EN
The article is a presentation of selected theoretical questions of the urbanization process out of which the author discusses the issue of workers' settlement in villages, commuting to work and relations urbanization-natural environment. Population living in villages but working outside agriculture, through contacts with population of towns and urban environment influences significantly the process of reconstruction of rural environment, formulation of new attitudes and behaviour patterns among village inhabitants. An evidence of changes undergoing in the way of living of that part of the population are non-agiricultural settlements springing up on the outsikirts of towns, the fact that arable land is converted into building lots and a trend to introduce typically urban instiallations to suburban and rural areas. In result of urbanization of rural population (along with growing industrialization of villages) the natural environment is subject to intensifying pollution and degradation. This unfavourable phenomenon is intensified by spatial concentration of socio-economic functions in villages and scientific-technological progress. The problems of relations environment-urbanization process have become the subject of interest of a new branch of science called eco-town planning or biological town planning. The science intends to secure for man (subject to urbanizatian, industrialization etc. pressures) optimum conditions for biological development. At the end the author presents main rends and methods applied in studies of the urbanization process and evaluates them briefly with respect to their usability in practical analyses. The author starts from formal approaches to the urbanization process concerning the phenomena of concentration of population and economic activity, through a structural-functional approach referring to changes in professional and social structure and ending with the latest diffusion models. The models describe spatial behaviour of population in towns and villages and dissemination of patterns created in towns. The diffusing element is often attractiveniess of town as a place of work, residence, fulfillijng one's needs, entertainment etc. Previous methods of studies on the urbanization process, developed by many scientists from various branches of science were not satisfactory. Great complexity and variety of urbanization forms make it necessary to undertake interdisciplinary studies in the future so that basing on many complementary methods it will be possible to explain the mechanism of spatial migration of population and transmission of cultural patterns from urban to rural communities among individual groups of society and between elements of the settlement network.