Rural–Urban Change in Highland Peru: Perceived Impacts and Preferred Performance

In recent decades, the mountains of Latin America have undergone massive rural-urban change. In Peru, this has led to strong growth of population and settlement on the spatially limited valley floors of the Quechua elevational zone, which is part of a sophisticated vertical land use system that includes the adjacent slopes (Suni elevational zone) and high plains (Puna elevational zone). Periurban villagers not only benefit from this rural-urban change, but also bear its negative social and environmental consequences. Future-oriented mountain development in highland Peru could benefit from detecting and understanding the perceived impacts and preferred performance of rural-urban change in periurban villages. In an effort to do so, this study used structured, computer-assisted personal interviews with closed questions, complemented by informal talks, in 2 case study villages near the intermediate cities of Cusco (Huatanay Valley) and Huaraz (Santa Valley): Oropesa and Taricá. The responses of 420 interviewees, selected through nonprobability quota sampling, confirm negative impacts known from comparable studies. However, these perceptions do not lead to a negative overall assessment of rural-urban change. This supposed contradiction becomes easier to understand when considering the periurban villagers' preferred performance of future developments, which point in particular at the desire to preserve cropland and woodland on the valley floor, while, at the same time, making greater use of the high plains as settlement areas. Given these views, performance-based management of rural-urban change could potentially lead the way to a socially inclusive and environmentally balanced development and help in overcoming rural-urban dichotomies in highland Peru.