The political governance of urban peripheries

The paper introduces the challenges of this theme issue with regards to the dilemmas of political governance in upcoming urban peripheries. While becoming more and more topical in processes of urban transition and ongoing rescaling, urban peripheries struggle with the gap between the potential of new centrality and the consolidated sociopolitical marginality. The authors highlight the dilemmas of transforming subjects in the urban periphery positioned in asymmetric contexts of political power (the central city, the state, and the market). Furthermore, they set the agenda for the investigation of politically constructing cross-border planning within metropolitan areas.