Over recent years, socio-economic restructuring has tended to undermine the
tradition al functions of small rural towns. Empirical evidence also suggests
that significant proportion s of economic transactions are carried out through
the region al, national an d international economy. Establishing the degree to
which a settlement is integrated into its locality provides an indication of its
contemporary function s an d potential role in rural development. In this paper,
reliable measures of economic linkages are developed, and it is shown that the
strength of local integration is a function of the existing economic structure
of the town as well as its proximity to metropolitan centres.
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