How to Encourage Residents in Peri-urban Areas to Adopt Proximity-oriented Lifestyles?

A significant portion of Europeans lives in a peri-urban area, yet these territories remain a blind spot in most public authorities and residents stay locked into car-dependent daily routines. In a new publication from the DUT Knowledge Hub, "Peri-urbanity and the 15-minute City", authors explain that a 'polycentric 15-minute system' is better suited for peri-urban areas: a network of walkable nodes, connected by cycling routes and public transport, where residents can meet most of their daily needs locally without depending on the car. 

Five DUT projects (EMC2, InPUT, PROWD, SSWC and SuCoLo) collaborated to develop five complementary pathways and recommendations that urban governments can use to create polycentric 15-minute systems. All recommendatios were developed with input from the five DUT projects.

Five complementary pathways and recommendations for urban governments working with sustainable mobility:

1. Know your territory before you intervene 

Recommendations: consider commissioning a peri-urban diagnosis before drafting a strategy. Identify the corridors, centralities and local clusters with the greatest dormant capacity to accommodate proximity-oriented lifestyles. This evidence should form the base on which later investment decisions rest.

2. Rethink main streets as the backbone of proximity

Recommendations: consider treating the redesign of strategic main streets as the flagship peri-urban project of your metropolitan area, and restructuring budget and governance to follow the connecting corridor, even if it crosses municipal jurisdictions.

3. Bring services and work to people

Recommendations: consider commissioning studies on resident working culture preferences, running simulations of new commuting realities, piloting co-working hubs and flexible transit links to them, and formalising support for existing community-led initiatives.

4. Integrate sustainable logistics and flexible mobility

Recommendations: consider combining infrastructure (safe cycle networks, micro-hubs, pick-up points) with services (shared cargo bikes, bike couriers, flexible transit) and behavioural instruments (digital nudges, incentives). These tools work best together, and alongside the decentralisation measures of Pathway 3. 

5. Build on social innovation and local networks

Recommendations: consider including the mapping of social proximity and resident preferences part of your peri-urban evidence base, and formalising relationships with local social-innovation actors (associations, NGOs, social media groups, etc.) rather than relying on ad-hoc partnerships. Using their reach can help pilot new solutions or scale existing ones.