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'''FIGURE 8. Population density (U/OU)''' (chart)

along the southern border, an area which contains the industrial complex of the Upper Silesian coalfields and the country's most productive agricultural land, where population density exceeds that of the Netherlands, Europe's most densely populated country. Population density and urban and rural distribution by province is shown in Figure 9.

Both the Polish Government and the people have taken pride in the relatively rapid urbanization which has taken place since World War II. Compared to the slow increase in the proportion of the urban population between 1900 (19.6%) and 1946 (31.8%, adjusted to the country's prewar boundaries), postwar growth has been nearly double that rate; on 14 December 1966 it was officially announced that as of that date the urban population had reached exactly 50% of the population total. By December 1970 this girded had reached 52.2% of the total population. Although internal migration from rural to urban areas has decreased in terms of absolute numbers since 1962, the net urban increase continued to rise rapidly through 1970. Shifts in rural and urban population since 1952, shown in Figure 10, continue to reflect this strong trend toward urbanization. Notably, the increase in the total population between the 1960 and the 1970 censuses, or about 2.8 million persons, is almost exactly equal to the net urban increase over the same period.

Despite these achievements in urbanization, Poland in 1970 still ranked behind such Eastern European countries as East Germany (73.8%), Czechoslovakia (62.4%), and Bulgaria (53.0%), and the U.S.S.R. (56.3%). Moreover, Polish criteria for urban as against rural areas are imprecise or do not correspond to Western standards. In 1970, official data indicated 889 localities considered as urban areas. Of these 834 were classified as cities and towns, but 359 were under 5,000 in population and only 24 exceeded 100,000 in population. These 24 major urban areas accounted for 22.6% of the total population, and 43.2% of the total urban population.

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