Łódź, Poland

Economy and infrastructure | Transport : Air : Public : Rail | Education | National Film School in Łódź

🇵🇱 Łódź, written in English as Lodz, is the third-largest city in Poland and a former industrial centre. Located in the central part of the country, it is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship. The city's coat of arms depicts a boat, which alludes to the city's name.

Łódź was once a small settlement that first appeared in 14th century records. It was granted town rights in 1423 by Polish King Władysław II Jagiełło and it remained a private town of the Kuyavian bishops and clergy until the late 18th century. In the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, Łódź was annexed to Prussia before becoming part of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw; the city joined Congress Poland, a Russian client state, at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The Second Industrial Revolution (from 1870) brought rapid growth in textile manufacturing and in population owing to the inflow of migrants, notably Germans and Jews. Ever since the industrialisation of the area the city has struggled with multinationalism and social inequalities, as documented in the novel The Promised Land by Nobel Prize–winning author Władysław Reymont. The contrasts greatly reflected on the architecture of the city, where luxurious mansions coexisted with redbrick factories and dilapidated tenement houses.

The industrial development and demographic surge made Łódź one of the largest cities in Poland. Under the German occupation during World War II Łódź was briefly renamed Litzmannstadt after Karl Litzmann. The city's population was persecuted and its large Jewish minority was forced into a walled zone known as the Łódź Ghetto, from where they were sent to German concentration and extermination camps. The city became Poland's temporary seat of power in 1945.

Łódź experienced a sharp demographic and economic decline after 1989. It was only in the 2010s that the city began to experience revitalisation of its neglected downtown area. Łódź is ranked by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network on the “Sufficiency” level of global influence and is internationally known for its National Film School, a cradle for the most renowned Polish actors and directors, including Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski. In 2017, the city was inducted into the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and named UNESCO City of Film.

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Economy and infrastructure Before 1990, the economy of Łódź was heavily reliant on the textile industry, which had developed in the city in the nineteenth century owing to the abundance of rivers used to power the industry's fulling mills, bleaching plants and other machinery. Because of the growth in this industry, the city has sometimes been called the "Polish Manchester" and the "lingerie capital of Poland". As a result, Łódź grew from a population of 13,000 in 1840 to over 500,000 in 1913. By the time right before World War I Łódź had become one of the most densely populated industrial cities in the world, with 13,280 inhabitants per km², and also one of the most polluted. The textile industry declined dramatically in 1990 and 1991, and no major textile company survives in Łódź today. However, countless small companies still provide a significant output of textiles, mostly for export. Łódź is no longer a significant industrial centre, but it has become a major hub for the business services sector in Poland owing to the availability of highly skilled workers and active co-operation between local universities and the business sector.

The city benefits from its central location in Poland. A number of firms have located their logistics centres in the vicinity. Two motorways, A1 spanning from the north to the south of Poland, and A2 going from the east to the west, intersect north-east of the city. As of 2012, the A2 is complete to Warsaw and the northern section of A1 is largely completed. With these connections, the advantages of the city's central location should increase even further. Work has also begun on upgrading the railway connection with Warsaw, which reduced the 2-hour travel time to make the 137 km (85 mi) journey 1.5 hours in 2009. As of 2018, travel time from Łódź to Warsaw is around 1.2 hours with the modern Pesa SA Dart trains.

Recent years have seen many foreign companies opening and establishing their offices in Łódź. The Indian IT company Infosys has one of its centres in the city. In January 2009 Dell announced that it will shift production from its plant in Limerick, Ireland to its plant in Łódź, largely because the labour costs in Poland are a fraction of those in Ireland. The city's investor friendly policies have attracted 980 foreign investors by January 2009. Foreign investment was one of the factors which decreased the unemployment rate in Łódź to 6.5 percent in December 2008, from 20 percent four years earlier.

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Transport Łódź is situated near the geographical centre of Poland, only a short distance away from the motorway junction in Stryków where the two main north–south (A1) and east–west (A2) Polish transport corridors meet, which positions the city on two of the ten major trans-European routes: from Gdańsk to Žilina and Brno and from Berlin to Moscow via Warsaw. It is also part of the New Silk Road, a regular cargo rail connection with the Chinese city of Chengdu operating since 2013. Łódź is served by the national motorway network, an international airport, and long-distance and regional railways. It is at the centre of a regional and commuter rail network operating from the city's various train stations. Bus and tram services are operated by a municipal public transport company. There are 193 km (120 mi) of bicycle routes throughout the city (as in January 2019).

Major roads include: • A1: Gdańsk – Toruń – Łódź – Częstochowa – Cieszyn (national border) • A2: Świecko (national border) – Poznań – Łódź – Warszawa • S8: Wrocław – Sieradz – Łódź – Piotrków Trybunalski – Warszawa – Białystok • S14: Pabianice – Konstantynów Łódzki – Aleksandrów Łódzki – Zgierz • DK14: Łowicz – Stryków – Łódź – Zduńska Wola – Sieradz – Złoczew – Walichnowy • DK72: Konin – Turek – Poddębice – Łódź – Brzeziny – Rawa Mazowiecka • DK91: Gdańsk – Tczew – Toruń – Łódź – Piotrków Trybunalski – Radomsko – Częstochowa

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Transport: Air The city has an international airport: Łódź Władysław Reymont Airport located 6 km (4 miles) from the city centre. Flights connect the city with destinations in Europe including Turkey. In 2014 the airport handled 253,772 passengers. It is the 8th largest airport in Poland.

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Transport: Public The Municipal Transport Company – Łódź (Miejskie Przedsiębiorstwo Komunikacyjne – Łódź), owned by the Łódź City Government, is responsible for operating 58 bus routes and 19 tram lines.

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Transport: Rail Łódź has a number of long distance and local railway stations. There are two main stations in the city, but with no direct rail connection between them—a legacy of 19th-century railway network planning. Originally constructed in 1866, the centrally located Łódź Fabryczna was a terminus station for a branch line of the Warsaw-Vienna railway, whereas Łódź Kaliska was built more than thirty years later on the central section of the Warsaw-Kalisz railway. For this reason most intercity train traffic goes to this day through Łódź Kaliska station, despite its relative distance from the city centre, and Łódź Fabryczna serves mainly as a terminal station for trains to Warsaw. The situation will be remedied in 2021 after the construction of a tunnel connecting the two, which is likely to make Łódź Poland's main railway hub. The tunnel will additionally serve Łódź Commuter Railway, providing a rapid transit system for the city, dubbed the Łódź Metro by the media and local authorities. Two new stations are to be constructed on the underground line, one serving the needs of the Manufaktura complex and the other located in the area of Piotrkowska Street.

In December 2016, a few years after the demolition of the old building of Łódź Fabryczna station, a new underground station was opened. It is considered to be the largest and most modern of all train stations in Poland and is designed to handle increased traffic after the construction of the tunnel. It also serves as a multimodal transport hub, featuring an underground intercity bus station, and is integrated with a new transport interchange serving taxis and local trams and buses. The construction of the new Łódź Fabryczna station was part of a broader project of urban renewal known as Nowe Centrum Łodzi (New Centre of Łódź).

The third-largest train station in Łódź is Łódź Widzew. There are also many other stations and train stops in the city, many of which were upgraded as part of the Łódzka Kolej Aglomeracyjna commuter rail project. The rail service, founded as part of a major regional rail upgrade and owned by Łódź Voivodeship, operates on routes to Kutno, Sieradz, Skierniewice, Łowicz, and on selected days to Warsaw, with plans for further expansion after the construction of the tunnel.

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Education Łódź is a thriving centre of academic life. Currently Łódź hosts three major state-owned universities, six higher education establishments operating for more than a half of the century, and a number of smaller schools of higher education. The tertiary institutions with the most students in Łódź include: • University of Łódź (UŁ – Uniwersytet Łódzki) • Lodz University of Technology (PŁ – Politechnika Łódzka) • Medical University of Łódź (Uniwersytet Medyczny w Łodzi) • National Film School in Łódź (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa, Telewizyjna i Teatralna w Łodzi) • Academy of Music in Łódź (Akademia Muzyczna im. Grażyny i Kiejstuta Bacewiczów w Łodzi) • Academy of Fine Arts In Łódź (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych im. Wł. Strzemińskiego w Łodzi).

In the 2018 general ranking of state-owned tertiary education institutions in Poland, the University of Łódź came 20th (6th place among universities) and Lodz University of Technology 12th (6th place among technical universities). The Medical University of Łódź was ranked 5th among Polish medical universities. Leading courses taught in Łódź include administration (3rd place), law (4th) and biology (4th).

There is also a number of private-owned institutions of higher learning in Łódź. The largest of these are the University of Social Sciences (Społeczna Akademia Nauk) and the University of Humanities and Economics in Łódź (Akademia Humanistyczno-Ekonomiczna w Łodzi). In the 2018 ranking of private universities in Poland the former was ranked 9th, and the latter 23rd.

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National Film School in Łódź The Leon Schiller National Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa, Telewizyjna i Teatralna im. Leona Schillera w Łodzi) is the most notable academy for future actors, directors, photographers, camera operators and TV staff in Poland. It was founded on 8 March 1948 and was initially planned to be moved to Warsaw as soon as the city was rebuilt following the Warsaw Uprising. However, in the end the school remained in Łódź and today is one of the best-known institutions of higher education in the city.

At the end of the Second World War Łódź remained the only large Polish city besides Kraków which war had not destroyed. The creation of the National Film School gave Łódź a role of greater importance from a cultural viewpoint, which before the war had belonged exclusively to Warsaw and Kraków. Early students of the School include the directors Andrzej Munk, Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda, Kazimierz Karabasz (one of the founders of the so-called Black Series of Polish Documentary) and Janusz Morgenstern, who at the end of the 1950s became famous as one of the founders of the Polish Film School of Cinematography.

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Łódź, Polska 
Łódź, Polska
Image: Adobe Stock Tomasz Warszewski #281683121

Łódź is rated Sufficiency by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) which evaluates and ranks the relationships between world cities in the context of globalisation. Sufficiency level cities are cities that have a sufficient degree of services so as not to be overly dependent on world cities.

Łódź was ranked #213 by the Nomad List which evaluates and ranks remote work hubs by cost, internet, fun and safety. Łódź has a population of over 677,286 people. Łódź also forms the centre of the wider Łódź Voivodeship which has a population of over 1,163,516 people. Łódź is ranked #663 for startups with a score of 0.231.

To set up a UBI Lab for Łódź see: https://www.ubilabnetwork.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/UBILabNetwork

Łódź is a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for Film see: https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities

Twin Towns, Sister Cities Łódź has links with:

🇵🇹 Barreiro, Portugal 🇩🇪 Chemnitz, Germany 🇨🇳 Chengdu, China 🇹🇷 Denizli, Turkey 🇨🇳 Guangzhou, China 🇷🇺 Kaliningrad, Russia 🇸🇪 Karlskoga, Sweden 🇺🇸 Los Angeles, USA 🇺🇦 Lviv, Ukraine 🇫🇷 Lyon, France 🇪🇸 Murcia, Spain 🇨🇳 Nansha District, China 🇺🇦 Odesa, Ukraine 🇸🇪 Örebro, Sweden 🇲🇽 Puebla, Mexico 🇬🇪 Rustavi, Georgia 🇩🇪 Stuttgart, Germany 🇭🇺 Szeged, Hungary 🇫🇮 Tampere, Finland 🇮🇱 Tel Aviv, Israel 🇨🇳 Tianjin, China 🇱🇹 Vilnius, Lithuania
Text Atribution: Wikipedia Text under CC-BY-SA license | GaWC | Nomad | StartupBlink

Antipodal to Łódź is: -160.535,-51.766

Locations Near: Łódź 19.4651,51.7658

🇵🇱 Zgierz 19.406,51.858 d: 11.1  

🇵🇱 Pabianice 19.355,51.664 d: 13.7  

🇵🇱 Łęczyca 19.2,52.05 d: 36.5  

🇵🇱 Bełchatów 19.367,51.367 d: 44.9  

🇵🇱 Piotrków Trybunalski 19.683,51.4 d: 43.4  

🇵🇱 Kutno 19.367,52.238 d: 53  

🇵🇱 Zduńska Wola 18.967,51.6 d: 39  

🇵🇱 Łowicz 19.933,52.1 d: 49.1  

🇵🇱 Tomaszów Mazowiecki 20.037,51.539 d: 46.8  

🇵🇱 Radomsko 19.45,51.067 d: 77.7  

Antipodal to: Łódź -160.535,-51.766

🇹🇴 Nuku'alofa -175.216,-21.136 d: 16380.4  

🇵🇫 Papeete -149.566,-17.537 d: 16088.6  

🇦🇸 Pago Pago -170.701,-14.279 d: 15749.2  

🇼🇸 Apia -171.76,-13.833 d: 15679.4  

🇺🇸 Hilo -155.089,19.725 d: 12048  

🇺🇸 Maui -156.446,20.72 d: 11945.2  

🇺🇸 Maui County -156.617,20.868 d: 11929.6  

🇺🇸 Kahului -156.466,20.891 d: 11926.3  

🇺🇸 Wailuku -156.505,20.894 d: 11926.2  

🇺🇸 Honolulu -157.85,21.3 d: 11886.3  

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