Why are people moving to the edges of cities? The peri-urban, ground zero of contemporary architecture.
For centuries, people dreamed of the safety of walls and the protection of a roof. The house was the shelter against the cold, the rain, and an unpredictable world. The city, in its classical form, was designed as a concentration of power, commerce, and social life. The suburb, which appeared in the 19th century, first brought the idea of refuge beyond the city’s borders: a place where the middle class could live closer to nature without losing contact with the center. Today, however, we are living in a different moment. We are no longer talking about dormitory suburbs, but about a new kind of territory: the peri-urban.
The peri-urban is not the edge of the city, but an in-between space that is increasingly becoming the scene of major transformations. Here, new neighbourhoods, industrial parks, private schools, logistics hubs, and gradually even communities that function almost independently are emerging. In many countries, the peri-urban is already the growth pole of the future, the place where the pressure for housing shifts, but also the laboratory where new urban models are tested.
Prices in large urban centres have become prohibitive, people are seeking more space and flexibility, and technology allows distance to be negotiated differently. Teleworking, faster infrastructure, and digital connectivity have made possible what seemed unimaginable a few decades ago: living on the edge of the city while remaining fully connected to its dynamics. The last four years have accelerated this process. Millions of people discovered they could work from home, exchange a central apartment for a house with a yard on the outskirts or in a green area around the city. The expansion of the peri-urban is not just a technical or urbanistic process, but also a shift in mentality. In new peri-urban zones, people seek more than housing: they want communities. Homeowners’ associations managing shared spaces appear, private schools and kindergartens respond quickly to the needs of young families, and co-working spaces enable remote work close to home.
This migration toward the peri-urban is not a localised phenomenon. In the United States, census data shows that between 2010 and 2020, the population of suburban and peri-urban areas grew twice as fast as that of urban centres. In Europe, Eurostat estimates that nearly half of the European Union’s population already lives in peri-urban or rural areas close to cities, and the trend continues. In Asia, governments such as those of China and India are massively developing peri-urban regions, investing in infrastructure and urban planning to redistribute the pressure from overcrowded centres.
But today’s peri-urban no longer resembles the classic suburb. We are no longer talking about monotonous areas with identical houses and purely residential functions, but about mixed-use territories where housing meets offices, schools, commercial spaces, and cultural infrastructure. Increasingly, mixed neighbourhoods, eco-districts, or fully functional satellite cities are being developed. Examples abound: Vauban in Freiburg, Germany, a neighbourhood designed to function almost completely sustainably; Songdo in South Korea, a smart city built from scratch on peri-urban land; or the areas around Paris, integrated through the Grand Paris Express project.
Such a transformation brings immense challenges. How do you build the necessary infrastructure for tens of thousands of new homes? How do you plan utility routes, public spaces, access to transport, and green areas? How do you avoid the chaos of uncontrolled expansion that consumes agricultural land and brings endless traffic? The answer is that we can no longer plan the peri-urban with classical tools. This is where technology comes in, and BIM – Building Information Modeling – becomes the essential instrument.
BIM is no longer just a 3D model of a building, but an intelligent database that allows simulation of all the elements that define an urban space: structures, materials, energy consumption, traffic flows, costs, usage scenarios. On a peri-urban scale, BIM becomes a common language between architects, engineers, builders, and authorities. You can see, before a building is even raised, how it will affect the traffic of an intersection, what energy impact it will have, how it integrates into the utility infrastructure. You can simulate the energy performance of an entire neighbourhood or verify routes for smart grids.
The international adoption of BIM shows that we are talking about an emerging norm. In the United Kingdom, BIM has been mandatory for all public projects since 2016. Norway, Denmark, and Finland have introduced BIM into legislation, while Singapore has even created a national digital model. In Western Europe, over 70% of architecture firms report using BIM consistently, and in the US the percentage exceeds 80% for large projects. Romania is still at the beginning, but private companies are rapidly adopting BIM, driven by client demands and the need for transparency.
The peri-urban thus becomes the ideal ground for integrating this technology. While in the historic centers of cities it is difficult to apply completely new models, at the periphery there is space to build entire communities based on digital, sustainable, and intelligent principles. Here, neighbourhoods can be created that not only look good on paper but also function efficiently in the long run. BIM allows for realistic financial forecasts, simulates maintenance costs, and ensures that infrastructure is coherent.
Of course, there are also challenges. Administrative fragmentation is one of them: many peri-urban areas are divided between several municipalities, making integrated planning difficult. Real estate development often runs ahead of infrastructure, creating pressure on roads and utilities. There is a risk of excessive consumption of agricultural or natural land, and if prices rise too quickly, the peri-urban risks replicating the inequalities of urban centres.
And yet, the future of housing seems to be written here. The peri-urban offers space, flexibility, access to nature, and, with the right technology, the possibility of building sustainable communities. For Romania, this is a huge opportunity: Bucharest, Cluj, Iași, and Timișoara already have peri-urban areas in full development, but the direction will depend on the quality of planning. Do we choose to build improvised neighbourhoods, with unpaved roads and insufficient utilities? Or do we choose to integrate BIM and unified development models that provide coherence and predictability?
At Art Design Build, we see the peri-urban as a laboratory of the future. Here, our philosophy of integration – art, design, and build – can be applied, reinforced by BIM technology, to create spaces that are true ecosystems. Spaces that include sustainability, energy performance, aesthetics, and above all, the peace of mind of the client. Because in the end, whether you live in the city center or at its edge, what matters is the certainty that what you build today will work tomorrow.
