Chennai’s growth offers global blueprint claims new research

London, Apr 16 (PTI) The ongoing growth story of Chennai has helped experts to create a new way of understanding how “urban sprawl” happens around the world, offering the potential to use it as a blueprint to improve people's lives across the Global South through better urban planning.
     An international group of researchers, including UK academics, published their findings in ‘Habitat International’ this week after examining the rise of regions within St Thomas Mount Panchayat Union – 15 villages on the fringes of Chennai.
     They analysed the development of communities on the edge of the city in Tamil Nadu, where urban and rural areas meet – known as the “peri-urban” – to develop an approach that is tailored to the needs of India and other countries in the Global South.
     “With the rapid pace of urbanisation, urban sprawl has become a prevalent phenomenon in the Global South. This has created peri-urban spaces where city meets country – offering interactions between social, economic, and environmental systems that give valuable insight into how we can create better and more sustainable futures for the people living in these communities,” said Rahib Akhtar, co-author of the study from the University of Birmingham.
     “Peri-urbanisation can provide a way of better understanding the dynamics between urban and rural areas in India and the wider Global South. By examining peri-urbanisation, we can gain a contextual understanding of the socio-spatial processes that shape urban and rural futures,” he said.
     In “The ‘peri-urban turn’: A systems thinking approach for a paradigm shift in reconceptualising urban-rural futures in the global South”, the researchers highlight a process that redefines the dynamics of such areas as the “peri-urban turn”, using Causal Loop Diagrams to map the connections between health, place, demographics, governance, and economy.
     They have identified a number of elements which make up this so-called “peri-urban turn” and take note of the ambiguity surrounding the demarcation of urban and rural areas, which creates challenges in understanding trends and patterns.
     Besides the University of Birmingham, the participating institutions in the international study include University College London (UCL); Rabdan Academy, United Arab Emirates; University of British Columbia, Canada; Ardhi University, Dar es Salaam; Tanzania School of Planning Architecture and Design Excellence; and Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, India.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)