ABSTRACT

Peri-urban settlements reflect persistent neglect, conflict and competition – they are zones in transition that have received less investment, limited land-use planning and no (or ad hoc) attention to environmental management than the more favoured urban centres. However, during the last few decades, the conception of rural and urban areas as discrete physical and social entities has slowly yielded to one based upon intangible and fluid interrelations between the two. There is growing recognition that the sustainability of both cities and rural areas is significantly affected by dynamic and changing flows of commodities, capital, natural resources, people and pollution within the periurban interface (PUI) (Allen, 2001). This zone is a place of competing interests, which lacks approaches that strike the balance required to ameliorate poverty, protect the environment, maximize the productivity of human and natural resources, or draw synergy from urban and rural relationships. New solutions are needed to address the conflicts and implement changes in this frontier that will benefit an increasingly excluded population of the PUI.