Limits of policy and planning in peri-urban waterscapes: The case of Ghaziabad, Delhi, India

•Mainstream policy and planning has negative implications for peri-urban waterscapes.•Resilient and transformative adaptation of urban and peri-urban areas is intertwined.•The peri-urban interface challenges the logic of universal access to water.•Powerful social groups can exert significant influence over water supply and quality.•Water mobilisations of the poor are systemically undermined by prevailing planning logics.

The notion of the waterscape has been proposed to capture the interconnectedness of economic, political, cultural and social processes embedded in water. More recently recognised, yet still relatively under-theorised are waterscapes that are ‘in-between’ the city and the periphery. This article focuses on peri-urban Delhi, specifically the area around Ghaziabad. We show that peri-urban waterscapes do not fit into existing urban or rural planning models because these same models largely fail to recognise the peri-urban interface as a distinct form of territorial development. As a result a diverse range of mobilisations around water relevant to the peri-urban poor are systematically undermined while power asymmetries that shape access to water remain unrecognised. Peri-urban spaces thus continue to be planned as if in a transition towards urban modernity despite the complex social, political, technological and cultural realities these spaces represent. The failure to address current limits of policy and planning in peri-urban waterscapes has long term implications for the resilience, sustainability and transformative adaptation of both city and periphery.