Full Description
This insightful book explores smaller towns and cities, places in which the majority of people live, highlighting that these more ordinary places have extraordinary geographies. It focuses on the development of an alternative approach to urban studies and theory that foregrounds smaller cities and towns rather than much larger cities and conurbations.
Comparative case studies from Australia, Cambodia, India, Korea, the UK and US provide a rich collection of theoretically informed investigations into smaller urban centres that are connected in complex ways to regional, national and international flows of people, goods, ideas and materials. The book further examines policy development and implementation in smaller towns and cities. Chapters analyse core societal challenges, including economic restructuring, urban decline and renewal, and ageing populations.
This is a timely and important book for students of human geography, urban studies, planning, and economic geography, particularly those focusing on cities and economic development. It will also appeal to policymakers and planners seeking insights on current debates reframing urban theory to embrace more ordinary towns and cities.
Contents
Contents:
Preface: ordinary cities - place, space, time and biographical
narratives xii
Acknowledgements xvi
1 Ordinary cities, extraordinary geographies: parallax
dimensions, interpolations and the scale question 1
John R. Bryson, Ronald V. Kalafsky and Vida Vanchan
2 The progressive city in the neighborhood context 23
George R. Frantz
3 The mechanics of small metropolitan labor markets in the
U.S. South: does job growth always drive population growth? 43
Jonathan Kozar and William Graves
4 Examining the exports of smaller southern cities and
assessing "borrowed size" 67
Ronald V. Kalafsky
5 (Extra) Ordinary Geelong: state-led urban regeneration and
economic revival 84
Louise C. Johnson, Sally Weller and Tom Barnes
6 The infraordinary or the ordinary as extraordinary?
Expertise (and not global) production networks and
ordinary towns and cities 106
Stephen Williams and John R. Bryson
7 An ordinary but extraordinary city: Siem Reap Angkor, Cambodia 133
Vida Vanchan
8 Resilience and development of a small city in India:
Dholpur, Rajasthan 151
Suparna Soni
9 Interconnection between ethnic enclaves in a small city
and globalization 164
Kamyoung Kim and Ju-Hyun Bae
10 Beside the seaside: vertical dis-integration, demographic
imbalance and adaptation in UK coastal communities 190
Jacob Salder
11 Reframing urban theory: smaller towns and cities, forms of
life, embeddedplasticity and variegated urbanism 210
John R. Bryson, Vida Vanchan and Ronald V. Kalafsky
Index
