Livelihood Transformation and Rising Inequality in the Peri-Urban Interface

This volume explores livelihood transformations, challenges, and opportunities in the peri-urban interface (PUI), focusing on increasing inequality in PUIs, land-use and and-cover dynamics, and outcomes for sustainable development in developing countries. PUIs are characterized by a mix of urban and rural land uses, accompanied by flows of labor, capital, commodities, and information. Furthermore, PUIs have often been characterized by increasing inequalities in economic, social and environmental milieus due to exclusionary processes. This book investigates the type and extent of livelihood transformations taking place in PUIs, particularly in urbanizing India, as well as the ways in which these changes are causing inequality to increase. Based on an interdisciplinary approach that combines urban sociology, development studies, and human geography, the study aims to comprehend how peri-urban populations deal with shifting social structures, ecological challenges, and economic opportunities. The contributing authors emphasize the pressing need to reconfigure development narratives so that the PUI is no longer seen as a city’s spillover, but as a space that is contested and in an ongoing process of transformation of livelihoods that deserves more scrutiny and responsive intervention.