The paper focuses on the topic of urban sprawl and critically discusses several policy tools that can by used by municipal governments in order to contain it. From the first decades of the twentieth century onwards the world is emerging the trend towards the formation of more and more extensive metropolitan areas within the to which existing urban centers lose their position as the main actors in terms of economic and social development and new suburban communities develop in predominantly rural / agricultural areas according to a relatively uniform but deficient model in terms of their ability to provide vital functions (leisure / art / culture, possibilities of interaction between community members, easy access to shopping centers, etc.) Peri-urban development is a relatively recent phenomenon in Romania, which has so far been ignored by both literature and practitioners.