Front. Sustain. Food Syst. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 2571-581X Frontiers Media S.A. 10.3389/fsufs.2026.1773657 Perspective Periurban agrifood systems as high-priority sustainability challenges Zimmerer Karl S. 1 * Conceptualization Data curation Formal analysis Funding acquisition Investigation Methodology Project administration Resources Software Supervision Validation Visualization Writing – original draft Writing – review & editing Duvernoy Isabelle 2 Conceptualization Validation Visualization Writing – original draft Writing – review & editing Qiu Jiangxiao 3 Conceptualization Validation Visualization Writing – original draft Writing – review & editing Tutu Raymond 4 Validation Visualization Writing – original draft Writing – review & editing WinklerPrins Antoinette 5 Validation Writing – original draft Writing – review & editing GeoSyntheSES Lab, Department of Geography, Programs in Rural Sociology and Ecology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States University of Toulouse, Toulouse, INP, ElP, INRAE, AGIR, Castanet-Tolosan, France School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States Global Societies Program, Delaware State University, Dover, DE, United States Department of Geography & Environment, George Washington University, Washington, DC, United States Correspondence: Karl S. Zimmerer, ksz2@psu.edu 10 02 2026 2026 10 1773657 22 12 2025 23 01 2026 26 01 2026 Copyright © 2026 Zimmerer, Duvernoy, Qiu, Tutu and WinklerPrins. 2026 Zimmerer, Duvernoy, Qiu, Tutu and WinklerPrins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

New and distinct perspectives are urgently needed to understand periurban agrifood systems as high priority sustainability challenges. The rationale for our Perspective is rooted in viewing these sustainability challenges as powerfully shaped through the widespread global expansion and accelerating uneven development of periurban areas. Our Perspective uses this distinct focus on periurban agrifood systems to address a select group of current sustainability challenges and dynamics: (1) dynamics of multifunctional trends in changing periurban agrifood systems; (2) health and well-being including food and nutrition; (3) climate change, land use, and land systems that include a gamut of types encompassing agriculture, gardening, and other food-related functions; (4) agroecosystem and agroecological processes including diverse food (i.e., agrobiodiversity, soil, water) and (5) landscape dynamics and connectivity. Scope of the sustainability analysis is guided by our in-of-for framework of ideas emphasizing the multifunctionality of periurban agrifood systems, spatial dimensions, and research-policy-stakeholder connections. Further distinctness is evidenced in our Perspective’s framing in relation to global periurban expansion and accelerating uneven development. Our Perspective elucidates key insights of research on the current challenges of periurban agrifood sustainability. By developing, applying, and reflecting on its well-defined, coherent position centered on these elements, the distinct viewpoint of our Perspective provides important advances and insights toward the understanding of periurban agrifood systems and sustainability challenges.

 periurban sustainability periurban sustainable development sustainable periurban food systems urban and periurban agriculture urban-rural linkages periurban agricultural landscape periurban livelihoods and landscapes periurbanisation dynamics The author(s) declared that financial support was received for this work and/or its publication. Funding through the Distinguished Professorship at Pennsylvania State University was used to support the research and the writing of KSZ for this article. section-at-acceptance Urban Agriculture Introduction: a distinct perspective and its rationales

A distinct perspective is urgently needed to advance understanding of the sustainability challenges of periurban agrifood systems. The rationale for this perspective is rooted in the widespread global expansion and current uneven development of periurban areas as distinct, urban-connected spaces reflected in diverse terms such as “new urban peripheries,” “urban fringes,” “suburbia,” and “urban–rural interfaces” (Angel, 2022; Karg et al., 2019). Periurban expansion accounts for the extensive spatial growth of urban areas, broadly defined, in recent decades (e.g., 275,000 km2 to 570,000 km2, 1990–2014; Angel, 2022) as well as notable demographic growth (U.N.-Habitat, 2020). Periurban agrifood systems reveal distinct relations to changing urban cores and to transformations of urban–rural/rural–urban linkages (Kratzer and Kister, 2021; Zimmerer et al., 2022), in addition to distinctive periurban land use, fragmentation of planning, and medium-density populations and built environments (Ravetz et al., 2012; Sahana et al., 2023).

The influential periurban ties to urban cores demonstrate the continued, ongoing evolution of dual distinctness-and-connectedness that is similarly central to the rationale for our Perspective (Duvernoy et al., 2018; Gray et al., 2020; WinklerPrins, 2017). Dual distinctions and connections are evidenced in recent usefulness of Urban and Periurban Agriculture (UPA) as an overarching designation (Zimmerer et al., 2021a) and in the evolving use of UPA-based frameworks to advance sustainability analysis (e.g., life cycle assessments; Benis and Ferrao, 2017; food-biodiversity systems; Zimmerer et al., 2021b). Our Perspective highlights that periurban agrifood systems and sustainability are influenced globally by uneven development—such as accelerating infrastructure inequalities—that accompany current urbanization-and-periurbanisation (Pandey et al., 2025).

Our goal in this Perspective is to provide insights into research on several current periurban-agrifood sustainability issues and dynamics of periurban sustainable development related to policies and stakeholders, specifically: (1) dynamics of multifunctional trends in periurban agrifood systems; (2) health and well-being including food and nutrition; (3) climate change, land use, and land systems; (4) agroecosystems and key elements (e.g., food biodiversity, soil, water) and (5) landscape dynamics and connectivity. Spatial dimensions and dynamic relations to policy and stakeholder interests are central to the insights of our Perspective. The current rise of unevenness in periurban social and economic development (Pandey et al., 2025) encompasses gentrification, low-income and socially marginalized livelihoods of immigrants, and social agency ranging from periurban property developers to diverse periurban food justice movements (Karagianni, 2024; Leitner et al., 2023; Yacamán-Ochoa et al., 2025).

The scope of sustainability analysis in our Perspective is guided by our in-of-for framework of ideas relies upon pluralistic interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge (Figure 1). “In” refers to the multi-functionality of periurban agrifood systems in relation to sustainability. “Of” refers to sustainability-influencing spatial patterns, processes, and scales that includes single- and multi-city systems, communities, and comparative case studies within and across countries. “For” denotes the potential applicability to sustainability research, policies, and stakeholders. Our framework outlining in-of-for ideas adds a spatial dimension to existing approaches (Maye et al., 2022) with examples detailed in the shaded areas of Figure 1.

Framework of in-of-for ideas about periurban agrifood systems and sustainability.

Circular diagram of a highlighted periurban zone that is located in-between the urban and rural spaces. Background is a satellite view. The diagram contains three labeled axes: multifunctionality (vertical), spatial pattern and scales (diagonal), and inter- and trans-disciplinary framing of research and policy (horizontal). Each axis is annotated with example dimensions, such as food-nutrition functions, policy and governance, and spatial scales. The inner circle is labeled “Urban,” the middle “Periurban,” and the outer “Rural.”

The distinctness of our Perspective is centered below on several issues of periurban agrifood dynamics and sustainable development that distinguish current challenges and implications for policy and stakeholders. The scope of this sustainability analysis is guided by our use and innovation of the in-of-for framework. Multifunctionality (in) occurring in periurban agrifood systems, spatial dimensions (of), and research-policy-stakeholder connections (for) are addressed and emphasized. Further distinctness appears in our Perspective’s general framing in relation to global periurban expansion and accelerating uneven development.

 Addressing high priority sustainability challenges of periurban agrifood systems: current and future research advances

This section’s sample of ongoing research on the current sustainability challenge of periurban agrifood systems is based on a concise, structured literature review and the authors’ studies. It emphasizes the interactions of these challenges with continued periurban expansion and accelerating uneven development (Pandey et al., 2025) and increased multifunctionality of periurban agrifood systems (Robinson and Song, 2018).

First, we address trends in multifunctional agrifood diversification amid the global expansion and evolving development of periurban areas. Intensification of these multifunctional trends include the profusion of industrial food warehousing, distribution, processing, and retailing in the “logistics landscapes” of periurban agrifood systems. Multifunctional trends increasingly incorporate social-technological and social-organizational innovations of food production exemplified by periurban greenhouse farming, diversified business strategies and entrepreneurship, periurban agrotourism, and social-collective farming and other alternative food systems (Karagianni, 2024; Paül and McKenzie, 2013; Yacamán-Ochoa et al., 2025; Zimmerer and Bell, 2025). The spatial dynamics of these expanding multi-functional trends provide new research, policy, and stakeholder insights (e.g., stakeholders’ sustainability debates on the spatial siting of expanding periurban greenhouse farming; Zimmerer and Bell, 2025; see also Duvernoy et al., 2018; Soulard et al., 2018; Zasada, 2011; Robinson and Song, 2018). Analyzing multi-functional trends in periurban agrifood systems and spatial dynamics are also important for sustainability frameworks such as ecosystem services and nature-based solutions.

Health and well-being functions are emerging as major priorities in the current global sustainability challenges of agrifood systems in periurban spaces due to entrenched and accelerating inequalities in social and economic development (Pandey et al., 2025). Examples include new research on the food and nutrition security of periurban stakeholders and policies promoting periurban-based short food chains (Cassatella and Gottero, 2025; Cattivelli and Pinna, 2025), which build upon earlier periurban studies (Colucci et al., 2017; Opitz et al., 2016). Food, nutrition, cultural identity, and health roles need to be viewed in future research as periurban sustainability functions that evolve through spatial and social differentiation among stakeholder groups (Gallaher et al., 2013; Torres-Lima et al., 2022). Insights include the spatial differentiation of distinct food spaces, policies, and stakeholders such as the “inner periurban” and “outer periurban” (Karg et al., 2019). Insights from our Perspective also suggest that future research consider spatially distinct, intra-periurban linkages of food and water security (Tutu and Stoler, 2016), cultural ecosystem services (Riechers et al., 2016), and stakeholder-accessible spatial technologies that support the sustainability of periurban agrifood systems (Vonthron et al., 2023).

Climate change poses major current challenges to periurban agrifood systems that can offer several adaptive strategies, including floodwater-absorptive capacities (Manasi and Raju, 2020; Padgham et al., 2015). Climate change-related multi-functions of periurban land use, land systems, and ecosystem/social/cultural-ecological services form crucial new insights for periurban sustainability and adaptive governance. Here our Perspective uses spatial insights to hypothesize the heightened risks and policy needs of low-income, periurban food-producers as stakeholders in potential climate-change “sacrifice-zones” as urban cores become increasingly hardened against flood risks. This insight recognizes that the stakeholders in periurban spaces can face destabilizing land-system processes of gentrification and marginalization further undermining climate-change adaptation and other sustainability-enhancing functions. Such land-change pressures call for the expansion of research on land-use zonation and spatial dynamics of periurban agrifood landscapes that form mosaics, patches, gradients, and thresholds in relation to urban–rural continua and linkages (Mulya et al., 2023; Qiu et al., 2025).

Interacting agroecological factors and management, such as biodiversity, soil, and water have become increasingly recognized as important for periurban agrifood research, policy, and stakeholder engagement. Affordable, agroecological production of diverse, nutritious, and culturally valued foods (agrobiodiversity) is vital in the periurban agrifood systems that often include large populations of low-income and immigrant stakeholders (Tornaghi, 2024; Zimmerer et al., 2021b). Here we use insight from recent research showing the spatial concentration of agrobiodiversity-supporting seed systems in the periurban areas of African, Asian, and Latin American cities (Zimmerer et al., 2023). This insight leads our Perspective to hypothesize the key policy-sensitive, spatial roles of stakeholder groups such as informal market vendors in low-income periurban spaces. Additional agroecological research on soil sustainability promises to address the crucial interactions with livestock and nutrient cycles in periurban agroecosystems (e.g., nitrogen and carbon flows; Graefe et al., 2019). Similarly crucial is water sustainability and stakeholders, with one of our specific insights directed to the dynamic role of periurban irrigator groups (part of extensive periurban irrigation globally; Thebo et al., 2014) in future research on emergent periurban irrigation systems amid current climate change and competing water demands (Fertas et al., 2024).

Landscape dynamics and spatial connectivity currently constitute an additional high priority sustainability issue. Insights from these spatial functions can propel the scaling-up of UPA sustainability (Qiu et al., 2024; Qiu et al., 2025). Sustainability-enhancing connectivity is a focus in future spatial research and design of greenbelts (greenways), landscape corridors, and periurban networks of resource flows with adjacent urban cores and with transforming rural areas of declining populations (Zimmerer et al., 2022). Insights from our Perspective highlight the importance of taking account of the rising uneven spatial development of periurban infrastructure (Pandey et al., 2025) in stakeholder-focused, cross-landscape connectivity for agricultural land preservation (Hammelman et al., 2022), diverse-food circulation (WinklerPrins and Oliveira, 2010), and water governance (Zimmerer et al., 2022). Here the insights of our Perspective urge research and policy support for sustainability-strengthening spatial connectivity that includes the evolving networks of periurban immigrant stakeholders to rural places as well as myriad links to changing urban-core stakeholders, policies, and practices (Hedblom et al., 2017; Duvernoy et al., 2025).

 Discussion: emergent high priority sustainability and periurban agrifood systems

Amid rising inequalities in periurban areas (Pandey et al., 2025), our Perspective has identified and calls for a new wave of sustainability research analysis, policies, and stakeholder approaches centered on periurban agrifood systems. Emergent spatial dimensions such as new food-and-sustainability territories (Duvernoy et al., 2025) co-occur globally with the uneven spatial development of periurban areas and periurbanisation processes (Angel, 2022; Pandey et al., 2025; Seto et al., 2010; U.N.-Habitat, 2020). Our discussion notes the role of additional current and future research that complements the sustainability issues examined above (e.g., periurban air quality, food-energy-water interactions, toxicology, sociocultural-identity practices, civic and political-economic functions) in the call for high priority sustainability research on periurban-agrifood systems.

Our Perspective suggests that the current uneven spatial development of periurban areas is contributing to the rise of notable sub-concepts that include several recent formulations, such as “rururban” and “semi-urban” (Sahana et al., 2023), “functional rural-urban territorisation” (Harriss-White, 2021), “agrarian urban” (Gururani, 2020), “rural urbanization,” and “urban agrarianism,” in addition to evolving notions of “suburbanization” and “ethnoburbs” (Galt et al., 2014; Li, 2008). The contrasting characteristics of several of these insightful spatial concepts, combined with the current rise of uneven periurban development (Pandey et al., 2025), lead to our hypothesis of the current accelerated differentiation of periurban agrifood systems. The characterization of the different spatial concepts of current periurbanisation also suggests insight into the historical dimensions of agrifood sustainability (Tornaghi, 2014).

Finally, our Perspective highlights pluralistic knowledge employed in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to periurban agrifood sustainability. It draws from urban and regional planning, geography, land science (landscape ecology, landscape sustainability science, land systems), anthropology, architecture and landscape architecture, sociology, and transportation fields. This pluralistic knowledge also incorporates the ecological and environmental sciences and, more broadly, the agronomic, food, engineering, biogeophysical, energy, and data sciences in addition to such integrative frameworks as social-ecological systems (Chen et al., 2023) and political ecology (Keil, 2020).

By way of conclusion, our distinct Perspective has been used to generate insights and elucidate research on select challenges in the sustainability of periurban agrifood systems. The scope of our sustainability analysis is guided by our in-of-for framework of ideas emphasizing the multifunctionality of periurban agrifood systems, spatial dimensions, and research-policy-stakeholder connections. Further distinctness is evidenced in our Perspective’s framing in relation to global periurban expansion and accelerating uneven development. By formulating, applying, and reflecting on the well-defined, coherent position centered on these themes, the distinct viewpoint of our Perspective provides important advances and insights toward the understanding of periurban agrifood systems and the challenges of sustainability and sustainable development.

 Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

 Author contributions

KSZ: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. ID: Conceptualization, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. JQ: Conceptualization, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. RT: Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. AW: Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

 Conflict of interest

The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

 Generative AI statement

The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

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Edited by: Pablo Torres-Lima, Metropolitan Autonomous University, Mexico

Reviewed by: Yushu Xia, Columbia University, United States