One approach to urban areas emphasizes the existence of certain immutable relationships, such as Zipf's or Gibrat's Law. An alternative view is that urban change reflects individual responses to changing tastes or technologies. This paper examines almost 200 years of regional change in the U.S....

This chapter concentrates on institutional differences in France and Germany. The stability of the German institutional setting contrasts with the series of institutional reforms that have stretched over decades or even half a century in France. While in Germany transformation has taken the form...

The situation, development lines and perspectives of small and medium-sized towns in Germany and France are compared and similarities and differences within the central place systems and the spatial planning of both countries are discussed. With different approaches to definition, these towns...