What about getting farms and farmers in the western outskirts?
That's a tricky design decision. If you do that, you alienate a lot of the current characters that frequent the outskirts, thus making it less popular as a low level hub. That hub is placed there for a reason. If it ends up being empty because only a certain set of characters can go there, new players will have a much harder time finding RP. There's nothing more discouraging as a new player than walking through tons of areas and finding no one to RP with.
I disagree, and if it was designed to be for mages to cast spells willy nilly in the outskirts and pretend they are not in a land that fears magic, I would say that it was kind of designed bad.
Mind you the idea, was to show that outskirts was still well part of vallaki, and still had the same general barovianess as the rest of the city. Not be a mini fearun/eberron/planescape land. Having NPCs here would help the immersivness of the area. They would still go into the hovels at night, so people can cast freely like there is no tomorrow during the night.
Though personally, i would rather see the actual town of vallaki being used. The market district being used as a place to sell things, public announcements being made in the town square, preaching for the various churchly factions, people looking to recruit in the town square. but alas, we got little fearun instead of a medieval town.
Could always be solved with a notice directing newcomers to a certain area in the town to look for work. Install a couple street signs, and you're good.
That is always good too.
Also what of moving houlgraves to where simon's quill shop is, ie from the residential to the market district district? or making Simon's shop into a new shop?
It does feel as if the outskirts isn't part of Barovia sometimes, it's like a micro pocket of shelter which is just down to the way the game mechanics work, even though there is an inn ran by a native, a church, and guards posted on the walls close by. If there was some more city life spilling over from the city I don't think it would stop the area being a hub, but it would make people think twice about casting spells and acting rash. What if traders walked through into the city from time to time? Or some other more general NPC's where present, even if they are just peasant, or something connected to the agriculture, forestry, or the fishing trade?