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"In government administration and leadership, rural community leaders face unique challenges in delivering public services including (but not limited to) education, health care, and public safety. Meanwhile residents who live in smaller and more isolated rural settings often face greater difficulties accessing provisions and services or commuting to work, among other economic development challenges. These factors may affect a community's resiliency to and recovery from shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Local Government Administration in Small Town America devotes some overdue scholarly attention to the governance and administration of public programs in small towns and rural communities in the United States. The chapter contributors to this volume analyze some of the unique challenges rural communities face, as well as the policy tools that their governments employ to address them. The book explores ways that small town governments collaborate with one another, the state, and the federal government, and examines how local government officials use knowledge of people and place to improve policy performance. The chapters are designed to provide cases and strategies for students and practitioners in public administration to use in a small town environment, while also considering a community's distinctive social and political culture which determines how local political leaders and government practitioners might respond to demands and challenges they face. Local Government Administration in Small Town America is an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students studying local government, as well as for rural practitioners navigating evolving challenges unique to their communities"--

Historically otkhodnichestvo in Russia was designed as the temporary departure of peasants from their permanent residences in villages to earn money in regions where industry and agriculture were well developed. Preconditions for the development of this phenomenon included rural overpopulation and inability to provide sustenance for peasants' households only through local agricultural activities and homecrafts. Nowadays otkhodnichestvo can be defined as employment outside home municipality, forced by the lack of jobs or by the low level of wages in places of otlhodniks' permanent residence, where they return on a regular periodic basis. Expert estimates of the number of otkhodniks in nowadays Russia vary from 3 million to 15 million households. Such a large-scale phenomenon as otkhodnichestvo (despite its "invisibility" to the state) causes a heavy impact on the quality characteristics of different levels of societies serving as objects of public administration and subjects of local government. But neither the federal level of power nor the regional one fully comprehend the significance of the phenomenon. Sometimes it goes the other way round for the local government, which is the closest one to people: municipalities could be divided into two groups of those who detect otkhodniks and those who don't. But even in those cases when local governments are able to notice otkhodniks it, in fact, cannot be said that otkhodniks are under permanent scrutiny of municipal administrations as they are still mainly on their own. Research into the present day interaction between otkhodnichestvo and viability of municipalities is far from being complete and exhaustive. This paper outlines the interconnection between contemporary otkhodnichestvo and some political, economic and socio-cultural processes at the local level. Influence of otkhodnichestvo on the political and economic life and socio-cultural processes at the local level is of ambivalent nature, which does not allow to unambiguously evaluate if the impact brought on by it is functional or dysfunctional for municipalities. Development of otkhodnichestvo is caused by complex socio-economic reasons and it entails complex implications for the municipalities, to which the phenomenon is immanent. This paper consists of 3 sections, which describe political, economical and socio-cultural relevance of otkhodnichestvo to small towns which are at some level exposed to the phenomenon. The paper draws on various examples of this incoherent impact on small towns, situated in the non-black earth zone regions, where otkhodnichestvo was historically developed.

China'sde jureurbanization level more than doubled in the five years between 1982 and 1987, jumping from 20.8 per cent to 46 6 per cent (Table 1). The Chinese State Statistical Bureau (SSB) officials explained that this unprecedented increase was largely the result of an increase in the number of urban towns since the mid 1984 relaxation of criteria for urban town designation.1 This is, however, only a partial explanation. My own analysis shows that much of the gain in the town population was in fact due to the post-1984 governing system of"town administering village" (zhen guan cun). Many newly designated urban towns (and some existing towns as well) have enlarged their administrative territories to include a huge number of agricultural residents in their official urban population. Most of these rural persons, however, judged by strict occupational and residential criteria, should not have been counted as urban population. The inclusion of many agricultural persons in the urban sector since mid 1984 has thus greatly exaggerated the actual urbanization level.2

8 p. ; International audience ; In India, the limited impact of the decentralisation reform on urban drinking water accessibility poses new questions both technical and institutional, especially in small indian municipalities. Based on empirical data from a recent doctoral research, we will analyse the water service management of four small towns in eastern Uttar Pradesh, a poor state in northern India, where expectation of improvement are strong. Beyond their singularity, each of these towns is facing the same kinds of water services problems and governance needs. Their comparison is relevant to highlight the general process of decentralisation, and at the same time, to underline the permanent role of the state in water accessibility. For that, interviews have been done with users, political leaders and government officials appointed at different levels (local, regional and state. Our aim is to give an idea of the municipal building of these small towns and its impact on water service.

8 p. ; International audience ; In India, the limited impact of the decentralisation reform on urban drinking water accessibility poses new questions both technical and institutional, especially in small indian municipalities. Based on empirical data from a recent doctoral research, we will analyse the water service management of four small towns in eastern Uttar Pradesh, a poor state in northern India, where expectation of improvement are strong. Beyond their singularity, each of these towns is facing the same kinds of water services problems and governance needs. Their comparison is relevant to highlight the general process of decentralisation, and at the same time, to underline the permanent role of the state in water accessibility. For that, interviews have been done with users, political leaders and government officials appointed at different levels (local, regional and state. Our aim is to give an idea of the municipal building of these small towns and its impact on water service.

8 p. ; International audience ; In India, the limited impact of the decentralisation reform on urban drinking water accessibility poses new questions both technical and institutional, especially in small indian municipalities. Based on empirical data from a recent doctoral research, we will analyse the water service management of four small towns in eastern Uttar Pradesh, a poor state in northern India, where expectation of improvement are strong. Beyond their singularity, each of these towns is facing the same kinds of water services problems and governance needs. Their comparison is relevant to highlight the general process of decentralisation, and at the same time, to underline the permanent role of the state in water accessibility. For that, interviews have been done with users, political leaders and government officials appointed at different levels (local, regional and state. Our aim is to give an idea of the municipal building of these small towns and its impact on water service.

114 pages ; This literature review aims at summarizing the state of knowledge related to small urbanised settlements. The significance of researching these localities can be inferred from the fact that a growing share of urban population lives in such agglomerations with a population above 10,000 and below 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants. This fact is not limited to India and a large share of the urban population worldwide lives in small and medium cities, which are understudied. The same dearth of research applies to the Indian context, as will be evident in this review, despite the importance of the resilience of an urban system comprising a large number of small towns and the diversity of these settlements in terms of their economic base and their social structure. This literature review is structured around five themes: A) the first section lays out issues related to estimating the magnitude and sources of demographic growth in order to infer the contribution of small towns to urban dynamics; B) the second section on Small Towns: Sources of Growth explores the economic processes supporting the expansion of small towns, and debates the dominant vision of the relationship between urbanization and growth, as explained by the New Economic Geography; C) the third section focuses on the transformation of small town economies and social structures while examining practices of entrepreneurship, circulation of labour, social mobility as well as caste and gender inequalities; D) the fourth section on Land and territorial transformations focuses on the relation between property and entrepreneurship; and E) the last section on Governance makes sense of the literature on decentralization, government schemes, governance and the political economy of small towns. This review constitutes one of the steps undertaken within the Subaltern Urbanization in India project (www.suburbin.hypotheses.org) to bring back to the fore the research on small towns.

114 pages ; This literature review aims at summarizing the state of knowledge related to small urbanised settlements. The significance of researching these localities can be inferred from the fact that a growing share of urban population lives in such agglomerations with a population above 10,000 and below 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants. This fact is not limited to India and a large share of the urban population worldwide lives in small and medium cities, which are understudied. The same dearth of research applies to the Indian context, as will be evident in this review, despite the importance of the resilience of an urban system comprising a large number of small towns and the diversity of these settlements in terms of their economic base and their social structure. This literature review is structured around five themes: A) the first section lays out issues related to estimating the magnitude and sources of demographic growth in order to infer the contribution of small towns to urban dynamics; B) the second section on Small Towns: Sources of Growth explores the economic processes supporting the expansion of small towns, and debates the dominant vision of the relationship between urbanization and growth, as explained by the New Economic Geography; C) the third section focuses on the transformation of small town economies and social structures while examining practices of entrepreneurship, circulation of labour, social mobility as well as caste and gender inequalities; D) the fourth section on Land and territorial transformations focuses on the relation between property and entrepreneurship; and E) the last section on Governance makes sense of the literature on decentralization, government schemes, governance and the political economy of small towns. This review constitutes one of the steps undertaken within the Subaltern Urbanization in India project (www.suburbin.hypotheses.org) to bring back to the fore the research on small towns.

The following are photographs from my perspective as an insider/outsider in a rural midwestern village. I would characterise Selma as a place of traditional sex roles, conservative politics, racial/ethnic bigotry, Christian fundamentalism, and a devastated economy. I would also characterise Selma as the place which has most strongly formed my identity, since I lived there for 19 years among my entire extended family.