Urban resilience in spatial planning of polish cities - True or false? Transformational perspective

•The system transformation which has begun after 1989, have left their mark on the post-socialist urban development in Poland.•Keywords of urban resilient in polish spatial planning are: restructuring, security, flexibility•The planning process in Poland, still under transformation, has a good formal and legal framework which can be treated as a guidepost for urban resilience.•Achieving full implementation of urban resilience in the spatial planning system requires adjustments, primarily at the executive level, concerning planning practice. The system transformation initiated in Poland after 1989, the departure from the socialist model of spatial management, and the neoliberal economy and its paradigms have left their mark on the urban development in Poland. A need arose to confront the spatial planning system with new challenges and threats of both natural and socioeconomic nature. In this context, the concept of urban resilience seems to be a useful approach from the viewpoint of spatial planning. The aim of this article is to present the concept of urban resilience and its implementation in the planning process in the largest cities in Poland with a focus on the transformational perspective. In order to achieve the research goal of the study authors analyzed and evaluated 15 623 records of the data connected with spatial planning in 39 largest cities in Poland. Moreover this study was the first theoretical and empirical attempt to analyse and evaluate the planning situation in Poland after 1989 in context of urban resilience concept. The findings show that the spatial planning in Poland has a good legal framework for implementing urban resilience, but achieving full application of discussed concept requires adjustments at the executive level, concerning planning practice.