Periurban Asia: A Commentary Oil "Becoming Urban.".

This commentary on the papers collected in this special issue identifies certain recurring themes from the papers and examines these in light of the urban transitions now being experienced by Vietnam and China, as elsewhere in Asia. These include: tensions in state-society relations as expressed in processes of periurbanization; the effects of the expansion of market relations in land and urban development; the persistence of the discursive categories traditional and modern in the analysis of periurbanization; and a consideration of what the periurban might imply vis-à-vis conventional notions of urban and rural, now and into the future. This discussion of recurring themes from the papers is prefaced by some reflections on how our choices of terminology may influence our theoretical understanding of a situation, event or condition. The specific question here is what is the difference between periurbanization and suburbanization, and it is argued that the distinction between the two may derive more from who is using the terms and the contexts within which they are situated than from specific denotative meanings of the words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]