ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the broad aspirations that may guide small town planning and, more specifically, the policy representations that can guide development and decisions about public services or resources. The nebulous concepts of place competitiveness, sustainability and resilience may provide some influence on policy in terms of focus. Whilst place competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience are potentially useful concepts around which a loose consensus can be formed, more specific policy concepts or policy representations are required when planning for small town change within specific places. Another policy representation, of importance in the past and now largely discredited, is the idea of small towns as 'growth poles'. A 'rural centres' policy does not imply a 'modification of the spatial structure of employment and population within a region', as in the case of 'growth poles'.
