To make sense of large complex set of problems, we use a’20-question template’. This helps to link the interviews, policy analysis, mapping and any other evidence. Then we can compare between different peri-urban types and different city-regions around the world.
- Each of the 4 ‘cause-effect’ themes (‘peri-urban, climate, vulnerability, governance’) has 4 questions each, making up questions 1-16 in the template
- The Pathway Toolkit provides questions 17-20, with an overview of the ‘systems, scenarios, synergies, strategies’.
The 20 questions template can be shown online with different levels of detail
- In summary form, as 5 main themes, where the different peri-urban zones in any city-region may be mapped and compared;
- In detailed form, where the four main themes expand into the full 2o questions, for each peri-urban zone (where these are defined):
- Where available, we can also attach maps & images to each question.
This 20-question format can’t fully describe the longer story and bigger picture of each zone in each city-region. But it does aim to help with summary and comparison, between zones and between locations around the world. A working example of the ’20-question template’ is shown here, from Chennai and its four contrasting zones:
Chennai region overview of zones
Peri-Urban
Climate Risk
Vulnerability
Governance
Synergistics
Chennai - Ennore
Heavy-industries complex along ecologically-degraded coastline and scattered towns and farmlands
Sea level rise, increase in extreme events - storm, storm surges
urban eco-social-economic mix in some areas has growing vulnerability
Quasi-government arrangements with industries, limited overview and regulation;
from the world's first industrial city-region to the first post-industrial eco-region
Chennai - Industrial corridor
Major highways criss-crossing industrial hubs and gated communities interspersed with farmlands and water bodies
Extreme rainfall events triggering floods and droughts and subsequent impacts on land, biodiversity
Fringe villages and towns adjacent to water bodies at higher levels of risk from flooding;
pockets of civil society action and local innovation could trigger pathways of transformation
Growing pressure on fragile landscapes & settlements: potential for socio-eco-resilience
Chennai - I.T. corridor
Coastal-to-hinterland landscape with hi-tech industrial and entertainment/scenic corridors, interspersed with fishing villages, salt pans and small-scale farming
High-risk coastal infrastructure, floods, fragmented land/waterscape
Rapid urbanisation leading to fragmented landscapes coastal infrastructure risk and loss of livelihoods
fragmented local governance, complex
potential new forms of eco-urban form & design, in new forms of community
Chennai - hinterland
Large watershed area with mid-sized cities, villages and farmlands and small-medium scale industries
(heat, precipitation and storm: impacts on water systems & agricultural livelihoods)
marginal livelihoods in sensitive landscapes with growing pressure of urbanization
fragmented local governance & civil society
Can a new eco-social order emerge?