Life in a Fringe Zone: An Empirical Analysis of Peri-Urban Lucknow City of India

Peri-Urban areas evolve as a consequence of urbanization and inordinate growth of city boundaries towards the hinterland: a phenomenon most commonly associated with a developing country like India which is home to world’s second largest population. The peri-urban zones lies at the point of interface between urban and rural areas, remains in constant transition and characterize by the co-existence of urban and rural activities, institutions, culture and society. Urbanization results in transformation of land use, environment and culture of communities living in the fringe zones and thereby, changes in the ecological balance of the city-region. Even though, the rapid expansion of peri-urban areas present both opportunities and challenges for urban and rural sustainability, however, unlike the western realities, the process often leads to the formation of ‘urban villages’ with hybrid culture, poor quality of infrastructure, lack of basic amenities, ecological imbalance and environmental tribulations that eventually hampers serenity of mind and impede quality life for the inhabitants. In order to examine the above viewpoints empirically, the paper analyses social, ecological and environmental matrix of peri-urban Lucknow city situated in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India by randomly selecting 500 sample families from four blocks (two villages from each block) located at four opposite corners. The findings of the study underlines that in order to accommodate rising population due to rapid industrialization and urbanization process; unplanned and haphazard development of fringe zones of the Lucknow city is on a rapidly accelerated path resulting into environmental destruction, ecological imbalance, poor quality of availability of infrastructure, crumbling of social structure and cultural decay. The perennial situation has drastically shattered the traditional structure of the society, disrupted employment and livelihood patterns, created health, hygiene and sanitation problems, apart from exhibiting trends of fading age old cultural beliefs and practices in the interface zone.