For the last decades, the development of speed and the improvement of travel conditions have led to socio-spatial transformations of the territory. This was characterized by a continuous growth of cities, where the distances between homes and activities became much more important. Rural urban areas have welcomed new populations in search of more affordable housing or a less urban, more natural living environment. These spatial transformations led to significant social inequalities of access to amenities, either in terms of access to fast travel modes, which highly depends on personal characteristics (Geurs, Van Wee, 2014) or to residential locations with good amenities or efficient public transport services. Both of these spatial transformations of urbanized areas and the social valuing of mobility have led to the increase need to travel more frequently, sometimes further, and faster (Kaufmann, 2008). This process of “mobility dependency” results in two forms of prejudice for precarious social groups: lack of accessibility for those who do not have access to mobility, or significant financial costs, difficult and longer travelling time for mobile people but severely constrained in their movements (Fol, Gallez, 2017). With the climate emergency, the increase in energy prices and the growing social inequalities, access to amenities for precarious people is becoming more challenging, particularly for people living in sparsely populated areas, less well served by public transport, and often less well provided with local services and shops. A reflection on planning model favoring access to amenities while limiting the need to travel is necessary, especially in rural-urban regions. Yet, low density areas are usually stigmatized as fragile territories, marked with unsustainable way of living and mobility habits primarily based on the use of cars and defined by the great distances between activities (Fourny, Cailly, 2012). These imaginaries still emerge from the way these regions are planned and thought through the lenses of “urban”. We hypothesize that that in diffuse urbanization spaces, the application of urban-centric planning doctrines (i.e., densification, polarization, massification of flows) tends to maintain or aggravate mobility dependency, especially for less advantaged people. In this communication, we will present the preliminary results of a PhD work that draw on the comparison of views, practices and experiences of the practitioners and the inhabitants, in order to show the gaps between urban-centric principles and the needs of the population. Our approach is based on various qualitative methods: in-situ observations, semi-directive interviews with urban planning and transport stakeholders, focus groups, open interviews and walk along with inhabitants. We draw on two case-studies that refer to contrasting urban environments and to different principles of urban planning-transport coordination. The first case study is Creil, a commune located outside the administrative region of Ile de France but right at its fringes. It is presented as strongly dependent on the Ile-de-France metropolis (looking at the importance of daily commuting). Creil's rail service promotes the territory with a good regional accessibility and micro-local accessibility restricted to a limited perimeter around the station. Such a dual approach tends to focus mainly on regional accessibility, while neglecting accessibility needs at intermediate scale (at the municipal and inter-municipal levels). The second case study is the small town of "La Roche-sur-Foron", located in the French peripheries of Geneva and served by the new Léman Express railway (the transborder FrenchSwiss infrastructure). The network has been conceived as a corridor, dependent of the metropolis of Geneva specially in terms of daily commuting. As in the other case, this focus keeps aside other access needs for the inhabitants.