The purpose of this article is to classify the regional economic types and development dynamics of small towns in suburb Beijing by applying the classification methods developed by Nelson's method and Location Quotient method into 183 small towns in Beijing.Four types of small towns are thus identified,including urban agriculture dominated towns,manufacturing dominated towns,service industry dominated towns and comprehensive type towns with balanced economic development.Within the environment of geographical information system,the spatial distribution pattern of four types of small towns with their evolution trend is analyzed.The results indicate that four types of small towns have obvious'core-periphery'spatial structure but with different functional orientations and evolution mechanisms.Based on this,the different development strategies for each type of small towns are summarized,providing a scientific reference for the differentiating planning and development strategies of these small towns.
