ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the peri-urban concept and introduces the peri-urban planning discourse, primarily in Western countries. It presents key works in landscape studies and also discusses the challenges, but also the need for, peri-urban landscape studies. The chapter emphasises the contested character of peri-urban landscapes, that needs to be taken into account when searching for a middle landscape. It addresses the fascination with hybrid landscapes, the city edge remains a 'zone of dissonance' and 'a jumble of contradiction', with land use and landscape conflicts. Peri-urban landscapes were mainly regarded as a problem within research and planning during most of the twentieth century, but a paradigm shift occurred during its last decade with the acknowledgement of the potential of hybrid landscapes. Walker and Fortmann provide a detailed account of the political struggle over the right to the landscape in a peri-urban county in California, with conflicts between nature preservation and land use at its centre.