The scientifi c monograph entitled "Confl icts over Use of Urban and Regional Spaces in the Time of Climate Changes. Good Management and Planning Practices" intends to add new issues, taken mainly from the Polish and Colombian spaces, to the scientifi c discussion on urban-regional changes and the role of the government in these processes. The authors invited to this work representatives of several scientifi c disciplines and several research topics. The common idea is to show the territorial

more »

... ocesses through the prism of environmental, social and political confl icts. The monograph is divided into three essential topics, important for this discourse: -The city as an arena of confl icts and negotiations; -The region as an arena of confl icts and negotiations; -Society, education and possibilities in contestation spaces. Cities have always formed a fascinating and intriguing space. Their unforeseen development, with surprising forms, unexpected directions and un predictable effects have always brought crowds of people to cities, hungry to live in a different environment than rural -full of movement and interactions, lively, noisy, colorful and diverse in all senses. The space of the city, due to the number of interests, aspirations and visions, must be confl ictive. Thousands of texts have already been written about the apparent confl icts within the urban space and many more will probably follow. Here we mention just four topics within this problem that we fi nd important and interesting for readers on both continents. The fi rst issue, which has not left the pages of newspapers for several years, is the question of the situation of cities and their place in space in the face of climate change. It is a very broad topic and causes several controversies about the forms of urbanization processes and the adaptation of urban space to these changes. Governance also plays an important role here. Jaime Mejía Gutiérrez talks about this aspect in his article and, being very critical of environmental policy in the southern department of Caldas in Colombia, blames local authorities for inadequate urbanization processes. The article by Sylvia Dudek-Mańkowska and Mirosław Grochowski is also related to the theme of governance. This time they evaluate the effi ciency of governance in the case of the city of Warsaw, Poland. INTRODUCTORY WORDS Katarzyna Dembicz presents a very important text on education for development and the mistaken western visions applied to the local Latin American world. Claudia Jurado Alvarán talks about the emigration of young people from the countryside and the very diffi cult situation in the countryside.