Introduction

Urban and regional studies have undoubtedly garnered increased attention recently in the socialist countries. This chapter focuses on the concept of urbanization strategy, which entails the formulation of general principles and methods for developing a national settlement system. It details the basic premises underlying the formulation of urbanization concepts, revealing their main features and indicating their main lines of development. Regional conditions and problems naturally constitute the "environment" that has to be understood when dealing with urbanization, but they have not in themselves been at the center of interest in the survey. The management of urbanization depends to a large extent on understanding how the urbanization process relates to industrialization and modernization. All the socialist countries of Eastern Europe are dealt with, with the exception of Albania, where the inaccessibility of the literature and the language barrier have made inclusion impossible.