ABSTRACT

Small British market or country towns are so commonplace, so normal, that they have avoided the analysis and concern of the geographer and planning theorist. In what follows I want to hint at a reconsideration of these environments which commonplace experience has made almost invisible. My reasons for doing so concern both a general regard for human development-as US poet Charles Olson noted, ‘Man is forever estranged to the degree that his stance toward reality disengages him from the familiar’1-and a specific concern about the current problems of these towns and their users. I believe that massive changes are affecting the towns and that new geographies, sociologies, and images of place are being manipulated with little public or professional comment.