This is a book containing 6 papers contributed by various writers on peri-urban dynamics of population, habitat and environment of Indian metropolis.

The papers have greatly benefited from the comments of the discussants and other participants to the workshop, and later from the reviewers. In this connection, we would like to thank especially N. Sridharan. In addition, the reflections developed in the introduction have also benefited from the discussions held during a follow-up seminar organised on the same topic at the Centre for Population and Development, Paris on 15th November 2004. The findings on Indian metropolises were compared with case studies of peri-urbanisation in other metropolises of the world. The financial support of the institutions that made these two scientific meetings possible needs to be acknowledged here: the French Ministry of Research, as a part of its incentive programme ‘Space and Territory: Society, Economy, Culture, Languages, Representations’, 2003-4; the Centre de Sciences Humaines of New Delhi (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs); the Centre for Population and Development (CePeD, Paris); the Institute of Research for Development, Paris.