Housing conditions in selected metropolitan areas in Poland

Housing conditions are considered an element reflecting the living standard of the population. In addition, it is also an important index illustrating advancement of suburbanisation processes. The article presents diversification of housing conditions in two selected metropolitan areas: Warsaw, Kraków and Potential Rzeszów Metropolitan Area. Two indexes are analysed in the paper: the number of persons per apartment and the average floor space of apartments, in two time periods:1995 and 2010. On the basis of the indexes, a typology of municipalities within the metropolitan areas was created with the housing conditions criterion. At the next stage, fluctuations in the population and in the number of apartments in the area were analysed as the element explaining the above-presented transformations.