Introduction
Cities are growing as centers of population, economy, infrastructure, services, technology, innovation, creativity, and politics that determine policy-making around the globe. However, cities' characteristics are distinct between the developed countries of the Global North and the majority of developing countries in the Global South. As cities in the Global North are proportionally structured into large, middle, and small cities, cities in the Global South are dominated by mega-urban regions that grow rapidly and extensively, serving as engines of growth (; ; ).
Such mega-urban growth stimulates urban encroachment on adjacent rural spaces (; ), facilitated by road networks that keep the urban core accessible. Economic strength in the city core attracts in-migrants who work in the formal and informal sectors but live in the periphery due to cheaper land prices and a better environmental quality for housing (; ). Consequently, massive urban mobility for commuting makes the infrastructure capacity of the urban core insufficient (). In parallel, intensifying competition for economic space drives up land prices and leaves little room for green space, which offers intangible benefits.
Due to imbalanced green spaces between the urban core and peri-urban areas, some scholars suggested that peri-urban areas should be managed to provide ecosystem services (; ; ). Maintaining the economic center of mega-urban regions has become a concern as it is increasingly at risk of floods, droughts, waste, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. However, nowadays peri-urban areas are being developed more rapidly, filled by urban housing, industrial estates, new towns, and tourism serving an eco-friendly urban lifestyle (; ). As a result, recent findings by () show that haphazard urban expansion has damaged the capacity of peri-urban to maintain a mega-urban ecosystem.
Against this background, this paper proposes a framework for maintaining green spaces to mitigate environmental degradation in dense and sprawling mega-urban regions. It will also draw attention to how different policies of fragmented governments in mega-urban regions harden efforts to regulate urban sprawl.
Urbanization in the Global South
Urbanization in the Global South is pushed to facilitate economic growth. Therefore, infrastructure, facilities, and investments are concentrated, which are expected to accelerate economic development by spilling over into the surrounding areas. Conversely, prioritizing urban growth leads to overly agglomerated economic activities in mega-urban regions, thereby widening disparities with other areas ().
Mega-urban regions are characterized by urban sprawl beyond the urban core boundary. This is uncontrollable as fragmented governance has less capacity to manage rapid and vast urbanization across jurisdictions (; ). The increasing economic value of land parcels in the urban core has pushed urban housing to cheaper land in the urban fringes (), driving peri-urbanization, where urban and rural land uses are intermingled. In the Global South context, this creates the typical mixture of urban–rural land use called desakota (). Due to this situatedness, reduced green spaces in the urban core are followed by fragmented green spaces in the peri-urban (). Severely, daily commuting has made traffic jams a routine, releasing greenhouse gas emissions into the mega-urban space. High levels of urban mobility also strain infrastructure capacity, as the population accumulates in certain locations and at certain times, especially in the urban core during working hours.
Without effort, mega-urban ecosystems worsen rapidly, risking the economic growth achieved. Therefore, greening mega-urban regions should be prioritized, albeit it is very challenging amid the continuation of urban sprawl in areas of fragmented governance. As costs, benefits, and risks flow across governmental jurisdictions in mega-urban regions, divided policies set aside investment in developing green spaces that have low economic returns.
Challenges to greening cities
In the Global South mega-urban context, challenges to greening cities are typical. First, increasing land demand for high-return economic activities puts pressure on the remaining small patches of green spaces. Second, the high demand for land has raised land prices, making investment in green space development too expensive. Third, a limited government budget hinders the development of high-cost and high-technology applications of green infrastructure. Fourth, scattered and fragmented green open spaces are at risk of damage due to a polluted urban environment and resource limitations (i.e., healthy soil and fresh water). Fifth, a lack of knowledge of the functions and design of urban greenery in urban planning has led to gray infrastructure dominating. Sixth, urban sprawl leads to the occupation of green spaces by urban clusters, creating environmental injustice and disturbing the natural capacity to provide ecosystem services.
Still, those challenges should be addressed, as environmental degradation, coupled with the impacts of climate change, increasingly threatens mega-urban functions as major engines of growth. While cities in the Global North are turning sprawl into compact cities, equipped with smart-green technology and infrastructure (; ; ), these solutions are incompatible with the challenges of greening cities in the Global South, as they are high-cost, high-technology, and require well-coordinated governance.
Proposing a framework for greening cities
Considering the challenges, greening mega-urban regions in the Global South needs a different framework. In the urban core, designing green infrastructures (GI) in integration with gray infrastructure is promising. However, instead of building high-cost and high-technology green infrastructure such as vertical gardens, roof gardens, green facades, etc., it is better to optimize all open areas, including roadsides, river banks, parks, cemeteries, school yards, government office yards, sports venues, bare land, and farmland (). Some studies brought evidence that roadside and river banks can survive and support green urban networks in the Global South's cities (; ; ). Other evidence came from cemeteries, used to connect green space and culture that respects the late ancestors (; ). In particular, farmland should be cultivated using regenerative practices that not only prioritize food production but also support healthy soil, water quality, and a diverse range of commodities (). Besides, developing urban forests, botanical gardens, and mangroves (i.e., only coastal urban areas) can enrich urban biodiversity (). Furthermore, the green corridor should be designed to connect green spaces within the urban core and between the urban core and peri-urban areas. In doing these, the nature-based solutions (NBS) approach should be considered, in which gray infrastructure is redesigned to mimic and enhance natural processes (; ).
On the other hand, in peri-urban areas, urban sprawl not only converts land use but also divides green open spaces. Industrial estates occupy large areas, including green spaces, to reserve land for future development. Housing developers provide large green spaces as a selling point to market properties. Tourism businesses offer vast green spaces to serve urban-nature connected lifestyles. As they all focus on environmental quality within their clusters, the integration of green spaces as an ecosystem is overlooked. For instance, changing the landscape and river channels to avoid flood risk damages the watershed system; occupying riverbanks for recreation and accommodation disturbs the riparian ecosystem; clearing mangroves for beautiful sea-view housing and tourism threatens the coastal ecosystem, etc. Therefore, the integration of green spaces in the peri-urban area should be designed based on the ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) approach. EbA focuses on sustainable management, conservation, and restoration of the ecosystem as a way to adapt to climate change. Socioeconomic activities are also taken into account; thus, peri-urban farming, agroforestry, eco-tourism, and other uses of green spaces, such as industrial parks and residential parks, can become elements that support the ecosystem (). In the majority of Global South mega-urban regions, a watershed-based ecosystem exists that extends from upstream mountainous areas to downstream coastal areas (; ; ). In this case, integrating natural elements such as water catchments, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and coastal areas with man-made elements such as irrigation, dams, fishponds, embankments, infiltration wells, in facilitating activities such as rice farming, regenerative dryland and upland agriculture, agroforestry, ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM), and recreational areas, can be designed to enhance the watershed ecosystem. Therefore, multi-scalar governance from the community to the city level, coupled with inclusive and participatory planning, offers a solution in managing periurban or desakota land use ().
Combining GI-NBS in the urban core and EbA in the peri-urban requires coordination between local governments. Therefore, measuring the costs, benefits, and risks taken by each local government jurisdiction is important (; ; ). It should be clarified who the providers and beneficiaries of green spaces management are across the mega-urban landscape. A clear and fair incentive-disincentive policy that involves all government entities in mega-urban regions is needed, enhanced by public participation in monitoring and control. Schematically, this framework is drawn in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Summary
Cities in the Global South tend to sprawl, forming mega-urban regions that give rise to socioecological issues. It is the implication of development planning strategies that focus on creating engines of growth, which then expand uncontrollably beyond the management capacity of government entities in the region. Greening such cities through compact-smart-green approaches, like cities in the Global North, is ineffective due to a lack of knowledge, technology, budget, and fragmented governance. Therefore, different approaches are required: GI-NBS can be applied in the remaining open spaces within dense built-up areas of the urban core, while EbA can be adopted in the peri-urban or the typical urban–rural mixture called desakota, for instance, in upstream watershed ecosystems and downstream coastal ecosystems. To reach that, the integration of government policies and actions is needed, underpinned by cost, benefits, and risk sharing in green space development and investment. People's participation also plays a key role in pressuring the government to apply those strategies.
Statements
Author contributions
DP: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.
Conflict of interest
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Summary
Keywords
ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA), Global South, green infrastructure (GI), integrated governance, mega urban regions, nature-based solution (NBS), urban sprawl
Citation
Pribadi DO (2026) Greening cities amidst urban sprawl and fragmented governance in the Global South mega-urban regions. Front. Sustain. Cities 8:1844228. doi: 10.3389/frsc.2026.1844228
Received
31 March 2026
Revised
12 May 2026
Accepted
12 May 2026
Published
28 May 2026
Volume
8 - 2026
Edited by
Daniel Jato-Espino, Valencian International University, Spain
Reviewed by
Muhammad Salem, Cairo University, Egypt
Anne Kristiina Kurjenoja-Carrera, University of the Americas Puebla, Mexico
Updates
Copyright
© 2026 Pribadi.
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*Correspondence: Didit Okta Pribadi, diditpribadi@yahoo.com
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.