SMALL CITIES AND TOWNS IN GLOBAL ERA: Emerging Changes and Perspectives

In last two decades or so, the process of globalization has stirred up societies in various ways. The new market systems, emerged under the new global regime, have cut across the countries. This mega-transformation has made significant impact on conventionally existing cities and towns. A few cities across the countries are emerging as the hubs of flow of capital and new technologies under the ever-growing information technologies and labour markets. In this process, traditional centres of regional production and distribution of goods and services are getting reorganized or disintegrated.
In the above context, there is a strong need of understanding the impact of such changes on Indian urban settlements, more so the small cities and towns which have remained neglected in urban research. With this objective, the present volume, based on a seminar held at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS ), brings forth more than a dozen papers by leading researchers in urban area. The selected papers mainly fall under two categories: those focusing on the global agenda and its possible impact on urban settlements, and those which detail out the emerging changes and their impact on socio-cultural and economic life situations of citizens of specific cities (and towns) under their focus. Or, in other words, the first set of papers is more based on theoretical underpinnings and emerging perspectives on changing small cities and towns of India, while the second group of papers presents case studies on such settlements.
Being a modest attempt towards needed research in this very neglected area, it is expected that the volume will inspire the future researchers to make systematic efforts in grasping the rapid changes under the present global era and their impact on thousands of small cities and towns of India.

Contents
1 Small Cities and Towns in Contemporary Urban Theory, Policy and Praxis / Swapna Banerjee-Guha
2 Emerging Perspectives on Small Cities and Towns / Annapurna Shaw
3 ‘Citiness’ and ‘Urbanity’/ R.N. Sharma
4 Culture of Small-Town India / Rowena Robinson
5 The Academic Bias against Towns / Rajesh Gill
6 Small Towns, their Limited Resourcing Options and Equity Deficits / Biraj Swain
7 Industrial Dispersal and Clustering in India during Post-Reform Period and the Role of Small and Medium Towns / Abdul Shaban and Sanjukta Sattar
8 Financing and Access to Basic Amenities in Small and Medium Towns of India under Globalised Regime / Debolina Kundu
9 Urban Development and Small Towns in Punjab / R.S. Sandhu and Jasmeet Sandhu
10 The Changing Face of Urban India / K.N. Bhatt and Lalit Joshi
11 The City of Terror / Abdul Shaban
12 Ethnic Conflicts in a Small City / Nikhlesh Kumar
13 Morphological and Demographic Changes in Port Blair Town and their Impact / Umesh Kumar and D.N. Pandey
14 Complexities in Growth of Tura Town in Meghalaya / Sumit Mukherjee and Amlan Biswas
15 Urban Governance and Planning in Karnataka / V. Anil Kumar
16 Munger: A Bazaar Town in Decline / Sheema Fatima