TRIALOG Conference

The Research Group Regional Development and Risk Management (RER) at the Department of Spatial Planning TU Dortmund University cordially invite you to take part in the call for conference papers for TRIALOG Conference 2026.

Peri-urbanization, a global phenomenon driven by rapid urban growth, weak governance, and unaffordable housing, creates transitional hotspots of land transformation. These areas feature mixed land uses, competing claims, institutional fragmentation, and social marginalization. Environmental consequences include farmland loss, habitat fragmentation, flood risk, and water stress. Yet peri-urban regions also foster innovation through hybrid governance.

Overlapping formal and informal institutions produce legal ambiguities-e.g., conflicting urban and rural zoning-leading to insecure tenure, informal settlements, and harm to marginalized groups. Peri-urban areas are vital for resilience, providing "edible green infrastructure" such as food production, flood regulation, and biodiversity corridors.

A resilient framework must balance urban growth, rural livelihoods, ecosystems, and equity. This requires moving beyond static zoning toward adaptive, polycentric governance. Key elements include participatory land rights mapping, flexible tools for peri-urban agriculture, cross-sectoral coordination, and recognizing informal actors as legitimate stakeholders. The framework should capture dynamic transformations and complex actor interactions.

Consequently, the conference invites papers looking at the following topics:

• Track I. Defining the peri-urban / peri-urbanisation - a theoretical perspective to contextualise and localise peri-urban and peri-urbanisation in territorial governance.

• Track II. Dynamics of peri-urbanization - Analysis of the underlying drivers of peri-urban growth patterns of land use change, demographic shifts, infrastructure and evolution of peri-urban economies including case studies or comparative analysis of impact on livelihood and natural ecosystems in different regions.

• Track III Governance frameworks for resilient peri-urban development - exploration of land governance and, in particular, land management frameworks for sustainable peri-urban development. Key discussion topics include planning instruments and mechanisms to anticipate, address and govern for climate impact mitigation and adaptation, as well as the roles of various actors - local governments, the private sector, civil society, and communities - in the planning and managing peri-urban transformation.

A selection of conference papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume and special issue of TRIALOG Journal.