Metropolitan Peripheries Research Articles

Planning vs Market-led? Identifying Urban-suburbs Transition Zones in Metropolitan Expansion: A Multi-source Data Fusion Framework

The rapid urbanization of developing countries has significantly transformed the spatial patterns of metropolitan peripheries. However, the measurement and identification of urban-suburbs interfaces continue to pose considerable challenges, particularly given the wide variability and gap in results obtained using different datasets. To address these issues, this study presents a fusion framework that integrates multi-source urban bigdata, robustly discerning the urban core zones (UCZ) and the urban-suburbs transition zones (USTZ) in metropolitan regions. Further, this framework categorizes types of USTZs based on their modes of expansion. We applied this framework to Chengdu, a rapidly urbanizing megalopolis in Western China, to compare the roles of planning and market forces in metropolitan expansion from 2011 to 2021. The results indicate that over the decade, the area of UCZ increased by 129.19%, while the USTZs also saw a substantial expansion of 37.10%. Planning-led USTZ (P-USTZ) accounted for a larger share (62.04%) than market-led USTZ (M-USTZ) (37.96%). P-USTZ primarily expanded southward along the arterial roads, exhibiting a more continuous and concentrated spatial pattern, while M-USTZ expanded mainly northward with their spatial pattern being more fragmented and segmented. The spatial development equilibrium among P-USTZ and M-USTZ varied significantly. M-USTZ lagged in urban construction, while P-USTZ experienced intrazonal differentiation, with its southern subregions notably lagging in population agglomeration relative to urban construction. These disparities highlight the spatial disequilibrium driven by planning and market forces in metropolitan expansion, reflecting the complex spatial dislocation between the inner metropolitans and the new metropolitans. The framework adopted in this study effectively identifies the spatial differentiation and disequilibrium arising from government planning and market development in metropolitan expansion, and it underscores the complex interplay between various actors in the spatial production and the shaping of behavior during the urbanization process.

The influence of residential location and public transit options on commuters’ intention to use travel apps for different travel purposes

While living in city centers is usually linked to higher accessibility levels, shorter travel times, and higher levels of public transit (PT) utilization, the opposite is true for residents of suburban areas. This assumption holds in metropolitan contexts, where central areas offer better accessibility and are associated with higher levels of PT use. In metropolitan peripheries, a large part of commuting is done on an interurban basis, so that the level of use of public transit can be linked to the supply and information available. This work aims to understand the conditions in terms of transit supply and land use, considering the most frequent trip, psychological variables, and the modal choice of commuters’ motorized modes, in the intention to use the new real-time multi-modal travel app, such as advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) for digital mobility-management assistance. A Structural Equation Model is developed to empirically test a sample of 768 respondents collected in two suburban corridors in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA). Finally, our findings indicate that residential location, mode choice, and trip complexity have a relevant influence on the intention to adopt travel apps. Male students belonging to Generation Y/Z are the most likely users of travel apps. Regardless of the reason, travel patterns associated with more complex (more transfers) and more frequent trips can reinforce the intention to use apps. Also, it is worth noting that students are frequent public transit users, and public transit is also related to trip complexity.

Beyond the Rhetoric of Revanchism Towards the Metropolitan Core: An Analysis of Symbolic Representations of Milan From Its Peripheries

Socio-political research has shown that in metropolitan peripheries, populist parties have gained significant support. This is because these parties capitalise on a widespread feeling of exclusion, leading to a revanchist social representation of affluent metropolitan centres. This article contributes to the debate on metropolitan dynamics by exploring the social representations of the centre–periphery relationship, showing how symbolic representations play a role in shaping codes of action and revanchism alone is insufficient to understand the core–periphery relationship. Four suburbs with similar socioeconomic characteristics in the functional urban area of Milan were selected. Milan is the most important Italian metropolis, and it has a relevant socio-political fracture. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to analyse the cultural meanings of living on the periphery among local leaders. The metropolitan centre is perceived as necessary, evoking ‘efficient’ representations; however, these peripheral contexts are meaningful places of belonging. This article shows that an analysis of the dynamics at work at the metropolitan level should consider peripheral contexts.

Mega-urbanization, territorial fragmentation and social inequality in the Global South: The case of Mexico city and its city-region

City-regions have become the new dominant form of urbanization in both developed and developing countries, comprising a polycentric network of multiple cities of assorted sizes. However, urbanization does not occur uniformly within the city-region, creating several types of territorial inequalities. This study argues that there is a lack of city-region studies in Latin America for analysing these internal inequalities, expressed, among other aspects, in fragmented land occupation, highly differentiated economic decentralisation, and marked social-urban-rural and urban-urban inequalities. The city-region territory represents a fragmented, divided territory in an urban-rural, social, and economic sense.The main findings of this study of Mexico City's city-region point to the fact that globalization dynamized the economic development of metropolitan zones and second-tier cities, yet that its effect on rural areas was limited. It has created a clear territorial distinction between its main urban and rural territories, with the latter effectively becoming poor regional peripheries. Economic advantages have favoured metropolitan areas through the decentralisation of manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services, excluding small cities and rural areas from this economic model. The last two are the clearest losers in this process since they are associated with places with the most obvious disadvantages and the most marked social inequalities. Rural areas have low productivity and incipient industrialisation, and expel the migrant population, whereas metropolitan peripheries have high levels of social marginalisation.

Entrepreneurial and modular urbanism in China: New cities and new areas in the 2000s

This article assesses the recent trend in cities across China toward building new towns, new areas, new districts, new cities and other urbanizing projects in suburban areas. We refer to these projects under the generic term “new city and new area” following the Mandarin usage ( xincheng xinqu) (hereafter NCNA). Such projects are commonly on the fringes of urban centers, have significant area size, and are multifunctional in character. Hundreds of NCNA projects have been undertaken in recent years, reshaping metropolitan regions and altering the nature of China’s urbanization. Overall, the NCNA phenomenon emerges within China’s broader transition to a market economy amid the persistence of state land tenure, a Party-based personnel assessment system motivating intense careerism among urban officials, and the need for local administrations to push land development further into metropolitan peripheries to sustain local accumulation. The paper offers two urgent contributions to the existing literature. First, it discusses a panoramic assessment of the pervasive NCNA phenomenon and proposes a four-part typology of projects: (1) new Alpha-cities, (2) middle-class enclaves, (3) techno-poles, and (4) themed cities. Second, we provide an analysis of the underlying political-economic forces driving their development and highlight the variegated development trajectories of so-called modular urbanism in the current day.

Identity and inclusion. The housing complexes made by the Chilean architect Luciano Kulczewski (1922-1956)

Luciano Kulczewski was a professional who played a key and distinctive role in the first half of the 20th century, a period considered as crucial for the development of Chilean architecture, since it is the moment that brought the advent of modernity to the country. One of the most eloquent illustrations in this regard is the corpus, that collects more than a dozen housing complexes aimed for the middle and the working classes. Today, we recognize in these solutions not just the fact that they are in sync with the web of social, political, cultural, and economic processes that characterized the beginnings of the past century in Chile, but that they also have, among their most notable merits, having been conceived in terms of what we would understand today by “inclusion”. This article seeks to investigate these parameters, which range from urban proposals - that approached the city in "inclusive" terms - inasmuch as they did not push for these housing proposals to be in the metropolitan peripheries - to more particular issues, such as the stylistic management of homes as a tool to serve identity causes, in order to achieve the integration of the user with their environment.

Tracking Urbanization and Exurbs: Migration Across the Rural-Urban Continuum, 1990-2016.

This paper summarizes annual migration patterns across the rural–urban continuum in the USA between 1990 and 2016. We introduce a modified rural–urban continuum classification, the Rural–Urban Gradient (RUG). The RUG holds metropolitan classification constant, effectively designates exurbs, and distinguishes central city core counties in major metropolitan areas from their suburbs and exurbs. The RUG is used to compare, over time and across regions, net migration, and migration efficiency using annual county-level data from the Internal Revenue Service. Results show how migration patterns correlated with changes in demographics and housing depending on counties’ location along the RUG. We also describe the extent to which rural migration flows converged in counties at metropolitan peripheries and concentrated in the South and West, thus shaping widening disparity across US rural contexts.

Celeiros da pobreza urbana: suplementação de renda e isolamento social em ambientes metropolitanos nos tempos pandêmicos

The metropolitan regions registered on March 19th 2020, 85.71% of deaths and 93.3% of occurrences of COVID-19, a percentage that persisted with few variations until May 18th 2020. The combination of high density, lack of urban infrastructure and labor market with a strong dependence on the informality demonstrated vulnerability of the metropolitan peripheries, from the point of view of the contagion of COVID-19. In this context, the implementation of policies of recomposition and supplementation of income is necessary to, at the same time, ensure the subsistence of families and facilitate the policies of social isolation.

Quality Criteria to Evaluate Performance and Scope of 2030 Agenda in Metropolitan Areas: Case Study on Strategic Planning of Environmental Municipality Management.

The United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Agenda brings new governance challenges to municipal environmental planning, both in large urban centres and in metropolitan peripheries. The opportunities of the new framework of action proposed by the United Nations (UN) and its integrative, global, and transversal nature constitute advances from the previous models of municipal management based on the Local Agenda 21. This text provides evidence to apply quality criteria and validated instruments of participatory evaluation. These instruments have been built on the foundation of evaluative research, a scientific discipline that provides rigour and validity to those decisions adopted at a municipal level. A case study focused on a metropolitan area serves as a field of experimentation for this model of the modernization of environmental management structures at a local level. Details of the instruments, agents, priority decision areas, methodologies, participation processes, and quality criteria are provided, as well as an empirically validated model for participatory municipal management based on action research processes and strategic planning that favours a shared responsibility across all social groups in the decision-making process and in the development of continuous improvement activities that are committed to sustainability. Finally, a critical comparison of weaknesses and strengths is included in light of the evidence collected.

Movilidades cotidianas y nuevos modos de habitar: Un análisis en y desde la periferia metropolitana

La distancia cada vez mayor que separa a los habitantes de las periferias metropolitanas de las oportunidades que ofrecen los centros urbanos posiciona a la movilidad cotidiana como un importante elemento de análisis y discusión para la comprensión integral de nuevas formas de habitar la metrópoli. A partir del trabajo de campo, que consistió en entrevistas semiestructuradas, recorridos de observación, y observación par­ticipante, el presente artículo analiza experiencias de movilidad cotidiana de habitantes de la periferia metropolitana de Morelia, Michoacán, México. Se argumenta que la movilidad no se limita a los desplazamientos origen/destino, puesto que en la búsqueda de los habitantes por satisfacer sus necesidades y deseos de movilizarse se entremezclan experiencias relacionadas con sus motivos, recursos, y sentidos, que además de conformar estrategias de movilidad moldean nuevos modos de habitar.

Políticas sobre la tierra y la deuda. Variaciones sobre Gaia.

Los originarios, llamados “indígenas” por una generalidad blanca, imperial, colonial y republicana, miran la Tierra y extraen su fuerza de ella sin desvelar sus secretos. Habitar como originario supone tener como referencia primordial la relación con la Tierra en la que se nace y en la que se fabrica el nicho vital, no importa si su localización es en la selva, en la aridez de los desiertos, en las faldas andinas o en las comunidades de las periferias metropolitanas. Lo que sitúa a esos cuerpos es su condición de formar comunidad ligada a un lugar específico que será inmanente a su constitución existencial. Los originarios no se sienten ciudadanos como sujetos de derecho que forman parte de una población controlada por un Estado, sino cuerpos encarnados a la Tierra que solo existen bajo la forma del plural de la palabra “Pueblos”. Los pueblos y los cuerpos de los originarios son parte de la Tierra. La separación entre la comunidad y la Tierra supone la separación entre las personas de derecho y sus cuerpos, operación central ejecutada por la historia del Estado para crear poblaciones administradas. Esta es la calle de mano única que transforma al originario en “ciudadano pobre” o “pobre sin tierra”, lo que obliga a los cuerpos a vender su subsistencia para enriquecer a los nuevos dueños de la tierra. Separar a los originarios de su relación con el nicho vital, de su relación política y social que vive de la tierra, es una operación de los Estados trascendentes que se ligan hoy a las formas del capitalismo financiero, para transformar a los llamados “indios” en pobres, porque sin pobres no hay capitalismo.

Metropolitan peripheries or the issue of revitalisation of cities

Metropolitan peripheries or the issue of revitalisation of cities

The new planetary suburban frontier

ABSTRACT A decade ago, Roger Keil launched the “Global Suburbanisms” project, a large, transnational collaborative investigation of the intricate patterns and processes reshaping metropolitan peripheries around the world. In this commentary, I consider how Keil’s project offers fresh insights on the speed and spatiality of global evolution as well as current debates between postcolonial urbanism and planetary urbanization.

¿Seleccionan las ciudades a su población? Tendencias de selectividad residencial en las cabeceras metropolitanas andaluzas

After the generalization of metropolitan processes and the recent specialization in the new services economy, inner-cities are undergoing a process of socio-demographic reconfiguration, according to which certain groups are attracted to them, while others are progressively displaced to the Metropolitan peripheries, extrapolating the spatial social division on a metropolitan scale. The objective of the present work is to delve into the role played by the dynamics of residential mobility in this process, in order to know if inner-cities select in some way the inhabitants. To do this we will use the data from the 2011 Census for Andalusia, of which we own a particular explotation wich include a delimitation of the metropolitan areas that allows defining different residential mobility flows with origin and destination in the cities. Our objective is to analyze, through two multinomial logistic regression models, the propensity of individuals, according to their characteristics, to perform each of the movements contemplated, in order to approach the factors of attraction and repulsion of inner-cities. Among the main findings of the work we show that, although incipient, already exist trends that allow us to talk about a certain inner-cities residential selectivity.

De la hipoteca al desahucio: ejecuciones hipotecarias y vulnerabilidad territorial en España

Foreclosures promoted by financial institutions which can lead to housing eviction have multiplied in Spain since the beginning of the economic crisis. The growth of the mortgage market in a context of deregulation is at the origin of a process that now thousands of families from their homes annually and reflects the dispossession associated with capitalist crises. The aim of this paper is to analyze the growth and spatial distribution of accorded mortgages and foreclosures filed by creditors in 2001-2014. It is based on data published by the “General Council of the Judiciary”, which allow its evolution over the period and prove the deepening of uneven geographical development. The results confirm its highest intensity in the territories that took greater risks for their real estate specialization and metropolitan peripheries where most vulnerable social groups live.

Desplazados y ¿olvidados?: contradicciones respecto de la satisfacción residencial en Bajos de Mena, Puente Alto, Santiago de Chile

As a result of the housing expansion into metropolitan peripheries, where subsidiary social housing policies play a fundamental role, there is a sustained occupation of urban limits in cities such as Santiago. Bajos de Mena, in Puente Alto, is not only characterized by its large size and stage-by-stage construction, but also because of the various social and functional problems associated with the buildings, turning this space into a housing paradigm of urban segregation and marginalization. In order to correct these tensions, the Chilean State has designed various methods for intervention through the implementation of a series of programs and projects focused on the areas of education, health care and other social services. This study of residential satisfaction, carried out in four subdivisions of the area under review, questions the concepts of displacement and neglect, which are used to describe the socio-spatial consequences in residential areas such as the one addressed here. This paper also questions the effect of the real-estate market on the production of residential property in Chile.

Producing Sicily as Europe: Migration, Colonialism and the Making of the Mediterranean Border between Italy and Tunisia

ABSTRACTThis article studies the relationship between the production of the Mediterranean border between Italy and Tunisia, and Italy’s internal geographies of uneven development, commonly known as the 'Southern Question’. Through a study of contemporary Tunisian migration to Sicily in relation to turn of the 20th century Sicilian southward migration to French Protectorate Tunisia, it claims that Sicilians were made into Italians and Europeans through their relationship with Tunisians, and that Sicily was produced as Europe through the progressive demarcation and fortification of the Mediterranean border. Drawing on literature on colonial socio-spatial differentiation, internal colonialism and postcolonial analyses of migration to Europe, this article reframes current debates around the ‘integration’ of migrants as part of longer-term questions around the incorporation of ‘difference’ into the body-politic of the nation—questions that were historically posed in relation to colonial subjects and populations of metropolitan peripheries. Thus, the article considers current debates around the incorporation of migrants as part of a longer-term process of definition of the ‘civilizational’ boundaries of Europe.

Trash and the Ends of Infrastructure

This essay examines the relationship between uneven economic development and the differential distribution of trash. Drawing from fictional genres of urban discontent and photography of metropolitan peripheries, this article considers how aesthetic engagement with garbage has been integral for imagining the ends of infrastructure. The cultural transformation in the treatment of waste crystallizes around two moments. The first, roughly coterminous with literary modernism, marks the formalization of waste infrastructures in Western cities. Secondly, during the second wave of urbanization, the traffic of waste became a transnational and increasingly privatized affair; the garbage dump, as in Tekin’s Tales from Garbage Hills , became newly available as the ground of contemporary artworks.

Sobre lugares de crimes e castigos: periferia e imaginário colonial

The discussion about imaginary promotes an approach with values, its subjective and affective mechanisms in media texts of different genres such as news and movies. In the paper the relevance of cronotopo category is crafted to address the specific way of dealing with events in peripheral areas, while seeking to subvert the premise of objectivity in its production. In the case of journalistic news and national films on national and metropolitan peripheries there is an exploration of spatiality as places that repeatedly evoke an alleged crimes and prescribing corresponding punishment. As a result, we find the precedence of the colonial imagination as a necessary mediation and allocation source of meaning in media texts, which allows for a check to its uniqueness and its apparent linearity.

The dynamics of metropolitan peripheries: Ongoing changes in residential development in the North-Western corridor of the Madrid region

This paper examines the ongoing transformations of residential development underway in the North-Western corridor of the Madrid metropolitan region, which are a consequence of a deconcentration process that has affected the capital of Spain over several decades. It also outlines the historical forces that have paved the way for the contemporary suburbanisation process. This part of the Madrid region, traditionally used for animal husbandry or leisure activities for wealthy social classes, was later occupied by second homes. In recent years we have observed a transformation of these second homes into principal residences, together with a construction of brand-new primary residences. This is linked to the rise in housing prices occurring in central Madrid, which has fostered a centrifugal movement of population. This process has particularly affected single-family housing.