Peri-urban Spaces Research Articles

Contesting the Anticipated Infrastructural City: A Grounded Analysis of Silk Road Urbanization in the Multipurpose Port Terminal in Chancay, Peru

A new private port and logistics complex is under construction in the city of Chancay, located north of Lima, Peru, as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) promising to change life in the city while expanding a Sino-centric globalized economy and Peru’s reach within it. Through a series of interviews conducted between 2020 and 2022 and document analysis, we seek to offer a grounded theorization of how the BRI, as an exemplar of infrastructure-led urbanization, interweaves with broader sociospatial and socionatural transformations, affecting the present and future of the places where it materializes. By using the concept of the infrastructural city we show how the combination of port and logistics infrastructures with spatial interventions in periurban space is guiding contemporary urbanization, resulting in the formation of a new, amorphous city that has as its defining characteristic the domination of infrastructure over urban life, eradicating prior functions and marginalizing local grievances to facilitate the creation of a privatized enclave for international trade. Our analysis provides insights into the intricate and multifaceted geographies of emerging Chinese-sponsored infrastructural strategies, the hopes and struggles that contextually shape them, and the potentially distinctive and contested urban features of the anticipated infrastructural cities yet to come.

For a method for evaluating the economic integration of peri-urban space. Case study Mitidja of Algiers, Algeria

The peri-urban area poses a complex challenge, acknowledged for its diverse morphologies and temporalities. This article aims to provide a tool for understanding this area better and to assess the integration or exclusion of the Mitidja peri-urban area in the territorial dynamics of the Algiers metropolitan area. Geomatics and multi-criteria decision support tools, employing the AHP method and geographic information systems, were utilized. The analysis assessed the relative economic contribution considering variables like distance, population, industry, trade, and services. Results revealed significant economic roles played by certain peri-urban municipalities, challenging preconceived notions about their limited economic impact and exclusion from the Algiers metropolitan area. The research analysis clearly shows that peri-urbanization is constantly expanding, with peri-urban municipalities evolving under the shadow of the economic, social and environmental transformations of the Algiers metropolitan region.

Implications of peri-urban land reform programs on urban land markets: a case study of Harare, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe implemented the Fast-Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) in the year 2000. This program has had far-reaching implications on urban development, especially on urban land markets in cities and towns. This paper highlights the implications of the land reform program on urban land markets, using Harare as a case study. The paper is based on document review (policy, academic and development literature) and interviews with key informants with experience and knowledge of the land reform and its associated implications on urban land markets. Our analysis demonstrates that the land reform process in peri-urban spaces was complex and largely driven by political interests. The land reform process distorted the urban planning processes, leading to disparities in the land markets. Such disparities include informal and uncontrolled processes of accessing land and, ultimately, rapid development of informal settlements in the city. Political elites and land barons took advantage of the land reform program extorting money from desperate home-seekers. We conclude that the distortion of urban land markets by politically driven land reform processes negatively affects sustainable urban development. Overall, the paper makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on land reforms and peri-urban development in Africa, demonstrating the complex and multidimensional implications of land reform programs on peri-urban land markets. Based on the study findings, the paper provides a set of policy recommendations aimed at improving the effectiveness and equity of land reform programs in African peri-urban areas.

The ‘peri-urban turn’: A systems thinking approach for a paradigm shift in reconceptualising urban-rural futures in the global South

With the rapid pace of urbanization, urban sprawl has become a prevalent phenomenon, particularly in the global South, leading to the emergence of peri-urban spaces where rural-urban interfaces occur. These peri-urban areas exhibit dynamic and continuous interactions among social, economic, and environmental systems, offering valuable insights for fostering resilient futures. However, this aspect remains largely unexplored in current research due to a lack of innovative methodological approaches that effectively capture the complementarities, potentialities, and contestations inherent in the dynamics of peri-urban areas. We contend that peri-urbanisation needs to be reconceptualized as an alternative socio-spatial framework that extends the predominantly Eurocentric discourse on counterurbanisation, making it more inclusive of the emerging urban-rural transformations in the global South. By doing so, we can better understand and address the complex dynamics and challenges associated with peri-urban areas and develop strategies to foster resilience in these contexts.

Horizontal and vertical inequity of multi-modal healthcare accessibility in the aging Japan in the post-COVID era: a GIS-based approach

ABSTRACT Evaluating the inequity of healthcare accessibility across demographic groups in the post-COVID era is of critical importance for an aging society like Japan – it helps to achieve better social equity via distributing healthcare resources in health planning and policy making. Our study contributes to the first post-covid evaluation of multi-modal healthcare accessibility in Tokyo, Japan, the most populated metropolis in the world. A further novelty goes to the multi-dimensional examination of the inequity of healthcare accessibility (i.e. hospitals) by public transit, driving and walking – the horizontal inequity across urban space and the vertical inequity across three demographic groups (the young, adult and elderly) through network analysis, spatial accessibility analysis and inequity indexing. We find that low healthcare access areas mainly appear in the peri-urban space as well as regions less covered by public transit. Compared to the adult group, the elderly group experiences significant inequity of healthcare access particularly in the peri-urban areas where driving is the dominant transport mode to access healthcare facilities. We provide timely evidence to the Japanese government and health authorities to have a holistic and latest understanding of multi-modal healthcare access across different demographic groups in the post-COVID era.

Morphometric Indicators for the Definition of New Territorial Units in the Periurban Space: Application to the Metropolitan Area of Valencia (Spain)

New territorial units resulting from urban sprawl processes constitute a major challenge for territorial planning. The aim of this paper is to analyze periurban spaces, focusing on the delimitation and characterization of the urban units arising from urban sprawl processes. The delimitation derives from fractal analysis, where urbanized space is used to detect the limits of the units. The characterization starts with the calculation of eight different indicators, using Geographic Information Systems tools. PCA is used to obtain different dimensions of the urban sprawl phenomenon. Finally, a cluster analysis has been applied to establish a typology of territorial units and facilitate the comparative analysis. The methodology is applied to a case study, the metropolitan area of Valencia. Results show six groups of urbanized spaces, which present different types of urban sprawl structures with different necessities. This applied research can be useful for the spatial planning of the periurban spaces, insofar as it allows the identification of supra-municipal or infra-municipal areas, where it will be possible to improve infrastructures, facilities, or green infrastructure, to empower secondary urban nuclei and to create new inter-municipal cooperation and governance formulas. In addition, the results can constitute a non-administrative territorial basis for the calculation of land occupation indicators that are often used as thresholds for the creation of new residential spaces in regulatory planning documents.

Belling the cat: Designing collective action institutions for natural resource management in the peri-urban interface

Peri-urban spaces are experiencing tremendous growth in the Global South, which in turn has fuelled a suite of environmental and natural resource management challenges, including inequitable access to and conflicts over natural resources, and the existence of institutional lacunae. Against this backdrop, we examine how scholars study collective action institutions around natural resource management in peri-urban spaces, with a regional focus on South Asia, and present its implications for institutional design and development in peri-urban contexts. In order to do so, we use ‘organic institutions’ and ‘pragmatic institutions’– a type of institutional classification grounded in the origin of institutions, as a conceptual entry point. We find that less is known about the role of organic institutions in enabling collective action around natural resource management in peri-urban spaces, even though their understanding is key for efforts at building effective pragmatic institutions. The paper concludes that practitioners working in peri-urban spaces should invest resources into understanding underlying social differences and developing strategies to mobilise social groups, by developing an understanding of organic institutions in peri-urban spaces.

Revisiting periurban water (in)security in South Asia

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified periurban development as one of the major drivers of climate risk on vulnerable communities. At the same time, ‘grand challenges’ such as the Covid pandemic and urban–rural contestations create a new imperative for renewed attention to issues of periurban water insecurity by drawing attention to living conditions in periurban spaces where people live in crowded and often informal settlements with inadequate access to safe water. Understanding periurban water insecurity requires paying attention to the dynamic processes of change characterising periurban spaces that make access to water in periurban spaces uncertain and fluctuating. Rather than focus on quantitative indicators of periurban water insecurity or assume that reclassification of jurisdiction status will improve periurban water security, action research with robust partnerships across academia, government and civil society organisations should inform approaches to improve water governance in periurban spaces.

Land politics and settlers’ responses to land tenure under threat in emerging peri-urban spaces in Zimbabwe

Drawing on the case study of Caledonia peri-urban settlement in Zimbabwe, this study presents the complex struggles and responses undertaken by settlers to assert their access, utilization, and rights to land for settlement. Employing qualitative methodologies including 50 in-depth interviews, participant observations, key informant interviews, and document analysis, the study reveals the lived experiences of vulnerable peri-urban settlers when faced with challenges posed by expanding local authorities and land acquisitions orchestrated by influential elites. Grounding our analysis in the theoretical framework of insurgent citizenship, this study challenges the notion of passive vulnerability among poor urbanites or settlers and illuminates their capacity to design protective mechanisms against threats to their land tenure. In the context of Caledonia, vulnerable settlers employed a range of strategies such as political rent-seeking, legal action, civil disobedience, and invoking religious symbolism to safeguard their land rights. Through these actions, we uncover a complex interplay between settlers’ agency and the emerging dynamics of authority, revealing not only the proliferation of competing claims but also the emergence of novel forms of power that shape access and control over coveted urban resources, particularly land. Given the complexities of land politics in Africa’s peri-urban, more studies will deepen understanding of dynamics shaping land access, privatisation, commodification and how such transformations are reconfiguring the political economy of peri-urban spaces.

‘Emerging forms of spatialised and socialised authority’ among ‘tenure-insecure peri-urbanites’ in African peri-urban spaces

This paper explores the ‘emerging forms of spatialised and socialised authority’ adopted by tenure-insecure peri-urbanites to secure coveted land in African peri-urban spaces. The paper demonstrates that tenure-insecure peri-urbanites are increasingly utilising various formal and informal institutions – ‘emerging forms of spatialised and socialised authority’, in the form of state functionaries, political party allegiance, traditional leaders, cooperatives, lobbying groups, legal courts, and religion and the occult to access and secure land in African peri-urban spaces. The review demonstrates how land remains of economic, social and emotional importance among tenure-insecure peri-urbanites. It further indicates that tenure-insecure peri-urbanites are not passive but ‘nimble-footed and responsive’, as they find ways to secure land by drawing on various normative orders like the courts and sometimes through evasion, patronage, performance and other means of conviviality. The paper also highlights the complex power dynamics characterising peri-urban areas and underscores the need for a nuanced understanding of the multiple actors involved in land governance. The paper recommends the need for effective and inclusive mechanisms of access and security over land to balance the interests of diverse actors and promote the rights of tenure-insecure peri-urbanites in peri-urban spaces. Overall, the paper helps to broaden the scope of actors that need to be engaged in the planning and governance of peri-urban spaces in the age of complex peri-urbanisation processes.

How does community food growing build community bonds? Insights from grassroots visual storytelling

ABSTRACT Community food growing (CFG) builds community bonds and placemaking through emotional attachments. This process has been illuminated by grassroots visual storytelling, whereby CFG participants made short video stories about their experiences. The stories inspired community-building for better futures so as to encourage greater support for and participation in CFG. These stories were analysed to illuminate the social basis and roles of CFG. Participants” stories highlight some key aspects, namely: solidaristic mutual-aid relationships around food-growing, cooking, eating and distribution; cooperative, creative, adaptive capacities for collectively responding to common difficulties; empathetic bonds among participants across various differences (such as ethnicity, age and prior skills); a food culture strengthening participants’ knowledge and supply of healthy food; and the social-organisational skills for facilitating and inspiring those group practices. As these video stories show, community-building processes are radically hopeful: they acknowledge difficult issues and emotions, alongside aspirations for a different future. Together those roles helped to strengthen place-attachments for more participants. By screening the video stories, moreover, participants have made the process more visible and attractive. This provides a stronger basis to identify exemplary practices, extend their strengths, spread the societal benefits and attract greater commitments. Although many urban and peri-urban spaces are potentially available for expanding CFG, successful initiatives depend on social-organisational skills to facilitate self-confidence, empathetic cooperation and place attachments among volunteers. Support measures from Local Authorities are generally fragmented across several policy areas and so warrant integration. Community-building skills can provide a focus for such policy integration around the multiple roles and benefits of CFG initiatives.

A tale of two rivers: development, destruction, and despair in Ongata Rongai, Kenya.

Ongata Rongai is a rapidly growing peri-urban space in Nairobi Metropolitan, Kenya. The last 10 years have seen exponential population growth and building development leading to overcrowding and pressure on water and environmental resources. This original research sheds light on interactions among humans, animals, and this rapidly changing urban environment. It is therefore a quintessentially One Health study. Qualitative and ethnographically informed methods are employed to better understand the impact of rapid growth on the riparian environment and the effect of this on those who depend on it. The reflexive use of archival material and a historical ethnographic approach enabled in-depth narratives to address these issues within a longitudinal context, and the use of deliberate walking alongside visual methodologies and more traditional anthropological methods make this study novel both in terms of methodological approach and findings. This study finds that people cite high levels of pollution from solid waste and sewage have made the rivers almost unusable and a hazardous place for both humans and animals. Yet, in the past, these rivers played key roles in daily life. There is frustration with structural-level actors' moribund attitude to the environment. The poor health of the rivers and riparian environment leads to human and animal health challenges, increased pressure on water resources, and economic pressure due to a loss of livelihoods. The study contributes to what is currently a fairly small literature on urban riparian spaces globally, but one which is of growing and vital importance given the rapidly increasing percentage of humans who now reside in urban spaces. It contributes to WASH and urban clean water knowledge as well as One Health, public health, and urban growth narratives, and directly addresses challenges faced by SDG 6.

THE PLANNING CHALLENGES OF EXTENDED METROPOLITAN AREAS: ISSUES FROM SOUTH AFRICA

Territorial administrative restructuring and the redrawing of municipal boundaries was undertaken in South Africa to address the apartheid legacy of major social, economic and spatial inequalities. A significant consequence of territorial administrative restructuring was that the boundaries of certain South African metropolitan areas were expanded such that they incorporate vast rural geographies. These spaces pose particular challenges for metropolitan planning. The aim in this paper is to examine the resultant planning challenges which confront South Africa’s extended metropolitan spaces. Among several consequences was the imperative for metropolitan authorities to build new competences in order to plan and manage these added rural spaces as well as the peri-urban spaces. The analysis is contextualised within an international literature on planning in extended metropolitan spaces and of peri-urban spaces.

An Explorative Analysis of the Labour Market structure in the Peri-Urban area of Hyderabad Metropolitan Region

The study was undertaken during June–August, 2020 in the peri-urban areas of Hyderabad Metropolitan Region of Telangana under the department of Agricultural Economics, Professor Jayashanker Telangana State Agricultural University, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Telengana state, India. The objective was to explore the nature of gender gap in the labour market since peri-urban spaces capture changes better. Based on the Census survey data, descriptive analysis was employed in the study. The study revealed that urban sprawl did not guarantee working environment to men and women equally and women were either pushed out of workforce or rendered with marginal works. A gendered society in developing world was clearly pictured and occupational segregation was also observed in the study locations. The results also revealed the existence of distress employment with a rise in the female marginal workers compared to their male counterparts. Women workers were more into agricultural labour than male workers in the peri-urban study locations confirming feminisation of agriculture whereas other worker category which needs specialized skills were dominated by male workers. A decline in female work participation rate was indeed observed but a detailed look identified it as a rural phenomenon. In a nut shell, the results reflected that the rapid developments in the peri-urban region did not provide a similar working environment to both genders and further, the benefits of urbanization is yet to reach the rural continuum.

Exploring the Dynamics of Occupation between Resilience and Abandonment in Two Post-Classic Rural Landscapes on the Iberian Peninsula

In this paper, we present a comparison of two rural landscapes in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, where the dynamics of occupation have differed since the end of the ancient world in terms of both the degree of resilience of settlements and the land use. Our purpose was to explore the social, political, economic, and environmental factors that could explain why there has been a long-term cross-cultural occupation of some resilient sites and landscapes for almost a millennium, while there have been only very specific temporary occupations in other areas. The first part of this paper describes the archaeological investigations carried out by means of intensive survey methods, geophysics, and some excavations in peripheral and peri-urban spaces. In the second part, we reflect on whether the use of the same methodology in all cases allows us to compare and understand what makes societies sustainable (or not) over time through their archaeological record.

Smart cultural and political narratives in urban and periurban landscape

Urban space constitutes in general the historical, cultural and politi-cal environment, the important ‘cultural landscape’, correlated not solely to ma-terial indices but, moreover, to immaterial, intangible mnemonic references. The possibility to present this multifaceted info-sense tissue to visitors is usual-ly assigned to guides personifying the description of the city, in a time and space restricted way, delimiting the volume of information and proposing a pre-confined number of guiding narratives only. Furthermore, these conventional guiding itineraries are usually directed to tourists, or to specialized didactic and presentational events; they are not offered to the immediate desire of knowledge or to the game-oriented tendency of the urban ‘flâneur’, of the urban stroller. Behind a conventional guiding tour, extended libraries, or galleries may be con-cealed, many hours of musical references; differentiated ‘ontologies’ of infor-mation, of semantic sequences which could be reorganized and reconnected again and again. Our effort presented in three different projects of urban landscape design, has to do with the correlation of this enormous quantity of interconnected in-formation with real space visiting itineraries, associated to virtual digital guid-ance as well. The scope of the projects presented is the same in all three pro-posals. It has to do with the importance of public urban and peri-urban space as a generator for social identity and cohesion. Considering that identities are basi-cally formed through socializing among members, as well as by exposing col-lective affiliations in public, the primary role of public space and the extended offer of cultural, historical and political information in such a process, is easily understood.

Collective memories, place-framing and the politics of imaginary futures in sustainability transitions and transformation

A geographical perspective is crucial to understanding sustainability transitions and transformation, but previous research on place framing in sustainability transitions and transformation has had a marked focus on the politics of the future and its performativity in the present. This paper analyzes place-framing in sustainability transitions and transformation by examining how the conflicting collective memories of a place and the framings of the future of this place interact and lead to the justification of particular forms of socio-material development, land use and sustainability of the peri-urban spaces of the city of Sogamoso, Colombia. Based on 38 semi-structured interviews, we identify three distinct assemblages of future visions, collective memories and place frames, which we call urban development, recovering tradition, and cultural revitalization. The analysis shows that place framing is an exercise through which collective memories and future visions are connected and co-constituted in a spatio-temporal ‘dialogue’: collective memories, future visions and place frames are processes of social construction activated in the attempt to shape or contest sustainability transitions and transformation. We contend that the existence and mobilization of collective memories—and their critical influence on future visions—are a core aspect of the politics of place framing fundamental to the socio-material processes of sustainability transitions and transformation. Furthermore, a politics of place-making in sustainability transitions and transformation involves acknowledging and negotiating collective memories of the past as much as future visions. This suggests ways to critically counterbalance the marked future orientation taken in recent years by sustainability science and transition studies.

Peri-urban villages in Kunming, Southwest China: history of change with dual urban–rural characteristics

The process of absorbing villages into urban areas in China is of major significance and can follow several paths. Specifically, the dual urban and rural characteristics of villages located close to cities provide new opportunities and constraints for active community engagement. This paper examines two related options through case studies in Kunming, Southwest China, and the interface between the urban and the rural in peri-urban studies. One village was transformed from a collective landholding system into a village shareholding company. In this case, villagers’ self-construction and redevelopment activities significantly changed the built environment in the settlement. The second village was transformed into a new urban residential community by property developers. In this process, villagers also had their hukou [household registration] status altered from ‘rural’ to ‘urban’. The study illustrates the variable transition processes between rural and urban in this particular region and highlights the relationship between villagers and their surrounding environment. It is argued that peri-urban spaces in Southwest China retained their distinctiveness and certain rural characteristics despite the integration through the urbanisation process, and that the relationships between villagers and their surrounding built environment are constantly being re-appropriated and reinvented.

City or hinterland – site potentials for upscaled aquaponics in a Berlin case study

Sustainably feeding the rapidly growing urban populations requires resource-efficient food production solutions, such as aquaponics. To assess its upscaled fruition in city regions, we applied system analysis to depict determinants of aquaponics at a mesoscale. Using Berlin as a case study, site potentials regarding the production of freshwater fish, tomatoes, and lettuce to achieve self-sufficiency were investigated. We analysed planning documents by text mining and applied geographic information system procedures to evaluate this technology’s spatial efficacy in intra- and peri-urban spaces, considering aspects of economy, sustainability and spatial distribution. In a facility-based approach, we contrasted specific intra- and peri-urban site potentials with their different boundary conditions. A thereupon-based scenario allocates approximately 20% of the production volume in Berlin, 80% in its hinterland, and emphasises the crucial use of circular economy resources in both spaces. Policy recommendations and the transferability of this realistic approach will support the implementation of aquaponics.

Influence of demographic characteristics and social network on peri-urban smallholder farmers adaptation strategies - evidence from southern Ghana

With a gamut of climate variability and change literature that examines rural spaces in the global south, and in the case of Ghana, rural spaces in the northern part, this article turns focus to a less targeted empirical space of peri-urban geography to examine demographic factors and the extent to which membership of social networks intersect with adaptation strategies. Specifically, we answer the research question: To what extent do demographic factors and membership of social networks influence smallholder farmers adaptation strategies in a peri-urban space in Ghana? Using a mixed-methods approach involving cross-sectional data on 150 smallholder crop farmers selected through random sampling, complemented by focus group discussions, we find that smallholder farmers’ demographic characteristics such as gender, age, educational level, farming experience as well as membership of Farmer Based Organizations (FBOs) significantly influenced adaptation strategies to climate variability. Gender, however inversely influenced alternate livelihood adaptation strategy. Agricultural advisory and extension services should target addressing specific gender needs, promote, and up-scale crop rotation, tree planting, and alternative livelihoods, as well as its intersection with demographic factors and FBO membership among farm households to improve resilience to climate variability and change in peri-urban spaces.