Introduction: The Peri-Urban Zone: The Structure and Dynamics of a Strategic Component of Metropolitan Regions/Introduction: La Zone Periurbaine: Structure Et Dynamiques D'une Composante Strategique des Regions Metropolitaines (Overview of Journal on Canadian and French Urban-Rural Areas; Article in both French and English‪)‬

Introduction * The rural-urban fringe, increasingly replaced in the research terminology by peri-urban fringes, zones or areas, has been a major arena for geographic research, and to a lesser extent, research in the planning field, for over 50 years. From the 1970s in particular, considerable research was undertaken on this zone, focusing on the patterns of change in the context of the then dominant conceptual framework, that of the central city and built-up area, the rural-urban fringe, the outer fringe and the urban shadow. Such research became very popular in Canada, for instance, during and after the 1970s when it was recognized that this zone was a central part of the structure and functioning of urban and metropolitan regional systems. These zones represented and still represent important extensions of the living space of major urban and metropolitan systems--as living environments, as environments in which employment opportunities were developed and resources exploited (e.g. agricultural resources), as environments in which important recreational and leisure activities could be pursued and provided for, and as environments destined to receive many important infrastructural developments (e.g. transportation infrastructure).