From the guest editors

Abstract

There is widespread recognition that places provide contexts within which differences are produced and reproduced, and that places are not fixed containers. Henceforth, rural areas are recognised by southern urbanism planners in their own right as playing a role in their context/locale in the production and reproduction of different human subjectivities. As such, planning itself is a process that is spatially and temporally contingent, varying through time and over space in a range of situated and local knowledges that form the resource foundations for structuration dialectics and identity politics. The rise of “the ‘peri-urban turn’ which is a systems’ thinking approach for a paradigm shift in the Global South” and its ability to transform rural areas through dynamic and continuous interactions among social, economic, and environmental systems, raises even more urgency to explore the subject of transformation and rural areas. This special issue comprises papers that directly engage with the theme of rurality and spatial transformation, while others engage with issues related to the subject matter.