Resilience in the Transition Landscapes of the Peri-urban: From ‘Where’ with ‘Whom’ to ‘What’

Abstract

In this paper, the peri-urban is conceptualised as a territory to analyse the tensions associated with governments pursuing various agendas in isolation from those inhabiting these spaces. Two peri-urban vignettes are drawn together and Taylor's conception of a 'social imaginary' is used to recognise the conundrum for government planners, as well as to support the narratives about the social and ecological meaning of what local in-migrants are doing in the landscape. A resilience framework assists in clarifying system boundaries and the concept of social-ecological memory is used to interrogate how practices emerge within the various social imaginaries. The findings emphasise that this combination of tropes assists in acknowledging the rich, social imaginaries of local people 'making' the new landscapes. It is argued that acknowledging and incorporating their interests requires engaging with local networks and, more strategically, conceding that the social imaginaries of the periurban can be co-constructed for other strategic landscape outcomes.

Introduction: Governing for urban resilience

“…Linking social and ecological systems, at the very least, allows a self-conscious interrogation of what the action within the one sphere and scale will mean to the others. Carpenter et al (2001) Goldstein et al (2013), and Beilin et al (2013a); and as critique by Boyd and Juhola (2014). The coupled system and its mutual resilience present a clear challenge for a post-humanist sensibility.…”

“…and this question resonates for the authors in this Special Issue. It is literally taken up by Goldstein et al (2013), and Beilin et al (2013a); and as critique by Boyd and Juhola (2014). The coupled system and its mutual resilience present a clear challenge for a post-humanist sensibility.…”

“…Memory is noted by several (Barthel et al, 2013; Beilin et al, 2013a; Goldstein et al, 2013; Wagenaar and Wilkinson, 2013) but used quite differently within these papers. Barthel et al (2013) are concerned with keeping alive how to do things like collect seeds and nourish plants and they see the community garden movement as providing a socially just way of passing on this local (city wide and garden based) knowledge.…”

Hydrating Hyderabad: Rapid urbanisation, water scarcity and the difficulties and possibilities of human flourishing

“…Governance is strongly related to politics but is more associated with the public sector, power structures, civil society, equity and the ideals of public administration, hence it directly relates to water provision. 3 In the following two sections we focus more specifically on histories of water and related contemporary resilience (Beilin and Wilkinson, 2015; Beilin et al, 2015; Sultana and Loftus, 2012). The second section presents the water history of Hyderabad, enabling a temporal and spatial analysis of water catchment, distribution and usage.…”

“… 4. See Beilin et al (2015) for similar examination of conflicting tensions between state agendas versus residents in peri-urban spaces which include growth corridors. …”