Small towns as centres of rural micro-regions Small towns ensure services on the basic urban level, jobs, social contacts, occasions to travel outside the micro-region, services of the state administration and sometimes also an identity of the micro-region. Mass commuting from villages to small towns is usual for Czechia for a long time. Small towns in peripheral regions are of our interest. Character of these towns is given by the remoteness and bad accessibility from regional centers, by the lack of investments, problems of human capital etc. Nevertheless, the peripheral small towns remain the definite centers of their hinterlands because of the lack of competition in majority of cases. The second demographic transition leads to ageing of rural population. Sub-urbanization and counter-urbanization impacts on the population shift from big and medium cities to the countryside. In the process of globalization, the countryside including small towns plays a role of bearer of the traditional way of life. Transferring the jobs from productive to non-productive branches endangers the countryside by losing jobs in industry. Increasing value of leisure, environment, space, security etc. offers new chances for small towns.

Peripheral regions on the state border are among the most problematic areas of Czechia (the Czech Republic). The special case of the Javorník micro-region which is physically open to and historically anchored within Polish Lower Silesia was chosen as a study area. The question of possible substitution of a peripheral position in the national context by crossborder collaboration was posed, and it is shown that certain potential for this kind of collaboration exists, in the face of already-intensifying cross-border contacts, albeit with relations with Czech 'inland' areas remaining closer than the cross-border tendencies thus far.Keywords periphery • Czech-Polish borderland • rural development • Javorník

The paper analyses the position of small towns in the Czech settlement system. It deals with the definition of small towns, their geographical positions, demographic characteristics and functions in the national settlement system. A typology of small towns aimed at individual pillars of their sustainability is one of the results of the paper. The article discusses the position of small towns as part of the urban world and their position as a part of the countryside. It concludes that small towns are functionally important as rural centres. However, differences between urban and rural seem to be less important than differences among individual types of the Czech countryside (suburban, intermediate, inner periphery, borderland).

Small towns in rural areas: a neglected yet relevant research subjectThe idea of an urban-rural continuum -rather than a dichotomous understanding of city versus countryside -is widely accepted and has a long tradition in both rural and urban studies (for an early account of the then "folk-urban continuum": Miner, 1952). Yet, this consensus is in sharp contrast with the scientific landscape where a strong urban-rural dichotomy prevails. While urban studies predominantly deal with cities and metropolises, rural geography and sociology tend to focus on villages in their settlement studies. Therefore, while the poles of the settlement structure have been fairly well explored, smaller towns are neglected structurally by both disciplines (Vaishar and Zapletalová, 2009;Steinführer, 2016). In comparison with the bulk of knowledge about cities and ruralities, respectively, there is fairly little systematic research about urban life in small(er) towns or, as Bell and Jayne (2009, p. 690) called it, about "small urbanity". In handbooks of urban studies, for example, urbanity beyond metropolises is not a topic to which specific attention is paid. When taken into consideration by urban scholars at all (rarely), small towns tend to be treated as a specific type of urban settlement to which concepts and theories developed for and in cities are applied (e.g., Hannemann, 2004). Yet, this transfer remains a one-way street, as the existing small-town research does not seem to have contributed to genuine topics of urban research such as socio-spatial differentiation, social exclusion, or urban governance. Within rural studies, there is an ambiguous relationship to small towns: on the one hand, they are considered urban (and, thus, not rural) when, for example, investigating the service functions for their rural "hinterland" (e.g., Powe and Shaw, 2004). On the other hand, however, traditional concepts of rurality are applied and empirically analysed. This holds true, in particular, for the concepts of community and social capital. Strong mutual and personal bonds, considered a specific feature of this type of human settlement, are a major topic of small-town research (e.g., Mattson, 1997, Besser, 2009.A picture of non-knowledge -particularly in comparison with the bulk of studies on cities and metropolitan regions -does, however, prevail. The structural neglect of small towns by the social sciences is all the more astonishing as Europe is characterised by a dense network of small towns. Many of them are parts of metropolitan areas and often closely intertwined with a city's 1 Dr.

Bohemia and Moravia are historical lands, which constitute Czechia (together with a small part of Silesia) since the 10 th century. Two entirely diff erent sett lement systems can be identifi ed in Czechia: the centralistic Bohemian sett lement system surrounded by a ring of mountains, and the transitional and polycentric Moravian sett lement system. The two lands were physically divided by a border forest. Although they have belonged always to the same state, their autonomy was relatively high until the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. In 1948, a new administrative division was introduced, which did not respect the border between the two lands. Bohemia and Moravia kept their importance as diff erent cultural units only. The main research question addressed in this paper is how the Bohemian and Moravian identities are perceived by the people today and whether it makes any sense to consider the historical lands seriously when rethinking the idea of the Europe of regions.