ABSTRACT
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.
