Evaluation of Rural Communes in the Context of Sustainable Development

The aim of the study is to determine whether the development of selected communes entirely located in rural areas is progressing towards achieving integrated order in line with the concept of sustainable development. Detailed research covered typically rural communes located in the Lower Silesian Voivodship. Research was carried out according to 5 functional regions of rural areas of the voivodship. The research period covered the years 2011-2017. The research takes into account three orders: social, economic and environmental. Sustainable development indicators and the linear normalization method in the form of zeroed unitarization were used. In the analyzed rural communes of the Lower Silesian Voivodship, the indicator of striving for environmental order (E) ranged from 0.403 to 0.571, the indicator of striving for economic order (G) from 0.403 to 0.571, and the indicator of striving for social order (S) from 0.320 to 0.459. Finally, a synthetic indicator (SI) was calculated to determine the level of integrated order, which ranged between 0.370-0.452 (the lowest values were recorded for the 2nd functional region, and the highest for the 4th functional region of Lower Silesia). The synthetic indicator of the pursuit of integrated order grew, with the exception of the 5th region. Changes should be assessed as positive.