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Estimates of resident satisfaction with public education have great utility in public administration, especially among decision makers in shrinking small communities. But such estimates are typically obtained via surveys, which are costly and often unreliable at high spatial resolutions given low response rates. Our study found that satisfaction with public schools among residents of small communities can be reasonably estimated at the community level using public data. Several models generalized adequately to unseen data—these models typically included the following covariates: state student assessment scores, school reorganizations, net open enrollment, and the cost of educational outcomes relative to neighboring districts. Our findings thus amount to a cost‐effective survey alternative for gauging satisfaction with public schools in small Iowa communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contributes to the understanding of socio-spatial trends and urban systems in Europe, with a specific focus on smaller settlements. First, a morphological delimitation of urban settlements as geographical base is used to identify the different settlement structures that characterise regions across Europe. Secondly, an analysis of population and GDP performances of NUTS 3 regions for the 29 countries of the European space (growth rates in 2001-2011) provides evidence of the variety of territorial phenomena that characterise smaller-settlement regions across Europe. Finally, the paper highlights the diversity and complexity of urbanisation structures in Europe and how general trends observed at larger scale are articulated locally according to prevailing structures of urbanisation. It shows the character of 'embeddedness' of smaller settlements within urban systems and territorial structures and how the socio-economic performances of smaller-settlement regions are defined by a combination of macro trends, national contextualisation, local dynamics and regional path dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite that small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) have been, and continue to be, a central part of the history of Europe, these places have largely been neglected by urban research. The ESPON TOWN project, on which this Special Issue builds, sought to redress this neglect performing a comparative analysis of their position and role across Europe. In this introductory paper we discuss some of the theoretical and methodological challenges when it came to identifying, studying and analysing SMSTs and the theoretical framework developed to inform our understanding of SMSTs. In particular, three themes are discussed. The first one is about the ontological problem of defining a town. Administrative, morphological and functional perspectives are considered. The second one reflects on a wide array of interpretative approaches about the relationship between towns and their regional context. The third one is about the thematic and multi-scalar perspectives that can characterise the policy approach to towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the values and purposes of reading associations, using textual records of their meetings and activities. Minutes and printed materials show the kinds of improvement that association members wished to facilitate. Alongside the pursuit of politeness and intellectual development, associations also paid attention to posterity, by commemorating the philanthropy and service of key members. Reading associations' philosophies of improvement were extrapolated to include their localities, which they believed would be improved by their presence. Their local environment was central to their self-identity, epitomising their belief in improvement as a community process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban history as a sub-discipline within history began to emerge in Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s. Attention initially focused heavily on the 19th century, but the Tudor and early Stuart town also soon attracted attention. Academic interest in the post-restoration and 18th-century urban world emerged a little more slowly, but the closing decades of the 20th century produced a mounting volume of research on the subject. Geoffrey Holmes was one of a group of post-war historians rewriting the history of Augustan Britain and re-establishing its significance in the longer-term development of the country. Though not a specialist urban historian, Holmes saw towns playing a vital part in shaping the character of the period. His research anticipated and inspired many of the facets of the rapidly-emerging historiography on the 18th-century town, intersecting with it in three particular areas. First, in demonstrating the important role played by towns, in particular as the home of four-fifths of the seats in the house of commons, in the broader political system; second, in highlighting the position of London at the hub of the Augustan world; and third in revealing the part played by towns, and especially those who inhabited them, in promoting social change at the same time as securing long-term political stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A test of 300 young students on individual modernity in China was carried out. The results indicated that there was a significant difference in individual modernity between the students from town and those from the countryside, as well as between males and females. There were also differences in individual modernity between each two of the levels of education. The students from town were more modern than those from the countryside. The males were more traditional than the females. With the rising educational level, the students’ traditionality will decrease and modernity will increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SummaryThe environmental psychology literature is reviewed as it focuses on children’s needs and experiences of towns and cities. Children are, we argue, the unacknowledged outsiders in the planning and management of urban areas; yet their enjoyment of and contribution to these areas is ignored at our peril. We discuss the importance of place attachment in the child’s developing personal identity; and the rich affordances of towns and cities for the child’s well-being and development, alongside an assessment of the evidence about the social and physical dangers that are more frequently stressed in popular discussions: these range from strangers and street crime, to traffic and pollution. Other related topics reviewed include: children’s favourite places and their role in the child’s self-regulation; the role of exploration of the local area as part of the child’s widening social and cognitive world; gender differences in patterns of exploration, and whether these might be changing; and examples of children’s involvement at more than a token level in the planning of their communities. The role of children as consumers in the local economy, and their use of public places, malls and plazas, has often been discussed as if they were inevitably socially problematic, and that their presence inevitably led to conflicts with adult users: yet we argue for a view of cityscapes which bring the different strands of society together. We conclude by discussing those Continental European city designs which foster the participation of children in the city’s social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]