ABSTRACT
The basic aim of this chapter is to discuss and assess different classifications and research approaches to small towns that take their social and economic functions into account, as well as relations with surrounding areas. The subject literature typically includes three types of approach to the classification of small towns: (1) the structural, (2) the location-related, and (3) the mixed. The structural approach allows for the grouping of towns from the point of view of the social, cultural, and economic functions they discharge. The location-related approach draws on the idea of there being a continuum between the centre and the periphery, with significance therefore attached to the location of a given small urban centre vis-à-vis large centres undergoing development to the greatest extent. A mixed classification making simultaneous use of the different approaches to research brings the most information to bear in regard to categories of urban locality, but their results may therefore prove hard to interpret, given the more-complex research procedure and number of possible classes, categories or types.
