Among 44 cities in the Łódź region 28 are included into the category of so called "small towns". Many of them show serious social and economic issues and they are characterized by a high proportion of degraded areas. Opportunity for development of small towns has been a process of revitalization. It includes a comprehensive, coordinated and long-term activities that lead to significant spatial, technical, social and economic changes. The possibilities of financing the projects with EU funds became the impetus for the revitalization processes in Poland. Their use is dependent on the development of local revitalization programs (LPR). In this article the comparative analysis of revitalization program for six small towns in the area of the Łódź region was implemented, taking into account three categories of cities in terms of population. From the group of small towns from 10 to 20 thousand population a survey was conducted for Konstantynów Łódzki and Koluszki, from a group of 5 to 10 thousand for residents of Działoszyn and Poddębice, and from the group of towns below 5 thousand residents for Złoczew and Krośniewice. The analysis concerned the spatial extent of areas revitalized, financial scale and type of actions and their implementation system. In the smallest towns, revitalized surface area is relatively small, but its share in the total municipal area is larger than in the other cities. The most often repeated delimitation criteria are following: the level of land and public facilities degradation, poor housing facilities, the degradation level of the technical infrastructure, social issues and their weak economic activation. Larger towns more often used social criteria (unemployment, crime), however the smaller ones were likely to use weak economic growth criterion. Revitalization activities clearly dominate in the spatial field (improvement of housing conditions, renovation of public buildings, protection of monuments, modernization of technical infrastructure). Less frequently, activities in the sphere of economic activation (investment promotion, tourism development functions) and the elimination of social problems (elimination of unemployment, increased security, living conditions improvement) have been undertaken.

Spośród 44 miast województwa łódzkiego 28 (tj. 63,6%) ośrodków należy do kategorii tzw. „małych miast”. Znaczna ich część wykazuje poważne problemy rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego i cechuje się dużym udziałem obszarów zdegradowanych. Istotną szansę aktywacji małych miast stanowi proces rewitalizacji. Impulsem do jej realizacji stały się możliwości pozyskania funduszy unijnych. Ich wykorzystanie w tym kontekście uzależnione jest od opracowania lokalnych programów rewitalizacji (LPR). W artykule dokonano kompleksowej analizy porównawczej LPR dla sześciu odpowiednio dobranych miast z obszaru województwa łódzkiego pod kątem zasięgu ich oddziaływania, skali i rodzaju działań rewitalizacyjnych oraz systemu realizacji.