The ARL – Academy for Territorial Development in the Leibniz Association is currently establishing an International Working Group "Small towns and metropolitan cores: towards cooperation? A European perspective" and is looking for participants.
For several reasons, academics and practitioners at the national and EU scale debate much less the situation of and the challenges faced by smaller urban settlements. The limits of size and functions of ‘small towns’ are not unanimous within the research community and the national contexts in Europe are quite different. Small towns are heterogeneous regarding their spatial position: they may be included in urban regions, isolated in rural areas or part of a network of towns of a similar size. Across Europe, few studies have been devoted to small towns being part of a larger metropolitan area. Even less analysis has been carried out on how territorial cooperation can bring reciprocal benefits or challenges between metropolitan core and intermediate urban poles. Another debate is about the contribution of such towns to overall economic growth. The working group will analyse how European small towns, in all their diversity, face metropolitan development and its associated challenges.
The Working Group will be organised by Prof. Christophe Demazière (Univ. de Tours/France). For further information please refer to the Call for Membership.
Please send your application and short CV by 10.07.2020 to the ARL (correspondence: Lisa Keller): keller@arl-net.de.
For any further information please do not hesitate to contact us: Prof. Christophe Demazière: gustedt@arl-net.de.
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