Urbanization is a complex process undergoing in towns and also involving their surrounding areas. It concerns various aspects of economic and social life as well as town planning issues. Modern conversions of urban space have changed the relations between cities and their immediate surroundings. Economic development and globalization process made large cities enter a new phase of urbanization i.e. the metropolisation phase. In Poland, only several years after it has joined the world economy circulation, the processes of mertopolisation and the increase of metropolitan functions can also be perceived. Apart from Warsaw only 3–5 Polish cities have the chances of different degree for faster metropolitan development.

Over the last decade Poland has transformed into a market-oriented economy based on private ownership. The local land market has been undergoing continuous change since the beginning of 1990s, to finally reach stabilization. The emergence of the land market was one the reasons for the development of the real estate trading system in Poland, which is still subject to ongoing transformations induced by a variety of factors. One of the them is the constantly increasing value of real estates. When expressed in terms of money and compared to the value of other things and objects, this value remains high. It means that the increase in the value of a property, as a valuable thing, affects the increase in the significance of the thing itself. Such a situation is observed in the real estate sector in Poland. This sector is still developing, and today its growth is stimulated by high rates of return on capital invested in the land market. The term „real estate sector” pertains to both private and public property, the latter comprising real estate resources. In Poland the public sector is dominated by two types of resources, namely state-owned and communal, accompanied by real estate resourced managed by local governments at the district (poviat) and province (voivodship) level. Their importance for national economy results from the role played by real estates in the investment processes realized on the land market, as well as in all processes related to social and economic development. The space management process, governed by market principles, requires efficient use of all factors involved. Therefore, the establishment of a market-oriented economy in Poland was followed by adopting certain regulations and guidelines regarding real estate management and planning, so as to ensure that these processes are rational and effective, and that they bring the expected benefits. The Land Management Act of 1997 (Journal of Laws of 2004, No. 261, item 2603 with later amendments) introduced a set of uniform principles to be applied in respect of the use and management of public property resources. The use and management of private property resources is not regulated by any specific provisions. However, they should be governed by similar economic and social rules. The present paper constitutes the first part of a work consisting of two articles published in two consecutive issues of „Acta Scientiarium Polonorum. Administratio Locorum”. The purpose of this work was to determine the main tasks to be realized within the framework of the property resources management process. These tasks are to be performed in the systemic context, i.e. based on the concept of systemic management of communal real estates, proposed by Wiśniewski et al. [2006] and by Renigier & Wiśniewski [2006].

The structure of the employed according to the sectors of economy, property and sex in rural and town-rural communes of Lower Silesia Voivodship in the 1988, 1996, 2002 and 2005 is characterised in the study. The analysis showed a decline in the employment in sector I (agriculture) and sector II (industry) and an increased employment in sector III (services). The decreasing number of persons employed in agriculture confirms the theory on the decline of the importance of agriculture occurring with the economic development of a given region. The number of persons employed in sector II (industry, civil engineering) was also decreasing in the analysed years. Moreover, the study showed a decline of the role of industry in the 1996 and 2002 in relation to the 1988, which results from the transition from the system of planned economy to free market system.

This paper presents a new method of calculation of the price – size relationship for undeveloped land. This method consists in elimination of the influence of other attributes on the unit price of a parcel by special averaging technique. To illustrate the method, the percentage price – size relationship was calculated for the database consisting of 2422 sale transactions. Two types of the price – size relationship were considered: curved and linear. The results obtained in the present work were compared with results available in the literature, obtained using different method, based on dozens of selected transactions. It turned out that the percentage corrections in the price – size relationship are similar.