Several dozen simple forecasting models for a range of socio-economic indicators were developed for the NUTS 2 region of Mazowieckie voivodeship, the capital province of Poland, with 314 LAU 2 municipalities (gminas) being the basic units of modelling. Given that this set of municipalities encompasses the European-level agglomeration of Warszawa, several subregional centres, smaller towns and a multiplicity of small rural municipalities, the models reflect quite a selection of social, economic and resource situations, including rural areas of varied characteristics. In view of the broad range of the subject matter, the number of indicators modelled (around 70) and the orientation at the basic administrative units, the undertaking is unprecedented. Social and intellectual capital-related aspects were included among those modelled and the paper focuses on these from the methodological and substantive points of view, presenting some of the results and the conclusions drawn from them. We show that construction of such a varied and versatile model system is feasible, that it can be useful for pragmatic purposes, and that individual models of indicators (phenomena) can effectively represent the processes that are of importance at the local scale and, through aggregation, also regionally. In particular, the diverse courses of processes in the...

The paper reports on a sequence of analyses of the local self-governmental authority website-related features in conjunction with the socio-economic characteristics of the respective administrative units (counties and municipalities). These analyses had two objectives: (a) assessment of the local authority websites, their content and functionality, also in a dynamic perspective, and (b) inquiry into the potential interrelations between the specific features of the websites and the nature of the local unit, with special emphasis on the local development in the rural areas and its forward path. The study has been carried out for the capital province of Mazowsze in Poland, but some hints as to a quasi-comparative international study are also provided. First of all, substantial progress between 2003 and 2008 in the quality of the local authority websites is shown. Further, the conclusions from the study imply a rather loose connection between the characteristics of these websites and the socio-economic profile of the unit, including the characterisation along the urban-rural dimension. At the same time, though, an important role becomes apparent, played by the broadly conceived local culture, including the ‘smartness’ aspect, as perceived by the present authors. This role of culture and ‘smartness’ is visible in the very...