ABSTRACT
The roles that small and medium-size cities may play in regional development processes and strategies depend on the context in which they are being considered. During the 1960s and early 1970s, it was common to analyze spatial development processes in terms of a hierarchical spatial diffusion of innovations. This chapter presents the policy implications of this orientation is followed by evidence suggesting that this hierarchical diffusion paradigm has lost much of its validity, at least with respect to more economically developed countries. It discusses some implications of the newly emerging spatial division of labor, with particular emphasis on consequences for small and medium-size cities. The higher growth rates observed in the smaller metropolitan areas resulted from migration from still smaller urban and rural communities, rather than from moves away from the larger metropolitan regions. The early decentralization technologies occurred in the same areas as the improvements associated with the Industrial Revolution, namely, power, machines, and transportation.
