The economic and social transformation of rural areas in Poland after 1990 reveals itself/can be seen through the disintegration of the previous spatial order. Building a new pattern requires a vision which would counteract the complex causes of the disintegration. The latter belong to the institutional domain of planning strategies and the area of common practices. Therefore, agreement on the aims and means between spatial policy strategies and the tactics of those using the space/spatial use would favour the protection and sustainable shaping of environmental resources. An attempt to merge both the aforementioned life domains may be successfully realised only within the landscape and at the level of the commune, where local development takes place. The present article refers to the symptoms and causes of deformations in the rural landscapes. It describes landscape rurality as the desired development vision and the utility of landscape tools in the space/spatial management of a small commune. The article defines the idea of public space in a landscape aspect and indicates the directions and areas of explorations which would need to be developed according to the suggested perspective.