Changes for the better can be seen throughout the metropolis. Perhaps the largest year-round children's amusement park in Poland, Mandoria, has sprung up in Rzgów. Everywhere you look, investments and renovations are going on. To better understand what is happening in the smaller cities of the metropolis, I went to Pabianice. Tempted on the one hand by the gloomy atmosphere of Lukasz Barys' book "The Bones You Carry in Your Pocket" (Polityka's Passport 2021), on the other hand I was attracted by the full of positive energy and optimism attitude of the Pabianice magistrate. Previously, Pabianice was something of an afterthought to me, loosely associated with big-plate apartment blocks and decaying industry. And rightly so, because Pabianice - like Lodz - had to somehow get through more than twenty difficult years after the fall of communism. But they got through.
And today you can go to such a place as Levitin. I don't think I've seen such a cool, so refined and at the same time extensive, recreational public space before. There is fun, water, grass, plenty of installations for sports, a beach, tracks for boards, bicycles, a rope park - to live not to die, really great. There is also the Woolen Factory in Pabianice (proj.: Pracownia Projektowa Architektury - Bogdan Niepsuj). A super-modern beautiful hotel with a spa and all the infrastructure at the level of four stars. There is a golf course, a contemporary art gallery, a concert hall is being built. The whole center - just like in greater Lodz - is ditched and under reconstruction. When all this is finished, the streetcar to Lodz, which is probably one of the longest streetcar lines in the world, will start up again, especially if it goes further, all the way to Zgierz. Blocks of large slab buildings are here too, of course, but some so neat. Besides, they have recently come back into fashion, no longer synonymous with residential finitude. And Pabianice's Bugaj and Piaski housing estates look pretty good.
Lodz has the most experience in creating woonerfs in Poland
© City Hall of Lodz
