The Periurban Transport Challenge: Beyond Automobility Towards Access and Adaptive Governance

Periurban areas are fuzzy, in-between spaces where cities blur into countryside, creating governance vacuums with multiple agencies having overlapping responsibilities but no clear authority. These transitional zones face distinct transport challenges as car-centric sprawl systematically excludes vast non-driving communities, creating “bypasses” that isolate large archipelagos of human settlements. An adaptive governance framework that emphasises equity and access can be structured around four principles: Engaging diverse stakeholders at different scales in collaborative decision-making systems beyond technocratic planning; Learning from both local knowledge and technical expertise through formal and informal institutions; Situating solutions other than automobility within the specific contexts of transitional spaces (irregular settlements, mixed land uses, varied infrastructure); and Acting through flexible, experimental approaches that build adaptive capacity through pilot projects and feedback rather than implementing fixed blueprints, while acknowledging that structural constraints often determine whether participatory approaches can actually succeed. Adaptive periurban transport solutions work at different scales. At the community level, there are initiatives such as bike couriers. At the landscape scale, there are grassroots-led food mobility networks and water taxis to serve eco-tourism. At the commuter-shed scale, para-transit and shared modes are integrated with sustainable land-use planning. Altogether, these solutions emphasise human needs (access) rather than simply accommodating vehicles or aiming to relieve congestion (mobility).