Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Urban Resource Management
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsc.2025.1436287
This article is part of the Research Topic Land-Use Management in Peri-urban Areas View all 5 articles

Where is the peri-urban? mapping the areas 'around, beyond and between'

Provisionally accepted
Joe Ravetz Joe Ravetz 1*Mehebub Sahana Mehebub Sahana 2
  • 1 Manchester Urban Institute, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
  • 2 School of Environment Education and Development, The University of Manchester, Manchester, England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Peri-urban expansion is a global challenge. This paper provides the methods and results of the largest global project to date on the peri-urban. It presents an 'integrated framework' for the many layers of peri-urbaan development, along with a 'basic delineation' methodology, with examples of data analysis for 21 cities (a total of around 10% of the global urban population). Overall, these results provide both a practical methodology and demonstration for peri-urban research and policy.The methods developed here take a twin-track approach. One is a conceptual 'integrated framework', which includes the tangible parameters of land-use, population etc: relational linkages, and systemic emergence. A second track is a practical 'basic delineation', a simple classification of population density and functional urban area, based on the Global Human Settlements Layer (GHSL), as developed by the global project Peri-cene. The combination enables a practical methodology for periurban research and policy, and development of global and local typologies of the peri-urban.

    Keywords: bio-regions, Hinterlands, 'functional urban area', Edge city, 'Global Human Settlements Layer', urban-rural gradient, Peri-urban

    Received: 21 May 2024; Accepted: 27 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Ravetz and Sahana. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Joe Ravetz, Manchester Urban Institute, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.