Planning Practice & Research

ISSN: 0269-7459 (Print) 1360-0583 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cppr20

Sustainable Planning of Peri-Urban Areas:

Introduction to the Special Issue

Alexander Wandl & Marcello Magoni

To cite this article: Alexander Wandl & Marcello Magoni (2017) Sustainable Planning of Peri-
Urban Areas: Introduction to the Special Issue, Planning Practice & Research, 32:1, 1-3, DOI:
10.1080/02697459.2017.1264191

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2017.1264191

Published online: 20 Dec 2016.

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Planning Practice & Research, 2017
VOL. 32, NO. 1, 1–3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2017.1264191

INTRODUCTION

Sustainable Planning of Peri-Urban Areas: Introduction to the

Special Issue
Alexander Wandla and Marcello Magonib
a
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department of Urbanism, Delft University of Technology,
Delft, The Netherlands; bDepartment of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Polytechnic of Milan,
Milan, Italy

Peri-urban areas have enormous potential to play a positive role in enhancing urban
sustainability at the global level. This is because cities in all countries have to face the
challenges posed by urban sprawl. The process of urbanization will continue to grow
exponentially in the coming decades. ‘Population growth and urbanization are projected
to add 2.5 billion people to the world’s urban population by 2050, with nearly 90% of the
increase concentrated in Asia and Africa’ (United Nations, 2014, p. 1).
There are many definitions associated with peri-urban areas. The common feature of
the many different types of space that are considered peri-urban is that they are transition
spaces with some degree of intermingling of urban and rural uses. There is a particularly
strong difference between the peri-urban areas of developing countries characterized by
pollution of land and waterways, poverty and informal settlement; and those of developed
nations of Europe characterized by low levels of mobility, economic performance, landscape
integrity and environmental quality. Within both the developed and developing world, we
must recognize the variegated nature of the territory and the variety of peri-urban areas it
contains (Forsyth, 2012).
With the variability of the notion in mind we can say that peri-urban areas are generally
to be found at the urban fringe along the edges of the built-up area and tend to comprise
a scattered pattern of lower density settlement and urban concentrations around trans-
port hubs. Peri-urban areas may be predominantly large green open spaces such as urban
woodlands, farmland and nature reserves in the urban periphery with a lower population
density but belonging functionally to the urban area. Peri-urban may be a zone of smaller
settlements, industrial areas and other urban land-uses within a matrix of functional agri-
culture (Nilsson et al., 2013).
Peri-urban areas are generally territories affected by strong expansion processes of the
city, processes that are weakly opposed by marginal agricultural activities, but where the
expectations and interests of the communities are often high. Thus, they tend to have a cha-
otic and fragmented mix of urban and rural functions, and host uses that may be unwanted
by communities – business parks, big entertainment buildings and shopping centres. There
may be a high tension between the objectives of different urban and sectoral planning
instruments that both promote and resist such development (Antrop, 2004). Peri-urban

CONTACT Alexander Wandl a.wandl@tudelft.nl

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2  A. WANDL AND M. MAGONI

areas are generally thought of in negative terms rather than as positive territorial assets,
which is evident in the many synonyms for peri-urban such as transitional landscapes,
‘terrains vagues’, or the territory of borders.
Planning policies and strategies for peri-urban areas must take into account their variety
and begin from knowledge of the specific dynamics and development opportunities of each
area. Policies and interventions will benefit from experience of approaches taken elsewhere,
especially the evaluation of innovative approaches.
This special edition seeks to contribute to this evidence base by presenting studies of the
performance of peri-urban areas, and evaluations of approaches to the planning and gov-
ernance of the peri-urban landscape. It combines practice reviews and research articles that
report, compare and evaluate different examples of the transformation of peri-urban open
spaces that aim to steer them towards more sustainable development. The edition brings
together five papers: four of them are from Europe and one from Australia. The papers share
a common view of peri-urban areas as a particular ‘landscape’, inspired by the European
landscape convention which explains that ‘landscape means an area, as perceived by people,
whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’.
The authors all recognize the difficulty of addressing the complexity of the reality of the
ever-changing character of urban development. As Taylor et al. put it in their contribution
to this issue: ‘a key challenge for planning the peri-urban … derives from the ability of land-
use change to outstrip the development of new concepts and understandings’. The dynamics
of peri-urban areas result from many drivers: urban migration, agricultural intensification,
industrialization and changing preferences for the location of specific functions, like distri-
bution centres, waste and wastewater treatment infrastructures and similar. The difficulties
are compounded by governance complexity – inevitably peri-urban areas tend to extend over
multiple government jurisdictions and thus their management is particularly affected by
fragmentation of plans and management needing considerable cooperation. This is evident
in the contribution by Patti on the peri-urban between Vienna and Bratislava, where the
cross-national location adds even more complexity to the context for territorial governance.
With a focus on the peri-urban landscape and its complex mix of city and countryside, the
papers here also challenge the idealized image of settlement as being either urban or rural.
The examples show a very different reality with much territory now properly described as
peri-urban. They also reveal the potential of the peri-urban to contribute to more sustainable
development by engaging their diverse actors and communities around common objec-
tives. Santos explains that we can understand the peri-urban as distinct but interconnected
spatial units and open spaces with wide-ranging functions, but also as a fundamental part
of the infrastructure of a metropolitan region. As such the peri-urban landscape presents
opportunities to shape ecological networks and to foster productive economic activity. He
advocates that planning of the peri-urban should be a shared process of making stronger
links between the natural metabolism of territories and cultural place making.
In this way peri-urban areas are not simply the intensification of the urban in the
rural, but become a spatial category in their own right, deserving of particular attention
and distinctive policy approaches. The authors of this special issue advocate alternative
and adapted approaches for methods of analyses, evaluation, planning and design. They
address key challenges in dealing with multifunctionality. Taylor et al. discuss how the
traditional understanding of settlement pattern as a distinction between urban and rural
areas faces tensions when confronted in peri-urban Australia with the idea and reality of a
 PLANNING PRACTICE & RESEARCH  3

multi-functional peri-urban landscape. In this case, the dominant competing function is

the global agro-industry which has a ‘right to farm’ but is in competition with the right to
a ‘good life’ for the resident population.
Magoni et al. present an example of how innovative integrated planning has addressed
multifunctionality in peri-urban areas, in this case bringing together food production with
environmental and landscape planning. They elaborate on the establishment of rural dis-
tricts in the north of Italy that provide roundtables for the participation of farmers, public
officers and citizens in cooperation on agricultural and urban planning. They advocate
joint vision making among farmers, ecologists, citizens and the public sector in order to
facilitate a proactive and participatory planning approach, to replace reactive and top down
approaches that dominate in many peri-urban areas.
Wandl et al. also address the question of multifunctionality and present a methodology
for analysis and categorization of open space according to the potential of interaction of dif-
ferent network operators. The case illustrates the potential for multifunctionality and inter-
action but also reveals underlying competition. They emphasize the relationship between
spatial structure and multifunctionality and suggest that design and planning should not
focus on programmatic needs only, but also propose spatial compositions that are able to
facilitate a variety of different uses and related spatial needs. Patti explains how sustaina-
bility can be pursued in peri-urban areas with the example of the ‘Ökokonto’, a planning
tool for environmental compensation where municipalities can collect points according to
the environmentally sustainable projects they carry out. Points can then be exchanged with
other municipalities to compensate projects with a higher environmental impact.
In sum, the contributions to this special issue emphasize that planning in peri-urban
areas requires strong participatory involvement of the population in order to move between
negative ‘not in my backyard’ responses to more positive cooperation. The challenge of
planning the future sustainable development of peri-urban areas is principally to overcome
the separation of urban and rural planning and the separation of functions to achieve
multifunctionality. An integrated approach is needed which can address environmental
protection, the provision of ecosystem services and the creation of green infrastructure
alongside local economic development, and the maintenance of quality of life.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Alexander Wandl http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1163-0529

References
Antrop, M. (2004) Rural-urban conflicts and opportunities, in: R. Jongman (Ed) The New Dimensions
of the European Landscape, pp. 83–91 (Dordrecht: Springer).
Forsyth, A. (2012) Defining suburbs, Journal of Planning Literature, 27(3), pp. 270–281.
Nilsson, K., Pauleit, S., Bell, S., Aalbers, C., & Nielsen, T. (Eds) (2013) Peri-urban Futures: Scenarios
and Models for Land Use Change in Europe (Berlin: Springer-Verlag).
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs – Population Division. (2014) World
Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision, Highlights (New York: United Nations).