On the Edge: Shaping the Future of Peri-urban East Asia

2 The Asia/Pacific Research Center (A/PARC) is an important Stanford venue where faculty and students, visiting scholars, and distinguished business and government leaders meet and exchange views on contemporary Asia and U.S. involvement in the region. A/PARC research results in seminars and conferences, published studies, occasional and discussion papers, special reports, and books. A/PARC maintains an active industrial affiliates and training program, involving more than twenty-five U.S. and Asian companies and public agencies. Members of A/PARC's faculty have held high-level posts in government and business. Their interdisciplinary expertise generates research of lasting significance on economic, political, technological, strategic, and social issues. a consulting professor at the Asia/Pacific Research Center, has worked with the center's Urban Dynamics of East Asia Project since 1998. Webster has worked on urban and regional development issues in East Asia for twenty-five years, as an advisor to international organizations, East Asian governments, and the private sector. He was profes-where he directed the planning program. His current interests are comparative urban dynamics, peri-urbanization, and urban management in East Asia. Professor Webster is currently senior urban advisor to the Thai Government (NESDB) and is a frequent advisor to the East Asian Urban and Infrastructure Division of the World Bank. Recent publications focus on urbanization dynamics in the context of globalization, local-ization, and decentralization, particularly in Thailand, China, and the Philippines. At Stanford, Webster has taught courses related to comparative East Asian urban dynamics and managing the urban environment in East Asia. His current research focus at A/PARC is comparative peri-urbanization in East Asia, particularly China, funded by the Ford Foundation. Introduction The term peri-urbanization refers to a process in which rural areas located on the outskirts of established cities become more urban in character, in physical, economic, and social terms, often in piecemeal fashion. Peri-urban development usually involves rapid social change as small agricultural communities are forced to adjust to an urban or industrial way of life in a very short time. High levels of migration are an important driver of social change. Rapid environmental deterioration; large-scale, often haphazard, land conversion; and infrastructure backlogs are major policy challenges associated with peri-urbanizing regions. Typically, peri-urbanization is stimulated by an infusion of new investment, generally from outside the local region in question, including foreign direct investment (FDI). In spatial terms, Rakodi (1998, as quoted in Adell 1999) defines peri-urban areas as: …the transition zone between fully urbanised land in cities …