In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

69 Chapter Three Locating the peri-urban: the socio-cultural and livelihoods context Introducing the peri-urban The peri-urban as a spatial category is a socially constructed non isolable unit. Often, it reflects challenges and the temporality of delimiting rural and urban spaces (Nkwae 2006). Perceived solely in relation to the outward expansion of the urban into rural areas, it is often associated with the spread of urban populations, though population growth is not the only reason for the growth of peri-urban settlements. As Torres (2008) suggests on the basis of cities in Latin American, even when urban population growth rate is low, many large cities in the developing world present significant peri-urban expansion because the dynamics that determine peri-urban growth are quite complex, and tend to involve a number of dimensions that may include inconsistence land regulation and taxation, and also infrastructure and housing policies. Quite often the administrative boundaries marking the rural-urban divide inadvertently symbolize inconsistent representation of reality (Storey 2005). Against this position is the misconception that the way of life in peri-urban areas is simply a reassertion of rural ways or parodies of urban practices, but without really being either (Simone 1998). This view embodies biased model “bound to modern Western assumptions about the use and political control of space” (Ferguson 1999:39) as much as it also underplays everyday practices, which blend the rural and urban worlds in creative and multiple ways. The creativity, different understandings and experiences of urbaneness, imply that peri-urban settlers rarely consider themselves and they do not try to live like ordinary villagers. Perceptions of and responses to peri-urban land transactions are also rarely homogenous. The origin of the term peri-urban is obscure (Nkwae 2006) but its importance rose several decades ago as a result of the dilemma of delimiting rural from urban. For this reason, the rural and urban influence have led to proliferation of diverse terms such as ‘rurban’, ‘suburban’, ‘urban fringe’, ‘urban periphery’, ‘perirural’, etc (Nkwae 2006). The term ‘peri-urban’ is however regularly found in the literature and policy discussions even as the 70 key question remains whether the peri-urban may include land inside, or at the fringes of urban areas and land further away from the city, and also whether this concept may as well include both land that is formally or informally occupied. Budds and Minaya (1999) provided three alternative understandings of the peri-urbane. Firstly, the peri-urban is perceived as an interface between the urban and the rural spheres, in which activities traditionally classified as ‘urban’ (e.g. industry) or ‘rural’ (e.g. agriculture) coexist . The peri-urban is in this regard characterized by the encroachment of the expanding urban area onto the surrounding rural land, thus essentially and in significant ways affecting the livelihoods of small farmers. The impact on livelihoods is enormous because of the lack of institutional planning and management to deal with this newly-urbanizing area, as the city authorities consider the area to be rural and thus outside their scope, while the rural authorities regarded the area as part of the city and hence not responsible for it. Secondly, the peri-urban is seen as the periphery of the urban area, possibly areas where the city has expanded onto previously non-urbanized land. In this second sense the peri-urban refers to rural villages which are near to the city and are experiencing increasing connectivity, pressure and influence from it. Then the peri-urban is perceived as the source of potential migration to the metropolitan area and illegal settlements that threaten the protection of natural resources, including head-water areas (Budds and Minaya 1999). For this reason, peri-urban areas are commonly characterised as problem areas, with major problems experienced in the areas of access to clean water and sanitation infrastructure, and related environmental health problems. The attention to the peri-urban is guided by the belief that this area is often affected negatively by environmental problems, yet with little mechanisms for redress (Budds and Minaya 1999). The peri-urban has further been defined ‘as a locus of abrupt tenurial transformation’ (Kasanga et al., (1996) cited in Nkwae 2006), where land is being transformed institutionally from rural to urban and as such it is in a state of transition from customary to statutory tenure. Iaquinta and Drescher (2000) also cited in Nkwae (2006) perceive the peri-urban less as a geographical location but more as a state of...

Share