(Polish plural: ) is a term used in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

to denote a designated subdivision or

neighbourhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neighbourh ...

of a city or its , or of a town, with its own council and executive. Like the and

sołectwo A sołectwo ( Polish plural: ''sołectwa'') is an administrative unit in Poland, an optional subdivision of a gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' ) is the basic unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. ...

, an is an auxiliary unit (''jednostka pomocnicza'') of a

gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' ) is the basic unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,479 gminy throughout the country, encompassing over 43,000 villages. 940 gminy include cities and tow ...

. These units are created by decision of the gmina council, and do not have

legal personality Legal capacity is a quality denoting either the legal aptitude of a person to have rights and liabilities (in this sense also called transaction capacity), or the personhood itself in regard to an entity other than a natural person (in this sen ...

in their own right. In the case of an urban-rural gmina, it is also possible for a whole town to be designated an auxiliary unit. Not all Polish cities or towns have in the above sense. However the word is also frequently used to denote any

housing estate A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex, housing development, subdivision (land), subdivision or community) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to count ...

or development.

References

Polish Act of 8 March 1990 on gmina self-government, as amended
(in Polish) Administrative divisions of Poland Types of administrative division {{poland-geo-stub