Małgorzata Kmak

I received my master's degree in 2007 at the Pedagogical Academy in Cracow - major: political science, specialization: international politics. In 2011 I graduated from PhD studies at Pedagogical University in Cracow - Faculty of Humanities, major: Political Science. In 2012 I defended my doctoral thesis at the Institute of Political Science, UP (supervisor: Prof. Andrzej Piasecki, reviewers: Prof. Krzysztof Łabędź - UP and Prof. Andrzej Miszczuk - UW).
Academic interests: local government, public administration in Poland and Europe, regional policy, sustainable development, energy security, public management, administration, promotion and territorial marketing.
 

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Issue: 10:2 (The thirty eighth issue)

The aim of the article is to present selected relationships between social trust and the development of a territorial unit. Social trust affects the level of coop-eration in society and decides about the competitiveness of a territorial unit [12, p. 7]. The main thesis of the article is the author’s conviction that there is a significant correlation between social trust and the activity of citizens, the con-sequence of which is the development of territorial units. This relationship ap-plies to different categories of units, the article mainly focuses on municipal units. The conclusions presented are a consequence of the analysis of infor-mation sources and surveys carried out in three cities: Cracow, Helsinki and Valletta. The socio-economic situation of Poland, Finland and Malta is varied, also due to historical and political conditions. Social trust in these cities de-pends on different factors. Everywhere, however, significantly affects the di-rection of urban development, accelerating and stabilising it. Trust is a compo-nent of social capital, which translates into the ability to build an innovative and modern economy. In countries where citizens trust each other, a sense of security increases which significantly affects well-being.