It’s not the “Golden Train” or a puma on the loose in Poland that’s kicking off this year’s “silly season.” The monster of suburbanization is back.
This summer, after a brief hiatus, the media are once again focusing on urban sprawl, because they’ve realized that—despite past warnings—cities continue to sprawl and show no signs of stopping, even though we’re all supposedly aware of the consequences. We read that Warsaw—but not only Warsaw—is suffocating in increasingly dense traffic jams. These jams are caused by cars commuting from the suburbs, where houses have long since replaced the floodplains. Now these are floodplains of houses. The media is full of lamentations that life on these floodplains is strange, that leaving them is strange, and that returning to them is strange. A picture emerges of neither city nor countryside, but rather something out of a dream that, in a seemingly logical order, mixes up places and things. Suburbia appears as an ocean of strangeness, a software program replicating an error ad infinitum; it’s only a matter of time before Polish suburbs take over the galaxy.
When you read about the sprawl of cities, you also get the impression that it’s like climate change. It didn’t just spread on its own—decision-makers allowed it, investors built, and architects designed—but now there’s nothing anyone can do about it. All that’s left is to adapt—that is, to diminish the unique awesomeness of the suburbs by building sidewalks, organizing efficient public transportation, and planting trees on undeveloped plots.
As you can see, the eternal malcontents are incapable of loving Polish suburbs for what they are, even though there’s plenty to love about them. First, out of a sense of duty: they’re ours and we built them (and that’s not the last we’ll have to say about it). Second, because we’ve made them our home, and surely we couldn’t have been wrong. Third, as mentioned above, they are dream-like neighborhoods. Fourth, they’re full of the kind of innovation our economy so desperately craves. Such as “lying tenement buildings” or “horizontal blocks,” crudely referred to as “field-like housing estates.” A road with a single entrance serving several dozen homes in the estate is, after all, the equivalent of a stairwell—only without its drawbacks. No elevator is needed, the stairs aren’t tiring, and you can drive right up to your door. It’s fair, because everyone lives on the same floor and has the same views—of the same houses. No one makes noise above our heads, and we don’t stomp on anyone’s head.
The new suburbs also eliminate the problem of landscape planning for us, because in an area stamped with houses, the landscape is simply no longer visible. Sure, here and there are still some fields and hills, but local authorities have designated them for new housing developments. A wonderful opportunity for those numerous architects who, were it not for the designs of yet more haciendas and modern barns, would have nothing to post on architectural pornography websites. Soon there will be no more jarring contrast between efficiently developed areas and wasted, empty spaces. Even the developers of vacation resorts on the Baltic Sea are ensuring this psychologically pleasant lack of dissonance. An architect friend of mine bombarded me with photos of rows of cottages arranged just as densely and in the same orderly fashion as the vast housing estates. “Polish resorts—probably the perfect topic for summer columns,” he recommended. I recommend them, too: you drive those five hundred kilometers and it feels just like home, only by the sea. No stress that something might take you by surprise.
Polish suburbs are also a remedy for the horror of “15-minute cities ,” where—as the prophets of hidden truths predict—the architects of the new world order want to lock us up, just like in ghettos. Here we have a three- or even four-hour city, because that’s how long some people spend in their cars. Luxurious and on-trend. Zuzanna Skalska, a distinguished researcher and trendsetter, recently posted on Facebook: “Today’s luxury isn’t an expensive car, a designer handbag, or a helicopter on the roof... Today’s luxury is a collection of experiences that have left an impression on us and shaped our way of thinking.” What matters, then, is not the car itself, but the experience of spending time in it (and these experiences are no small matter), made possible precisely by the suburbs. After all, you have to make your way from there not only to work, but also to distant stores, gyms, restaurants, schools, and perhaps even cultural venues. To everything far away that isn’t found in the suburbs but is present in city centers, which are turning into themed amusement parks.
So people come to the city centers to catch a glimpse of the locals still living here and there, and for the inspiring experience of eating a cutlet at a restaurant, the unusual experience of walking on the sidewalk, or the feeling that they’re still city dwellers, even though, living in the suburbs, one belongs to a new class—the “hybrids.” The “mixed class,” because one is neither an urban nor a rural hybrid. One looks like a city dweller, speaks like a city dweller, has bourgeois pretensions and habits, but lives outside the city without experiencing the unpleasant events and obligations of city life. Walking down the street every day, you don’t happen to run into interesting people or strike up casual conversations with them about impractical things—conversations that, admittedly, once gave rise to many good ideas, friendships, or events, but they emerged chaotically and without a rational algorithm that tells us today whom to know and with whom to talk. Nor is it necessary—and in fact, due to one’s suburban residency, it’s impossible—to waste time participating in city associations, clubs, or neighborhood councils. Another plus: local governments can, as the name implies, govern themselves and develop urban amusement parks without bothering about the citizens’ opinions. They’ve been doing this very eagerly lately.
Finally—what a relief— people from the suburbs won’t take to the streets to protest against the authorities, because, first of all, there are no streets where they live, and second, before they even get to where the streets are, they’ll have the inspiring experience of being stuck in a massive traffic jam. Besides, why protest? GDP is growing, wealth is multiplying, and the cult of hard work is paying off. More than three post-transition decades have instilled in Poles a secular—nomen omen—Protestantism, with a belief in working up a sweat and a contempt for freeloaders. Take, for example, artists, to whom the state is supposed to chip in a little something to supplement their meager pensions (architects are included, too). And what about us? Why not us? — ask representatives of the middle class. They’re right, in a way. After all, surviving in the Polish suburbs is an art in itself.
Jakub Głaz
more: A&B 7-8/2026 – Single-Family Homes,
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