Valorisation of infrastructure in rural areas of Lower Silesia

Due to the significant role that infrastructure plays in the mobilization and development of rural areas, the aim of this paper was to examine infrastructure in Lower Silesia, South Western Poland. A detailed study was carried out in 2004 and involved 133 communes. General information was obtained from a publicly available database of the Central Statistical Office in Poland. The information gathered on the level of technical, social and economic infrastructure in individual rural communes of Lower Silesia was used to calculate coefficients which, after standardization, were analysed using two statistical methods. First, cluster analysis was used in order to isolate relatively homogeneous groups of communes with regard to the level of their infrastructure. Then points were assigned to the com-munes using a multiple correspondence analysis. Based on the performed analyses, infrastructure in individual communes was assigned point values and commune in-frastructure was evaluated with an additional division into functional regions and individual types of infrastructure. Our results show considerable differences between the examined communes and between the functional regions in Lower Silesia.