Economic and social aspects of merger of territorial self-government units – Polish experience

The article deals with the issues of merging Local Government Units (LGU). Based on Polish experience related to the unique process of integration of the city and the commune of Zielona Góra in 2015, the authors present the most important economic and social aspects of combining local government units. The article also presents important elements of the process of creating a new functional area from two different neighbouring local government units. Moreover, the exemplified research results, carried out in 2018 among residents of the commune annexed to the city, concerning the economic and social effects of the integration process, made available by the City of Zielona Góra for the purposes of this article, were presented and discussed there. At the same time, a synthetic evaluation of this process was carried out in the light of the documents analysed in the article that form the basis of the merger process and presented results of empirical research.