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Rural development requires strong interaction between rural and urban areas. One facet of this interaction is the role that emerging towns play in serving as economic centres to the rural people surrounding them. Keeping other factors constant, the emergence of new towns plays a catalytic role in improving rural livelihoods. Given this reality, however, limited study has so far been made in the area to comprehend how emerging towns in many economic aspects enhance their surrounding rural communities´ livelihoods. This book, therefore, aims at critically accessing the aforementioned issue. To this end, one emerging town, and three surrounding rural hinterlands located at different distances from the town are selected. The analysis is done on the basis of the theoretical notions of the rural service centre strategy and Perroux´s growth pole theory. The results of the analysis should give a good insight to researchers to conduct further researches on similar topics, and should be especially useful to development actors and policy makers in taking actions and launching proper policy support interventions.

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Aradom Gebrekidan Abbay, MSc: Studied Rural Development at National University of Ireland-UCC. Lecturer at Mekelle University,Ethiopia.

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