The city, its inhabitants and the urban living environment in the conditions of advancing motorisation (an example of Poznań)

When observing the development and operation of modern cities, one can quickly come to the conclusion that in the recent years the chief factor of the spatial-structural transformation of cities in Poland (though not only there) and the spatial behaviour of their residents has been motorisation, and more precisely, the car. This is so because the car, while facilitating and intensifying mobility, makes it possible to draw places of residence apart from those of goal implementation. The ever-growing number of cars moving around a city leads to disturbances in street traffic, makes the service of residents worse, causes many road accidents, and brings about unfavourable qualitative changes in the environment. That is why in many recent conceptions of urban development there appear measures intended to restrict the use of cars, which is one of the ways leading to the construction of ‘a city for people’. This paper presents the effect of motorisation on modern cities as documented by statistical data concerning Poznań, one of the largest and oldest Polish cities.