The making of the Bydgoszcz-Toruń partnership area as an example of a bipolar conflict

The aim of the paper is to identify features and regularities pertaining to the process of cooperation between two cities under the conditions of a pre-existing socio-political conflict. The study covers the Bydgoszcz and Toruń Integrated Territorial Investments’ support area, the only example of a bilateral arrangement in Poland which includes two voivodship capitals. Due to the specificity of the region and the Toruń-Bydgoszcz rancor, the negotiations preceding the formation of the ITI were turbulent. The research was based on a discursive analysis of newspaper reports published by the regional issue of the country-wide daily Gazeta Wyborcza in the period of 2012–2020 and directly related to the making of the Bydgoszcz-Toruń Functional Area. The purpose of the conducted press search was to reconstruct how the bipolar functional area that had enabled the applying for EU funding was formed, and to identify the socio-political conflicts that had lain behind the creation of the support area. It has been evidenced that disputes rooted in the examined cities significantly hinder the creation of a spatially coherent and functionally complementary bipolar system. The functional area is divided due to the core cities' past and the history of mutual animosities deriving from the local ambitions.