An Overdue Agenda: Systematizing East Asian Peri-Urban Research

This review stems from recent articles on East Asian peri-urbanization in Pacific Affairs, particularly the special September 2011 issue. Research on the peri-urbanization process in East Asia, whereby rural land transitions, often highly eventfully, into urban land on the city periphery is enjoying resurgence, but remains highly fragmented. Land use change detection analysis is proceeding full-tilt thanks to increasingly inexpensive satellite imagery and associated funding, while the sustainability movement is motivating technically oriented assessment of land use efficiency. However, there is insufficient understanding of the macro forces driving the rapidly changing nature of East Asian peri-urbanization associated with rapid economic change. New drivers such as residential development, e.g., bedroom communities; amenity, e.g., weekend tourism, second homes; theme zones, e.g., Disneylands, F1 racing tracks, religious complexes; and outward spread of high-tech are ascendant, as manufacturing becomes less dominant. Local governance, including land use regimes, is seriously understudied, despite pressing issues such as the creation of vast special economic zones; jurisdictional over-bounding in the communist countries, and under-bounding elsewhere; and local government capture by property development interests, organized crime, family dynasties, etc. Potential high synergy exists in meshing institutional understanding with the technical longitudinal data being generated through land detection and sustainability-oriented studies. Although more social scientists, particularly anthropologists, are increasingly studying peri-urbanization from the bottom-up perspective of existing communities, in contrast with the dominant view from the existing city, such studies would benefit from frameworks better enabling comparative understanding and synergy with those undertaking peri-urban analysis from other perspectives.

遲到的議程：東亞城市邊緣帶研究的體系化

東亞的邊緣帶城市化，即在城市邊緣開拓新的城市土地這一複雜而”混亂”的過程，仍是一個我們知之甚少的領域。Douglas Webster教授的述評表明，在土地使用變化檢測分析家、持續性研究學者、機構專家和社區型學者中，對這一現象的研究仍很零散。其結果是受東亞加速增長 的經濟結構變化驅使的快速變化的實踐超前於我們對其動態的理解。