Towards Situated Analyses of Uneven Peri‐Urbanisation: An (Urban) Political Ecology Perspective

Abstract

Abstract In this article we develop a novel analytical framework for situated studies of uneven peri‐urbanisation that resist further dividing Marxist and Situated (Urban) Political Ecology. We conceptualise uneven peri‐urbanisation as a process in which access to the resources mobilised for peri‐urban developments, such as water or land, is rendered uneven. In a three‐step approach we suggest, first, describing how peri‐urbanisation unfolds in the case being studied and distinguish it from other processes, such as suburbanisation. Second, we propose analysing the transformations of nature on which the peri‐urbanisation process is based; and third, examining the uneven power relations infusing inequalities into these transformations and consequently into the peri‐urbanisation process described. To allow for a situated analysis this approach regards the study of practices as crucial, but they have to be embedded in wider socio‐economic, political, and historical processes, since both contribute to transformations of nature and thus shape uneven peri‐urbanisation.