Volumen 24 (2020): Heft 1 (January 2020)

The presented work deals with the spread of viticulture and fruit farming in the Middle Ages in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region in Georgia. The current state of the farming sectors mentioned and those pivotal moments in Georgian history that had an influence on agriculture are also considered in the article. The changes that determined the viticulture geography from the second part of the 16th century up to the present day are also discussed. The study is mainly based on the census document created in 1574. The article represents the geographic distribution patterns of vineyards and orchards, as well as wine production capacity and the fruit harvest. Retrospective mapping made it possible to restore the distribution of farms and gardens of the mentioned period and to analyse the importance of viticulture and fruit farming in the 16th century. The maps represented show spatial patterns of vineyards, gardens, and main terroirs.

The article examines the issues surrounding tourist activity and social interest in agritourism among residents of the main cities in Kazakhstan. Based on the survey results among a group of n = 577 respondents, the article inspected the extent of their participation in rural tourism, including agritourism, as well as their preferences and expectations regarding the type and extent of services offered on tourist farms. Research results show that the interest of city residents in using agritourism farm services is limited despite of a generally positive attitude towards rural tourism. Potential tourists’ expectations of agritourism farm services focus primarily on the quality of accommodations and the sanitary conditions present in the facilities providing them. Domestic tourists especially expect to be able to take advantage of natural products with medicinal and cosmetic properties. They view active forms of leisure as a mere supplement. The respondents’ opinions and assessments can determine the ways agritourism farms adapt to this clientele as well as impact organisational decisions and strategic planning of rural tourism in the country.

This paper examines the factors that contributed to the economic resilience of rural regions in Portugal following the recent crisis. Portugal has for a long time faced the issue of regionalisation. However, rural regions in Portugal are not homogenous. Rural regions in Portugal are very diverse and experience very different economic realities. This paper adds to the growing body of literature on regional resilience by focusing exclusively on rural regions. Using an adaptation of Martin’s (2012) sensitivity index as a measure of resilience and bivariate analysis this paper examines the determinants of resilience in rural regions. In terms of economic structure, the paper interestingly finds that reliance on agriculture was beneficial while innovativeness hindered resilience. As for measures of social capital, the paper presents some contradictory findings. Higher rates of crime had a negative impact on resilience, however higher political participation also had a negative impact.

It is not only growth and development that is of value to local, regional and central governments, but also the ability to absorb negative phenomena and the ability to continuously transform socio-economic systems. Resilience strategies thus serve as a response to the more and more frequent and intense natural, social and economic challenges. In some approaches to urban resilience, special attention is paid to activities undertaken by cities to become inclusive, integrated, robust, resourceful, reflective, redundant and flexible. In regional strategies the emphasis is on diversity, dispersion, mutuality and modularity. The aim of the paper is to synthesise selected qualities of resilient cities and regions into a new model of resilience strategy. It assumes that goals at each level of strategy are formulated according to adaptive interpretation of the resilience concept. Development of such model would enable the use of the concept by practitioners responsible for creating development strategies.

The aim of this paper is to discuss changes in the spatial distribution of cities that perform the command and control function created by the largest corporations, based on the method of gravity centres. The analysis was performed both for individual sectors of the economy as well as for the global scale. A shift occurred in an easterly direction. This also pertains to sector indices, although the centroids of knowledge-based sectors, such as information technology and healthcare, shifted the most in the direction of Asia. At the same time, information technology was the only sector whose centroid shifted to the west in the study period. Moreover, the magnitude of the shift of the centre of gravity of the number of corporate headquarters in the studied cities does not converge to the shift of the centroid based on the value of the financial potential of the companies.

The practical problems of implementing the Regulation on Landscape Audits (European Landscape Convention, ELC) in Poland are discussed through the topic of landscape relief, on an example of landscape classification of three of Poland’s landscape parks. In the existing landscape typologies, various criteria are proposed, in which relief is usually considered to be one of the leading components. The study was carried out for the purposes of the Landscape Parks Conservation Plans, based on a comparison of the method under the Principles of Landscape Audits and the authors’ method. The results indicate that the landscape types set out in the regulation insuficiently take relief into account, leading to omitting the local specific nature of the terrain. The essential attributes of the terrain in the analysed parks are the morphometry of relief and its genesis. Relief helps to determine the landscape types that are more related to the terrain.