Periurban Asia: A Commentary on “Becoming Urban”

This commentary on the papers collected in this special issue identifies certain recurring themes from the papers and examines these in light of the urban transitions now being experienced by Vietnam and China, as elsewhere in Asia. These include: tensions in state-society relations as expressed in processes of periurbanization; the effects of the expansion of market relations in land and urban development; the persistence of the discursive categories traditional and modern in the analysis of periurbanization; and a consideration of what the periurban might imply vis-à-vis conventional notions of urban and rural, now and into the future. This discussion of recurring themes from the papers is prefaced by some reflections on how our choices of terminology may influence our theoretical understanding of a situation, event or condition. The specific question here is what is the difference between periurbanization and suburbanization, and it is argued that the distinction between the two may derive more from who is using the terms and the contexts within which they are situated than from specific denotative meanings of the words.

都市邊緣的亞洲：評”城市化”

本文結合中國、越南以及亞洲其它地區所經歷的城市轉型問題對本特刊所刊載的文章進行述評，發現並考察了一些在這些文章中反復出 現的主題。這些主題包括：在遠郊城市化過程中體現出的國家與社會之間的矛盾；土地和城市發展中的市場關係擴張的影響；在對都市邊緣地帶進行城市化的分析中 持續存在的或傳統或現代的話語類別，以及都市邊緣地帶這一概念對於通常使用的城市和農村的概念在目前和今後會帶來什麽樣的影響等問題的思考。在對這些反復 出現的主題進行討論之前，本文首先反思了我們對術語的選擇極其對我們關於情況、事件或條件的理論理解可能產生的影響。本文特別討論了都市邊緣地帶城市化和 郊區城市化之間的區別，本文認為這兩者之間的區別更多地取決於使用該術語的人及其特定的語境，而非這些詞語特定的指示含義。