Refining the dichotomy Europe/Developing countries might also be interesting: building a more articulated typology of new towns, in which experiences in GB or France are compared to what hapened in countries like Singapore or Egypt for example, in order to both understand the variety of uses of the concept and some possible hidden convergences or common challenges

I think one of the theoretical typologies would be for towns that are under development in post-communist regions, such as those in Eastern European regions. China is also an interesting case. They are really post-socialist in practice but retain the state with "characteristics of socialism", as the government claims. The typology of post-communist cities and towns?

This would be an exciting question raised in the upcoming 4th Urban Space and Social Life Conference. www.4c5mstduio.org

We are experiencing a kind of forced urbanization from the state (government) in Nepal. The issues related to 'town', 'urban' and 'city' have largely been misunderstood. A foreign scholar visiting our country with a mind packed with globally (especially western) popular concepts on urban/city/town would surely get shocked after grasping the reality over here.

Amrit, very interesting. Please elaborate your observation on the different perspectives between the western views on city and the local views. It is excellent to bring in different views to my classes. Thanks.

Warm regards Ho Hon for your response. I'll be writing in this regard as soon as possible as I'm compiling and synthesizing more and more observations from my research field and hopefully my condensed result will be in my hand in about two weeks.

In india, famous new towns are state capitals, like chandigarh, bhubhaneshwar, gandhi nagar