Research on village renewal conducted at the University of Lodz – an attempt at synthesis

In the last 25 years, the issues of implementing village renewal programs have been one of the key issues undertaken in the field of research on rural development, especially in the European context. Scientific work was carried out by representatives of many research centers, representing different points of view. For over a decade, this issue has also been present in the research of geographers and sociologists from the University of Lodz. The experience gained during research work both in the Lodz province and on a national scale allows for a comprehensive and critical look at the theoretical, methodological and practical issues of village renewal. In this article, we emphasize three important issues around which we focus our reflections, i.e. village renewal in local development research, the selective nature of programs and building the sense of place. The results of the synthesis of research conducted at the University of Lodz show that we are dealing with a certain saturation of these issues. We point out that in village renewal not only its definition is fluid, but also as an idea it is full of paradoxes of a spatial, social and methodological nature, and at the same time it strives to settle accounts, draw binding conclusions for the future, to quite probably, naturally, give way to new interests, challenges and interpretations of the village and rurality.