The Peri-Urban Interface

Approaches to Sustainable Natural and Human Resource Use

Duncan McGregor, David Simon, Donald Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781844071883
• eBook ISBN: 9781136536069
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Peri-urban interfaces - the zones where urban and rural areas meet - suffer from the greatest problems to humans caused by rapid urbanization, including intense pressures on resources, slum formation, lack of adequate services such as water and sanitation, poor planning and degradation of farmland. These areas, home to hundreds of millions of people, face unique problems and need distinctive and innovative approaches and solutions.

This book, authored by top researchers and practitioners, covers the full breadth and depth of the impacts of rapid urbanization on livelihoods, poverty and resources in the peri-urban zones in diverse African, Asian, Latin American and Caribbean contexts. Topics include peri-urban resource sustainability, ecosystems and societies and environmental changes in peri-urban zones. Rich case studies cover production systems and livelihoods including the impacts of irrigated vegetable production, horticulture, dairy enterprises, waste-fed fisheries and pastoral livelihoods. Also addressed are planning and development issues in the peri-urban interface including the difficulty in achieving sustainability, conflict and cooperation over resources, and a fresh look at the relationship between people and their environment. The final part of the book presents policies and strategies for promoting and measuring sustainability in peri-urban zones including community-based waste management, the co-management of watersheds and empowerment of the poor.

This book is the most comprehensive examination of the challenges and solutions facing the people and environments of peri-urban zones and is essential reading for all practitioners, students and academics in geography and development.

Part 1

The Search for Peri-Urban Resource Sustainability

1

Contemporary Perspectives on the Peri-Urban Zones of Cities in Developing Areas

David Simon, Duncan McGregor, Donald Thompson

Introduction

This book brings together a range of conceptual and empirical studies representing the state of the art in contemporary analysis of peri-urban areas in several regions of the global South. The origins of this collection lie in a session on this theme that we organized at the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) in London from 5–6 September 2003. The response to our call for papers produced lively presentations and discussions, seeking to explore the relationships between local specificities and contingencies, and the generalizability of peri-urban processes of change. These concerns are reflected prominently in Part 1 of this volume, where we examine definitional and conceptual issues, the approaches adopted by various donor and research-commissioning agencies, and comparative assessments across different situations. Inevitably, a few papers at the original session were unavailable for publication, while a few initially offered but ultimately not presented at the conference have been included as chapters.

In revising the drafts for publication, we encouraged authors to explain the nature of the peri-urban zone or interface (PUI) in their specific contexts, particularly for the case studies, in order to help illuminate the extent of similarities or differences. We pick up these issues both in the definitional discussion below and in Chapter 20; but first we examine the origins and nature of the construct of the peri-urban.

We make no claim for complete geographical coverage and are conscious, for instance, that China, the world’s most populous state and where the rate and dramatic nature of urban and peri-urban change are frequently featured in the news media, is not represented. Peri-urbanization there is also rather different from the contexts covered here, being very large scale and often heavily industrialized (Webster, 2002; Webster and Muller, 2002; Webster et al, 2003). In other respects, elements of the extended metropolitan region (EMR) phenomenon outlined below apply to parts of China too. We considered commissioning a chapter on China; however, in view of space considerations and the difficulties of integrating such different material, we resolved instead to draw attention here to the importance of the very different peri-urban processes in that country. Central Asia is also not covered; moreover, very little is known about the nature of peri-urbanization there. Some of the discussion and examples from the literature cited below reflect the predominance of African and South Asian case studies in this book; but they nevertheless illustrate wider generic issues.

Between Urban and Rural: Distinctiveness or Hybridity?

The terms ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ are still often used colloquially in traditional, mutually exclusive terms, and most people have clear mental conceptions of some ideal-type landscape corresponding to each. However, this simple dichotomy has long ceased to have much meaning in practice or for policy-making purposes in many parts of the global South, not least sub-Saharan Africa. This is because rapid urban population growth and expansion of the built-up area, technological change, global economic restructuring and the impact of externally driven macro-economic adjustment policies have combined to alter the interface between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ quite profoundly in many places.

Nowhere is there a neat dividing line where the city meets the savanna, bushveld, forest or desert. In a manner reminiscent of colonial suburbanization under conditions of land speculation, cities have spread rapidly but not uniformly. There has been no circular outward ripple. Instead, the process has been differentiated according to combinations of the following factors:

• the size and structure of the existing city;
• the composition of the urban and migrant populations in terms of age, sex, family and household structure (including multi-local households), ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, educational and income levels, urban experience, and so forth;
• extensive oscillating or circular migration, with multi-local households often spanning rural areas and different categories of urban centre;
• physical terrain and environmental barriers beyond the existing built-up area;
• the orientation, accessibility and affordability of transport networks;
• land tenure systems, land values and land uses surrounding the city;
• occasionally substantial differences between administrative/political and de facto urban boundaries, which may give rise to contestations over jurisdiction between urban and non-urban local authorities and/or between traditional and state authorities.

As a result, today there are different types of transition zones between city and countryside – between what is unambiguously ‘urban’ and supposedly typically ‘rural’. Some may resemble relatively uniform sprawl, others honeycomb structures or spines of growth along specific corridors. These transition zones – generally known as peri-urban areas in English – vary in width and nature, and are subject to rapid change with increasing urban pressures. Many indigenous villages, previously located in rural areas a considerable distance from the city, have experienced in-migration, growth and changes in population composition, land use and economic base. As a generalization, the closer the city comes, the more pronounced is the transition from ‘rural’ to ‘urban’ characteristics. Eventually, these settlements become part of the built-up urban area, which then comprises a complex mixture of formal houses, shanties and rural huts and other dwellings. Although the dwellings may be rebuilt in more urban styles over time, these areas often retain distinct identities and even traditional chieftaincy structures. As indicated earlier, this could bring traditional and state authorities into conflict. Furthermore, these areas may fall within combinations of urban and/or rural local authority boundaries. Subsequent boundary changes to reflect the results of rapid urban growth could then change their administrative status.

It is interesting to note how the term ‘peri-urban’ – now well-established in the English lexicon – is expressed in different languages and cultural contexts. For instance, the nearest equivalent in Dutch is halfstedig (semiurban), in German urban-ländlichen Zonen (urban–rural zones) and in Afrikaans buitestedelik (outer city or beyond the city). Yet, these differences are modest in comparison to the fact that, in many indigenous languages in the global South, the concept is entirely unknown. Naturally, this presents substantial problems for researching a concept or construct that local people frequently do not recognize, and a salutary warning against assuming the universal relevance of academic or planning constructs. Even where the term does have an equivalent, as in the examples above, the linguistic differences may play a significant role in framing ideas, research and analysis. Definitional issues are no less important and are discussed later in this chapter.

In East Asia and parts of South-East Asia, a new form of EMR has emerged as a process labelled desakota (city village) (Ginsberg et al, 1991). While various factors contribute in each case, in general this process primarily reflects the phenomenal economic buoyancy of the Pacific Asian region – apart from the relatively short interruption of the ‘Asian crisis’ from mid 1997 – and the rise of newly industrialized countries, with often ‘hi-tech’ production now spilling out of the heavily congested metropolitan cores to cheaper, more accessible areas beyond. Hence, many previously rural areas now have farmland interspersed with small factory units and larger enterprises; all are essentially parts of the urban economy. However, this process has very different characteristics from conventional metropolitanization in that many villages and small urban centres retain much of their previous distinctiveness and some rural activities, while simultaneously being integrally ‘plugged in’ to manufacturing or processing for the new industries and world economy. Land-extensive tourist and leisure facilities (for example, golf courses and theme parks) catering to urban and international clienteles are also concentrated in such zones (not only in East Asia). The desakota phenomenon is thus helping to force a redefinition of traditional conceptions of urban–rural distinctions and relations (Ginsberg et al, 1991; Parnwell and Wongsuphasawat, 1997; Wang, 1997; Douglass, 1998; Kelly, 1998). As Dávila explains in Chapter 4, a similar phenomenon characterizes Latin America’s large metropolises, which – because of the particular forms of their close integration with the world economy as identified 20 years ago by Armstrong and McGee (1985) – have also evolved into ‘urban archipelagos’ with diffuse boundaries and weakened official planning controls.

However, to date, nothing directly comparable has emerged in the very different geo-economic and socio-cultural conditions pertaining in Africa. Although probably more akin to the US beltway and ‘edge city’ phenomenon (Garreau, 1991), the extended metropolitanization occurring in the Johannesburg–Pretoria region of South Africa’s Gauteng Province warrants study in this context. Nevertheless, with the possible exception of parts of South Africa, the African continent remains very largely in the periphery of the increasingly globalized world system, except as a source of natural resources. There are still relatively few export-oriented industrialization or producer services geared towards regional or global markets, although Africa’s role as an international ‘pleasure periphery’ has grown. Indeed, Briggs and Mwamfupe (2000) found little evidence of outer suburban retail malls, office parks or hitech industrial nodes in Dar es Salaam, and also suggest that metropolitan polycentricity may have less relevance to Africa than to other regions on account of its global economic peripherality. Polycentricity is itself usually a feature of relatively advanced physical, functional and/or administrative decentralization, something that is occurring more widely in Africa as a result of urban size and congestion (Jaglin and Dubresson, 1993; Briggs and Mwamfupe, 1999). Briggs and Mwamfupe’s (1999) conclusion, with which we concur, provides further circumstantial evidence that Asian-style EMRs are not a feature of African metropolises at present (with the possible South African exception mentioned above) since EMRs are quintessentially polycentric, and tend to arise through peri-urban and rural transformation beyond the outskirts of already large and polycentric conurbations. Of course, the question as to whether EMRs might arise in future is difficult to answer; but any such development would almost certainly depend on a significant prior change in the continent’s present geo-economic peripherality.

The situation in South Asia is diverse, with increasing export industrial production in Sri Lanka and parts of India, for example; but no literature yet exists on whether Mumbai or other major metropolises fit the EMR model. This book includes a case study of part of Colombo’s PUI; but the city as a whole does not constitute an EMR. Even in the very different context of west-central Nepal, on South Asia’s outer periphery, Blaikie et al’s (2002, p1257) re-study some 23 years after their initial research reveals the often profound nature of ‘peri-urban development which has transformed a small village (with a weekly market and six tea stalls under three large banyan trees), into a town (with 60 shops and five banks)’.

The objective of this introductory chapter is to provide a context for the book as a whole through an overview and assessment of recent conceptualizations of PUIs in their wider geopolitical and geo-economic contexts. It then outlines the chapters that follow. Accordingly, the next section examines the growing importance of, and research into, interactions between urban areas and their surrounding peri-urban and rural areas. Thereafter, the nature of peri-urban areas as interfaces between urban and rural areas is explored. The final section comprises a chapter-by-chapter outline of the book’s contents.

Beyond the Built-Up City: The Peri-Urban Interface (PUI) and Urban Footprints

Many fast-growing large cities across the global South are surrounded by dense and generally impoverished shantytowns or other forms of informal and/or irregular housing, characterized by inadequate infrastructure, service provision and security of shelter. These often spread into previously rural and peri-urban land, commonly enveloping or merging with existing villages of varying age, size, and physical and functional structure. This process creates complex zones in terms of land tenure, security of tenure, land use, access to services, and other measures of social, economic and political integration. These complexities – and the associated tensions and conflicts – therefore pose formidable challenges to planners, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the residents alike in terms of enhancing security of tenure, upgrading settlements, service provision, integration with the urban areas and associated governance issues, and forward planning. This explains the recent increase in internationally funded research into, and concern with, peri-urban areas.

On the other hand, changing international divisions of labour are producing new areas of rapid industrialization and economic development within or beyond existing metropolitan boundaries (for example, the EMR phenomenon cited earlier) in some parts of the world. These are accompanied by rising incomes and improved quality of life for some groups of inhabitants, but often at the expense of the immiseration of others in both these new cores and peripheries. However, new local styles, resistances and hybrid forms are emerging to give new forms of diversity at different levels. Hence, significant forces of divergence are also at work; the notion of progressive unidirectional convergence is too simplistic (Armstrong and McGee, 1985; Simon, 1992; Potter, 1993). Nevertheless, despite the vast literature on individual city growth and management in various parts of the global South, remarkably little attention has been devoted to the urban fringe or peri-urban areas; indeed, the term is absent from the indexes of many books.

The Peri-Urban Interface: A Tale of Two Cities (Brook and Dávila, 2000), a publication arising directly from the UK government’s Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) peri-urban interface research programme in Kumasi and Hubli-Dharwad, India, represents probably the only book-length treatment of peri-urban dynamics. Similarly, little if any attention is devoted to peri-urban zones in the many journal articles and individual chapters on African cities within more general edited books.

Interestingly, a major research programme at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, on the nature and role of small towns in Africa did focus explicitly on aspects of rural–urban interaction (Baker, 1990; Pedersen, 1991; Baker and Pedersen, 1992); but the issue of peri-urban areas and their dynamics received little attention, perhaps because the rate and scale of growth and change has been more limited than in large conurbations.

Following much discussion and definitional debate in both the global North and South during the 1970s (Mortimore, 1975), intellectual interest in peri-urban areas declined. They then received little explicit attention in the literature as a whole, except for limited mention of their rapid transformation by urban sprawl, some rethinking of their position within the rural–urban dichotomy referred to earlier, and the value for integrated urban planning of considering urban regions rather than merely the built-up or administrative areas of individual cities.

However, since the 1980s, the importance of peri-urban areas as a source of urban food supply has been underlined by the growing body of research on urban agriculture (especially in Africa, from which the following examples are drawn), even though much of this literature concentrates largely on urban areas themselves and the ‘peri-urban’ has been treated in different ways (Guyer, 1987; Sanyal, 1987; Rakodi, 1988; Freeman, 1991; Gefu, 1992; Smit and Nasr, 1992; Memon and Lee-Smith, 1993). A notable exception in Africa is Marshall and Roesch’s (1993) study of land tenure and food production in the zonas verdes (green zones) surrounding Nampula in Mozambique, which examines how many predominantly female producer co-operatives gained access to high-quality land to supply the urban market successfully before the wave of land privatization during the 1990s. Briggs and Mwamfupe (1999, pp269–272; 2000) argue that research into expanding urban agriculture and its promotion, and research into subsistence versus commercial production priorities there, have been largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in peri-urban zones across Africa since the early 1990s. More recently, attention has also embraced the emergence of formal and informal land markets and the related land-use changes in peri-urban areas.

Maxwell et al (1999) highlight the differences in processes between four peri-urban sites around the Ghanaian capital, Accra. Depending on specific combinations of circumstances, these areas have variously experienced one or more of the following processes: land loss to housing; economic transformation away fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Part 1: The Search for Peri-Urban Resource Sustainability
• Part 2: Production Systems at the Peri-Urban Interface
• Part 3: Planning and Development of the Peri-Urban Zone
• Part 4: Strategies for Sustainable Development
• Part 5: Synthesis
• Index