According to the national law, settlement units or localities (Polish: miejscowość) are broadly classified in Poland as one of the following:[1] Some of the types, namely a settlement, a colony, a neighbourhood and a hamlet, can be either a principal locality (rural only) or a part of a locality, the latter within any rural or urban principal locality in the case of a settlement, within a city/town or a village in the case of a colony and a neighbourhood, or within a village only in the case of a hamlet.
In 2015 there was 103,086 official names of localities and their parts, including (23 types):[2] Thus, there are 53,445 of independent localities, called principal localities (8 types: "urban" - cities/towns, "rural" - villages, settlements, colonies, forest settlements, neighbourhoods, hamlets and tourist refuges) and 49,641 of non-independent localities which are integral parts of principal localities (15 types: "urban" - parts of cities and towns, "rural" - parts of villages, settlements of villages, colonies of villages, forest settlements of villages, neighbourhoods of villages, hamlets of villages, parts of settlements, settlements of settlements, colonies of settlements, hamlets of settlements, parts of colonies, settlements of colonies, colonies of colonies and hamlets of colonies).
A statistical locality (miejscowość statystyczna)[1] is a separated collection of several localities (out of all 23 types) for statistical purposes, for which statistical data are collected and compiled together.
In a special case, the team may contain only one locality.
11,000) of the "rural" principal localities is taken together under the statistical localities (however, this data do not stipulate how many of tham are fully uninhabited).