At the edges of Lanzhou, where city dissolves into countryside, researchers have found that human movement is not chaos but pattern — rhythmic, corridor-bound, and legible. By tracing the daily paths of peri-urban residents through mobile location data, scientists at Lanzhou Jiaotong University have revealed that the in-between spaces of Chinese cities are not formless voids but structured territories with their own internal logic. Three distinct ways of inhabiting these transitional zones have emerged, each demanding its own response from planners and policymakers. The study suggests that the