Life in the city - design for social well-being

Main issues
1. The neighbourhood. Designing urban space
2. Social infrastructure. Design for social well-being
3. Values of sustainable living

Site description
The residential area Suchy Dwor is located in Kosakowo municipality at the edge of the Tri-City Agglomeration Gdansk-Sopot-Gdynia. Its distance from the Gdynia city centre is about 10 km. Gdynia, a city of 250 thousand inhabitants is the Polish main cargo harbour and the biggest container terminal in the Southern Baltic Region with a developed shipbuilding industry. The city is the major centre of maritime education. The Gdynia Maritime Academy, the Gdansk University Faculty of Marine Biology and Earth Sciences, and scientific institutes (for example the world famous Maritime Fishery Institute) educate and have recognised specialists. Gdynia has favourable conditions for investments, as well as for life and work.

Kosakowo, neighbouring Gdynia, is a municipality of 5000 inhabitants with exceptional environmental values. The northern part of Kosakowo belongs to the Sea front Landscape Park. This terrain is one of the protected areas on the Baltic Sea coast. Kosakowo is foreseen as a recreational area for Gdynia.

Model description
Building new neighbourhoods with one family houses in the Eastern Baltic region will be an extremely important focus for efforts for sustainable urban development in the future. Poland, having the best economy of the NIS countries, is first in this development.
The model project, the 5 hectare Suchy Dwor residential area, is a part of a bigger housing enterprise for 2000 inhabitants (32 hectare). Here efforts have been made to build affordable housing, where urban planning emphasises the well-being of the neighbourhood in the tradition of garden city. Included in the development of Suchy Dwor is thus architectural, urban planning, economic and social aspects.
Suchy Dwor is located in Kosakowo, a five thousand inhabitants municipality with exceptio-nal environmental values neighbouring Gdynia in prosperous three-city area of Gdansk-Sopot-Gdynia. Over 90% of the municipal surface area belongs to private owners. The dominating form of housing is one-family housing. The technical infrastructure is poor and it needs to be developed or modernised urgently. The population density is 100 person per square kilometre.

Municipality of Kosakowo
Jolanta Miernicka , architect
ul. Zeromskiego 69, 81-189 Kosakowo, Poland
tel +48-58-679 17 44

Technical University of Gdansk, Dept. of Architecture
Dorota Wlodarczyk, Dr, Malgorzata Dymnicka Dr.
Narutowicza 11/12 , 80-952 Gdansk, Poland
Tel +48-58-621 45 37, +48-58-347 12 33
dwlod@sunrise.pg.gda.pl