Peri-urban planning: A landscape perspective

The management of peri-urban development has emerged as a new context of contemporary urban planning. Its dynamic and diverse nature presents major challenges and opportunities for urban sustainability. However, a more integrated framework for peri-urban planning has been progressing slowly. An examination of the epistemology of the landscape concept reveals three salient aspects of landscape relevant to multiple domains of peri-urban planning - the unifying, morphogenetic and socialised. Although landscape research has translated into peri-urban management, its full potential has yet to be realised. Among the three landscape dimensions, morphogenesis is relatively neglected. By foregrounding morphogenesis, the three epistemological orientations of landscape can be rebalanced and reintegrated to form the basis of a new planning framework for more continuous, harmonious and sustainable peri-urban development.