Conveners
SS_16 SMALL TOWNS – BIG CHALLENGES AND HIGH POTENTIALS?
- Helene Mainet (Université Clermont Auvergne)
- Silke Weidner
- Mina Di Marino (Norwegian University of Life Sciences)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, small towns have complained less about massive problems of sudden inner-city desolation. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that the inner cities and location-based retail had already experienced severe problems in previous years due to the growth in online retail, and on the other hand, the short (communication) distances proved to be very helpful. The...
In the scientific literature, small towns are often presented as places with a combination of demographic (population decline), economic (marginalised by globalisation) and even social (high concentration of poor people) vulnerabilities. In France, research on small and medium-sized towns has a long history, but scientific debate and the focus on metropolisation issues overshadowed them in the...
The increasing dynamism of the economy and the intensifying competitive environment are precipitating novel challenges for societies of knowledge, organisations and enterprises. Urban areas are recogised as focal points for social-spatial, cultural and economic activities within metropolitan and rural contexts. Despite the increasing connectivity facilitated by Information and Communication...
In the recent debate about the sustainability of our lifestyles in the cities, the current status of small urban settlements and their interdependent relationships are frequently overshadowed and neglected by the so discussed expansion of bigger metropolitan cores. The actual focus of the debate that arises, in terms of spatial nature of metropolitan development, affirms that among bigger...
Metropolitan regions and metropolitan areas have been the subject of empirical urban systems research for many years. In contrast, the focus on small and medium-sized cities has been more recent, primarily through regional case studies and theoretical-conceptual analyses. Europe-wide comparative empirical analyses are rare and often unsuccessful due to a paucity of available small-scale data....
