EN
One of the essential conditions if the standard of living of the inhabitants of rural areas is to improve is the development of infrastructure. The furnishing of infrastructure determined the economic development and social organization of rural areas. The last ten years, has brought a raising of the level to which rural parts of Western Pomerania Voivodship are outfitted with infrastructure, and this inevitably influences the standard of living, reducing the difficulty or level of tedium associated with work and activity in the home, as well as regular travel to work and school. The development of rural areas is possible, if based on the creation of job opportunities for non-agricultural workers. Business activity in rural areas is based mainly on private entrepreneurs, co-operative societies and joint ventures with foreign capital. The capital is thus coming in the main from outside the local system. But it is hard to imagine such an economy functioning without well-developed infrastructure, and infrastructural investments are of high capital absorbency, and long payback periods. The development of infrastructure is thus a basic tenet of any "equal start" for rural society. It requires the provisioning of new opportunities for work away from agriculture, a base for the commencement of new business activities and an increase in own budgets. Infrastructural investments are in fact a classic instrument of government intervention, as local government is simply unable to make up for disparities in the provisioning of technical infrastructure that have developed over years, to develop the elements to new socio-economic conditioning, or to meet the civilisational requirements connected with the openness of national economies. Policy should thus aim at promoting the competitiveness of a given community in regard to other areas - by increasing its attractiveness as a place to live and by allocating production and services units. Such an approach can assure economic development, job creation and a rise in living standards for the inhabitants of rural areas. The creation of non-agricultural jobs in rural areas is the only way to reduce unemployment, which is extremely high in the voivodship of Western Pomerania.