Abstract: The peri-urban area is a dynamically changing area. Peri-urban areas in many countries are among the fastest growing regions, which have great strategic significance in space, social, economic and environmental aspects. Distinctive characteristics of peri-urban area, such as transition, dynamic and instability have attained attention of many scholars in the field of geography, urban planning, economics, and ecology. Peri-urban concept replaces urban fringe, desakota and city-village combination section in the third phase of rural-urban transition area. After delineating the content and context of periurban area, the distinction and likeness between urban fringe, desakota, city-village combination section, and peri-urban area have been discussed. This article focuses on spatial recognition, type identification and driving mechanism in the literature and the evolution, controversy or weaknesses in the research method, and finds that the method is changing from qualitative research to the corporation of it with quantitative research, and the research perspective expands more broad to social, economic, environmental aspects and many levels related with globalization and decentralization. This article provides a brief comment on comprehensive analysis of current research works, at last, suggests that more attention should be paid to the field of the driving mechanism in China’s peri-urban area, compromises of quantitative measurement with humanism ideas, and typology inside the peri-urban area in the future.

Key words: driving mechanism, peri-urban area, spatial identification, type identification