agricultural functions are developing. The tourist municipality definitely stands out here, as within its borders, all the villages have intensive development of second homes (Figure 4). It is clear that tourist settlements completely ignore local tradition when it comes to spatial layouts. A similar situation can be seen in some villages of the industrial municipality. These are villages located around coal mines (the municipality’s main industrial plant), which have become the site of chaotic development of housing estates for miners. In the case of both municipalities, as well as some villages of the service municipality of Garbów, the form is completely incompatible with existing village layouts and develops in a haphazard and chaotic manner mainly on arable land and with reference to their property divisions (typical for fields—not for rural development). This trend is clearly visible in Figure 3, included in the previous section.

Positive changes, i.e., situations in which the share of development within traditional spatial layouts is increasing, mainly concern agricultural and peripheral villages. At the same time, these are villages in which there is little construction traffic and so it is easier to cheaply acquire land for building a house within the village, compared to villages with high construction pressure. Besides, in peripheral villages there are also relatively more cases in which houses located outside the traditional village disappear.

It is worth noting that in the vast majority of villages, the areas of continuation of traditional village layouts include sufficient space to accommodate new development. The construction of new houses outside the traditional village layout is therefore not due to a lack of space within the layout. Rather, it is the aftermath of a lack of municipal transition policies and a weak planning system in which general provisions on the need to continue tradition are not translated into specific detailed provisions. Thus, it can be seen here that in the absence of clear guidelines and planning provisions, new development tends to create compact layouts (to densify development) but does not tend to create traditional and rational spatial layouts.

3.3. Availability of Services

In our study, we analysed changes from 1970/80 to 2024 in the accessibility of three types of service facilities: grocery stores (basic commercial service), schools (basic public service), and churches (the only service facilities whose number and location have not changed). We examined accessibility by determining the share of residential development in a zone up to 800 m from a service facility (convenient pedestrian accessibility) and up to 3 km from a service facility (the recommended, among other things, maximum distance from services in rural areas by Polish law). To show the overall trend, we also calculated average values for all three services combined. All results are given by municipality and individual village (Figure 5,

Table 5. Changes in accessibility to the three types of services studied, over the period 1970/80–2024, by municipality and socio-district (own elaboration on the basis of analyses of service data and cartographic material) *.

Municipality/ Village	Changes in the Share of Development (in %) in the Range of Service Facilities:
	Grocery Stores		Elementary School		Churches		Average Value for 3 Types of Services
	800 m	3 km	800 m	3 km	800 m	3 km	800 m	3 km
ABRAMÓW	−14	−10	−31	−30	0	−1	−15	−14
Abramów	−1	0	−3	0	−4	0	−3	0
Ciotcza	0	−2	−41	−99	0	0	−14	−34
Dębiny	−42	−49	−42	−67	0	0	−28	−39
Glinnik	−18	0	−57	−3	0	0	−25	−1
Izabelmont	3	2	0	−16	0	3	1	−4
Marcinów	17	0	−1	0	4	0	7	0
Michałówka	−70	−97	−77	−99	0	0	−49	−65
Sosnówka	−94	0	−94	−34	0	0	−63	−11
Wielkie	−9	0	−5	0	−5	−3	−6	−1
Wielkolas	0	−3	−1	−6	0	2	0	−2
Wolica	11	0	−61	−53	0	0	−17	−18
GARBÓW	3	−2	−6	−8	−1	1	−1	−3
Bogucin	24	6	−2	−6	0	−1	7	0
Borków	−89	−70	−1	0	−1	0	−30	−23
Garbów	11	2	−2	−2	−6	2	1	1
Gutanów	1	−2	−26	−97	6	1	−6	−33
Janów	−93	−59	0	0	8	0	−28	−20
Karolin	1	0	−96	0	0	1	−32	0
Leśce	0	0	4	0	0	−4	1	−1
Meszno	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Piotrowice Duże	4	−1	−37	−24	−8	0	−14	−8
Piotrowice Kol.	0	0	9	8	0	6	3	5
Przybysławice	−22	3	0	3	0	5	−7	4
Wola Przybysł.	19	0	−1	−1	−1	−1	6	−1
Zagrody Przybysł.	3	5	7	4	−6	4	1	4
PUCHACZÓW	−9	−4	−17	−9	−3	3	−10	−3
Albertów	6	0	8	7	0	0	5	2
Bogdanka	−41	−6	−39	−54	0	14	−27	−15
Brzeziny	−44	0	1	0	0	2	−14	1
Ciechanki	−10	0	−50	−38	0	−7	−20	−15
Jasieniec	0	−28	0	−3	0	0	0	−10
Nadrybie Dwór	−4	2	28	32	−5	3	6	12
Nadrybie Ukaz.	0	0	−49	3	0	−1	−16	1
Nadrybie Wieś	−10	−13	16	−15	0	−10	2	−13
Ostrówek	1	0	−2	0	0	0	0	0
Puchaczów	4	1	0	−1	−2	7	1	2
Stara Wieś	2	0	−15	0	−13	0	−9	0
Szpica	−6	0	0	−4	0	0	−2	−1
Turowola	−3	0	−47	−12	0	−6	−17	−6
Wesołówka	−46	−62	−42	−84	0	0	−29	−49
Zawadów	−17	0	−1	−1	0	−3	−6	−1
UŚCIMÓW	−24	−13	−7	−10	−1	−15	−11	−13
Drozdówka	−73	−77	−70	−88	0	1	−48	−55
Głębokie	−84	−10	0	−4	0	−8	−28	−7
Jedlanka Nowa	−6	0	5	0	0	0	0	0
Jedlanka Stara	−61	−56	−2	−14	0	−1	−21	−24
Jedlanka PGR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Krasne	−23	5	−6	4	0	5	−10	5
Maśluchy	1	0	1	−4	0	−5	1	−3
Ochoża PGR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Orzechów Kol.	0	−19	0	−19	0	0	0	−13
Rudka Starośc.	−99	−6	0	−5	0	0	−33	−4
Uścimów Nowy	−15	−7	0	−3	0	−1	−5	−4
Uścimów Stary	35	2	0	2	1	2	12	2

* the colouring of the table is indicative (red indicates negative changes, green positive changes) and is intended only to improve the readability of the table.

).

In general, taking all types of services together, access to them has deteriorated significantly over the past 40–50 years. This applies to all municipalities and all types of services. The decline in accessibility applies more to the range up to 800 m, i.e., the pedestrian access zone (Figure 5). But it is only slightly better for the 3 km range. As for individual municipalities, the following stand out decidedly on the negative side: the municipality of Abramów (agricultural), where accessibility to schools has worsened drastically in the first place, and the municipality of Uścimów (tourist), where accessibility to stores has declined the most. The unfavourable situation is in the industrial municipality of Puchaczów where access to all services has deteriorated—especially in the zone up to 800 m. On the other hand, the smallest changes have occurred in the service-oriented Garbów municipality—although here, too, the changes are overwhelmingly unfavourable.

Analysing individual villages, it is clear that the availability of services has deteriorated greatly in small villages—most often those located peripherally. This is related to the liquidation of a school or store in these villages. In large and centrally located villages, there has been little or no improvement in the availability of services. These trends are very similar in all municipalities and their intensity depends on the number of services disappearing or being created (Figure 5).

In order to show the changes in the availability of services due solely to the spatial development of rural development, we analysed separately those villages where the number and location of services did not change. In this case, we found that in most cases the share of development within walking distance (up to 800 m) decreased, while the share of development within 3 km remained at a similar level or even increased. This shows that in all municipalities there is a spillover of development away from the village centre—which worsens the conditions for pedestrian accessibility to basic services.

In order to show the changes in the availability of services due solely to the spatial development of rural development, we analysed separately those villages where the number and location of services did not change. In this case, we found that in most cases the share of development within walking distance (up to 800 m) decreased, while the share of development within 3 km remained at a similar level or even increased. This shows that in all municipalities there is a spillover of development away from the village centre—which worsens the conditions for pedestrian accessibility to basic services.

The most basic commercial service facility in rural areas is grocery stores. At the same time, this is the type of service that almost all residents use on a daily basis. We therefore considered that for quality of life, it is the availability of grocery stores that is the key feature.

To begin with, we analysed changes in the share of residential development in the zone up to 800 m from a store—a distance defined as a convenient walking distance. In 1970/80 in the surveyed municipalities, about half of the residential buildings were located within this range (the least in the Garbów municipality, 37%; the most in the Uścimów municipality, 62%). Since then, this share has decreased significantly (in the municipality of Uścimów by as much as 24%) and only in the tertiary municipality of Garbów has it increased by 3%. In all municipalities, the reason for these changes is mainly the decline of stores (or the emergence of new ones) but also the intensive development of buildings mainly outside the compact, central village area. The situation of individual villages within the surveyed municipalities is very complex (see Table 5). The greatest decrease in accessibility is in villages where stores have been closed. There are two to four such villages in each municipality (the most in the municipality of Uścimów, the least in Garbów). In general, the negative changes mainly affect small and peripherally located villages. However, there are also cases where stores were eliminated in centrally located villages—probably due to close proximity to a large communal village rich in service facilities. At the same time, there are two to four villages in each municipality where the situation has improved, and these are mainly central villages (the seat of the municipality) or other important and centrally located villages. Most often in these villages, the number of stores has increased (to two or even four). However, the most interesting situation is in the villages where the number of stores has not changed—well, as far as the pedestrian accessibility zone (800 m) is concerned; either there have been no significant changes there or the situation has worsened. These minor changes are due to more intensive development of buildings outside the 800 m zone. The unfavourable changes, on the other hand, relate to the situation where the one store has changed location. So, it turns out that the change of location in most cases was unfavourable in terms of accessibility to the store.

In the second place, we analysed changes in the share of residential development in the zone up to 3 km from stores, i.e., the distance defined (among other things, by Polish law) as the maximum permissible distance from service facilities in rural areas. In 1970/80, in all municipalities, almost all residential buildings were located within a range of up to 3 km from a store (Abramów municipality 99% of development). Outside this range were only isolated buildings located peripherally or small fragments of scattered villages (they accounted for the most in the municipality of Uścimów—5% of development). Over the past 40–50 years, some stores in smaller villages have been closed, which has resulted in the fact that there are currently entire villages or large sections of them located outside the 3 km range from a store in each municipality. They range from 5% of development in the Garbów and Puchaczów municipalities to 18% in the Uścimów municipality. Thus, the largest decreases in accessibility occurred in the tourist and agricultural municipalities. The spatial distribution of changes in individual villages is similar to that for the 800 m zone. Significant changes occur in villages where stores have been liquidated or relocated (decrease in accessibility) or new stores have been established (increase in accessibility). In other villages, the situation usually remains unchanged.

Among public services, one of the key facilities is elementary schools. This is a type of service that, although used only by residents of a certain age, is daily and compulsory. Access to schools is therefore the second very important factor determining the quality of rural space. In the analysed municipalities, the share of development, both in the zone up to 800 m and up to 3 km, has decreased significantly. In 1970/80, pedestrian accessibility to school (zone up to 800 m) was characterised by 21% (Uścimów municipality) to 48% (Abramów municipality) of residential development. Currently, it is only from 14% (Uścimów municipality) to 29% (Puchaczów municipality). Thus, the declines are very significant, ranging from −31% in the agricultural municipality of Abramów to −6% in the tertiary municipality of Garbów. Trends are similar for the share of development in the zone up to 3 km. In 1970/80, in all municipalities it exceeded 90% (most in the municipality of Abramów, 99%) while now it is only from 69% in the municipality of Abramów to 85% in the municipality of Garbów. Again, therefore, the greatest decline is in the agricultural municipality, but it is also significant in the other municipalities.

Considering the situation in individual villages—in the zone up to 800 m, one can see primarily a very large deterioration in villages where schools have been closed (and there are such villages, from six in the municipality of Abramów to one in the municipality of Uścimów). However, one can also see a deterioration of the situation in many other villages—which is due to the development of new residential buildings mainly outside the village centres, where schools are usually located (see the example of Puchaczów commune—Figure 6). For the zone up to 3 km, the spatial distribution of changes is similar to that of the 800 m zone. Here, too, it is mainly due to the closure of schools. The only difference is that in villages where schools have not closed, the situation has usually improved slightly or has not changed significantly.

Significant improvements in pedestrian accessibility to schools (in both zones) affect a small number of villages, and to the greatest extent those where the school has changed location (e.g., Nadrybie village—Figure 6 northern part). This is a very interesting phenomenon because, as mentioned earlier, in the case of stores, the change of their location over the last 40–50 years has usually resulted in a deterioration of the accessibility of these stores. Thus, in the case of schools, the opposite is true. This is probably due to the fact that public services such as schools are located top-down, according to the decisions of planners. It was similar with stores in the system of centrally controlled socialist economy that prevailed in Poland in the 1970s/80s. Today, in a free market system, but at the same time with a limited role of spatial planning, location decisions on rural stores are usually based on the place of residence of the investor. Thus, these are not optimal locations from the point of view of the majority of residents.

The last type of service facilities analysed were churches. These are facilities of a very specific nature (not public and not commercial). They are used only by some residents (according to [62], in the surveyed municipalities, 20–30% of all residents attend Sunday mass), but they are the only service facilities whose number and location remain unchanged throughout the analysed period. In addition, churches are usually historic buildings built many years ago, in the historical centres of the most important villages. Thus, the results of the analyses are not disturbed by changes in the number and location of service facilities (as was the case with stores and schools), and illustrate only changes in the spatial layout of development in relation to a service facility from the historic centre of the village. Due to the boundaries of the ecclesiastical administrative units, which do not coincide with the boundaries of the municipalities, access to facilities located outside the boundaries of the four surveyed municipalities was also included in the analyses.

In general, throughout the study area, a fairly small proportion of development was within convenient walking distance to the church in 1970/80. This was from 4% in the municipality of Uścimów to 19% in the municipality of Garbów. This situation has changed slightly—however, except for the agricultural commune of Abramów, there has been a decrease in accessibility everywhere. The situation is slightly different for the zone up to 3 km from the church. Formerly, this zone contained from 40% (Uścimów commune) to 84% (Garbów commune) of developments. Over the past few years, there has been a very large decrease here in the tourist commune of Uścimów (−15%), a slight decrease in the agricultural commune of Abramów (−1%), and small increases in the service commune of Garbów (+1%) and the industrial commune of Puchaczów (+3%). This clearly shows the nature of these municipalities, where the leading agricultural and especially tourist function tends to favour peripheral development, far away from services, while the industrial and service municipalities tend to be dominated by development closer to the main service centres (although not in the pedestrian accessibility zone). This confirms the results described earlier for stores and schools, which show that new development is generally built outside the zone of pedestrian access to services—and thus outside the compact centre of the village.

4. Discussion

The research carried out concerned villages that are located in close proximity to the city but are not typical suburban villages. Thus, we studied typical rural areas, which, however, develop with different intensity and based on different directions of development (agricultural, service, industrial, and tourist functions). Nevertheless, the studied indicators of spatial development had a similar direction in all municipalities although different intensities resulting primarily from the intensity of development and the baseline condition. Our analyses confirmed the occurrence of most of the negative spatial phenomena described for modern rural areas, especially in Poland. These include the obliteration of historical spatial layouts; monofunctional development; deterioration of walkability; disappearance of the village centre and deterioration of the legibility of spatial layouts; reduced availability of rural services; uncontrolled development along roads; emergence of second lanes of development in roadside layouts; enclosure of a traditional agricultural village with new single-family housing; and blurring of village boundaries [17,19,21,22,23,24,25,29,56,57]. However, there is one feature often mentioned by various researchers that was not confirmed in our study. This is the dispersion of development, which is a major problem in many rural areas. The analyses conducted here showed that in all the municipalities we studied, the share of compact development is increasing. It turns out that new residential development generally tends to over-densify existing dispersed development patterns. As a result, the share of compact development is increasing—although mainly where we previously had dispersed development. New dispersed development, on the other hand, is emerging in those villages where previously we had only compact development. Generalising, we can say that we are not dealing here with a dispersion of development, but with sprawl and its decentralisation, i.e., with the emergence of many suburban-type settlements and roadside developments, outside the compact, traditional village systems and away from the village centre. Development in these settlements tends to be compact—while the settlements themselves are being built in a highly dispersed and chaotic manner. This phenomenon has the effect of reducing accessibility to services—especially pedestrian accessibility. Thus, it can be said that although the study did not concern typical suburban villages—we are dealing here with negative phenomena similar to those described for suburban bedroom zones [17,19,20,24].

The described phenomena, as already mentioned, occur in all the analysed municipalities, although with varying intensity. The greatest number of unfavourable phenomena, or their greatest intensity, was recorded in the tourist municipality of Uścimów. However, this may be largely due to the fact that both permanent housing and second homes were considered here, the distribution of which is quite specific and usually concentrated in peripheral areas. Access to services is less important in this case—the availability of tourist attractions is key. In contrast, the most favourable indicators were recorded in the service-oriented Garbów municipality, which is also the municipality with the greatest diversity of functions. Thus, one might be tempted to conclude at this point that it is the multifunctional municipality that is developing more sustainably than the decidedly more monofunctional municipalities with agricultural, tourist, and industrial functions. However, here, too, most indicators have deteriorated in the last 40–50 years, and only the compactness of development has clearly improved, which, as already mentioned, is largely due to the large previous dispersion of development in this municipality. The other two municipalities, i.e., agricultural (Abramów) and industrial (Puchaczów), differ in the value of individual indicators, but their averaged assessment is negative and falls quite similarly. This is a very important aspect of the results obtained, because it shows that the described negative phenomena (e.g., a significant decrease in the availability of services) occur both in the poor agricultural municipality, where there has been very little development of housing, and in the richest industrial municipality in the whole region, where there is very intensive development of housing (in the analysed period an increase of 65%). An example is the share of development with access to schools of less than 3 km (which is the distance recommended by Polish law). In the municipality of Abramów, this share has fallen dramatically over the period under review and is now only 69%, but in the municipality of Puchaczów it has also fallen significantly and is 81%. It would seem that these indicators should be much more favourable in the municipality of Puchaczów, as it has both the financial resources to maintain schools and huge needs for the development of buildings and the influx of new residents. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and the quality of space in the richest municipality in the region continues to deteriorate. It seems that this may be due to both the weakness of the Polish spatial planning system and the lack of a vision for spatial development and awareness of local governments and residents regarding the consequences of chaotic spatial development.

Given these conclusions, the question arises as to which of the four scenarios of village development delineated by [7] the surveyed villages fall into. Due to sprawl and deteriorating access to services, it is not a mixed-function village moving, as [7] writes, toward urbanity. It is certainly not a consuming idyll (rural idyll)—even in a typically touristic municipality—either, since the spatial development of the surveyed villages has little in common with the traditional rural landscape. For the same reasons, it is also difficult to assign the surveyed villages to the village of radical renewal (radical visions), the important aspects of which are community and locality, i.e., features that are not favoured by the disappearance of services, the blurring of village centres and their boundaries, or the spillover of development. And, finally, the super-productivist village—in our area could be attributed only to individual farms or fragments of the surveyed villages. This condition confirms the opinion of [52] regarding the lack of a contemporary vision of spatial development of villages in Poland. In the absence of a concrete vision and determination to implement it, rural space is developed in a disorderly manner, with a selective application of patterns typical of suburban monofunctional bedrooms.

Of course, the results presented here apply only to the selected four municipalities, which do not represent the entire diversity of rural areas, even on the scale of this part of Poland. It should be noted that there are also other important factors (e.g., economic and political) that may have influenced the results achieved. In future, however, it would be worthwhile to carry out these analyses on a larger number of municipalities, paying additional attention to municipalities and villages in which various functions develop simultaneously—i.e., multifunctional municipalities. It would certainly also be valuable to apply the same method to suburban and peripherally located villages (outside the sphere of influence of large cities). For practical reasons, however, it would be advisable to include in the comparisons municipalities in which the indicators described here have improved significantly. Proper interpretation of such results could provide a basis for drawing practical conclusions, which should be used to create a rational, contemporary spatial model of a multifunctional village.

5. Conclusions

The changes in spatial arrangements that have taken place in the last 40–50 years in the surveyed rural areas are mainly of a negative nature. Everywhere, there is a significant deterioration in the availability of services and spatial development that runs counter to traditional, historical spatial arrangements. There is a spillover of development in the form of discontinuous, chaotic clusters of buildings, often in the nature of suburbs, and thus the disappearance of village centres, the deterioration of walkability, and the blurring of village boundaries. The only positive change is an increase in the compactness of development—mainly in villages that previously had a dispersed character. Generalising the results of all the analyses, it is possible to indicate a slight favourable advantage of service villages and the most unfavourable results obtained for tourist villages. However, we believe that the leading function of a village hardly determines the sustainability of spatial development of different rural areas. The differences we showed were mainly due to the initial situation and the intensity of development of individual municipalities. Where indicators were least favourable in 1970/80—there was a slight improvement; where they were favourable—they worsened. At the same time, the greatest intensity of negative changes occurred where development is most intensive. As a result, many indicators were co-favourable in the agricultural municipality—mainly due to the low intensity of development in these villages. In contrast, many unfavourable phenomena occurred in industrial and tourist villages—developing most intensively.

According to [8], “multifunctional development of rural areas should ensure a balance between the productive, social and ecological spheres, i.e., implement the principles of sustainable development”. In light of our results, multifunctional development does not meet these requirements. This is because, paradoxically, where economic development is most favourable, it is accompanied by the greatest investment pressure. In the absence of a vision for spatial development and the weakness of the spatial planning system, this pressure causes the greatest intensity of negative phenomena. As a result, economic development does not go hand in hand with social and environmental development—and even worsens the indicators representing these two aspects of sustainable development. Thus, the problems with rational spatial development in the municipality are not due to a lack of financial resources, but rather to a lack of sufficient attention to issues of planning and implementation of spatial policy.

Studying the impact of individual functions on the achievement of the goals of [54], it can be concluded that in all cases we have a very unfavourable situation when it comes to the achievement of social goals related to the availability of services (goal 11.1) and indirectly also public spaces or public transportation (i.e., goals 11.2 and 11.7). The best performing municipality in this regard is the service municipality (where the decline in service availability is the lowest or in some cases has not changed). Also unfavourable are indicators relating to cultural heritage and therefore the preservation of traditional rural spatial arrangements (objective 11.4). In this case, positive changes have occurred only in the agricultural municipality. In villages where non-agricultural functions are developing, there has been a definite deterioration in this indicator (especially in tourist villages). As for environmental goals, the indicator of compactness of development analysed here (corresponding in part to goals 11.4, 15.5, 8.4, and 11.3) has generally improved in all functional types of villages (most in the service municipality). However, it should be noted that the improvement in compactness occurred mainly in scattered villages, so we can speak here of a halt to negative trends rather than a significant improvement. Especially since, in addition to the problem of dispersed development described and examined here, the negative impact is also caused by the process of sprawl of compact development noted in the same municipalities, which was not included in our study. Comparing the changes in the land use of villages with different functions did not allow us to clearly identify the function that is most conducive to sustainable spatial development. The slightly more favourable indicators that the service and agricultural municipality together obtained, and above all the weaker results of the tourist municipality and the richest industrial municipality, show that balanced development can be achieved regardless of the direction of development. However, the spatial policy of individual municipalities and rational spatial planning are very important. Given the “natural” tendency to densify development found in our study, it is very important that municipalities take advantage of this preference and to a greater extent create new development in the immediate vicinity of the traditional compact part of the village—especially near the village centre. This will simultaneously densify development, encourage the emergence of services, improve their accessibility and improve walkability, and create a village with clear boundaries surrounded by open spaces, which is particularly important for the environment and the functioning of agriculture.