Typology and Development of Local Administrative Units: Spatial Discriminant Analysis

Purpose: The aim is the evaluation of the consistency of typology of local administrative units (LAU) with their level of socio-economic development. The authors identified also the impact of the incorporation of spatial relations on the stability of such consistency. Design/Methodology/Approach: The spatial linear discriminant analysis with various weights matrices has been applied. Introducing the spatial relationship between observations in different locations to the classical classification method allows to identify non-measurable spatial factors differentiating different locations as well as the directions of their development. Findings: The results confirmed a high discrepancy between the administrative type and the level of development of Polish communes in 2006-2018. The higher compliance of official typology of examined units with their actual level of development was found when spatial relations were incorporated. The obtained results indicated the marginalisation of medium-sized cities, and underdevelopment of urban-rural communes. The following predictors, new dwellings, employment rate, population density, and registered entities, had the highest power of discrimination in the classification process. Practical Implications: Proposed models could have the practical application for determining the actual type of local administrative unit and designing regional policy. Especially in the case when some intervention is needed in the area of financial external support. Such policy may reduce disparities between the levels of development of the various regions, especially addressing the problems of less developed areas. Originality/Value: This research presents a concept of spatial linear discriminant analysis with a spatial component of regional structure integrated in form of spatial weights matrices. The proposed method was applied to identify the meaning of neighbouring regions characteristics in classification of territorial units, as well as to indicate the group of Polish voivodeships characterized by a high and low degree of correspondence between the actual and expected type of the territorial unit.