The informational periphery: territory, logistics and people in the margins of a digital age

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines new configurations of the urban periphery in a digital age. It moves beyond current scholarship in urban and regional studies which points to the emergence of suburbia and informal settlements as the new urban periphery. The paper argues that while suburban growth has been a key force in the production of the urban periphery so far, the coming of a digital age breaks down the conventional conflation of urban edge with the urban periphery. The periphery in a digital age is located simultaneously across the geographic centre and edge, across material and digital urban worlds. The uneven, fragmented and disconnected nature of physical and digital infrastructures in the contemporary world has produced a far more fragmented and dispersed nature of the periphery that requires deeper examination and analysis.