Abstract

The stream of sustainable city-region pinpoints the need to build an enhanced life support system. It is a call for the agriculture to provide adequate foods for the current and future generations. Meanwhile, the challenge to endure agriculture within the facets of urban sprawl is prevalent. This paper aims to investigate opportunities to preserve peri-urban agriculture in the so-called “planning’s last frontier,” a term describing the complexities to plan urban outskirts. The study presents a case study of Malang, one of the vast growing regions in Indonesia. The growth of urban centres created a centrifugal force, resulting in a leapfrog development towards the outskirts, causing the loss of 7.28% of the prime agricultural lands in the last decade. Planning failed to regulate private sectors in dominating land acquisitions and further control the sprawl due to policy mismatches. The agro-economic setbacks triggered landowners to surrender their parcels while socio-agricultural traditions fade away, following the influx of modernization. Incorporating the multivariate factor analysis, this research revealed the influencing factors underlying the community’s preference on peri-urban agricultural preservation. The result shows that the ability of peri-urban agriculture to accommodate self-provision of food, and the opportunity for a better income generation is the most prominent motivation for them to stay engaged in farming.