How close is your town to being a 15-minute city?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-09-17 01:00

Australia; International

Very few cities around the world are close to achieving the '15-minute city' vision, according to international researchers who have set up an online platform assessing the world's cities and the access they provide to amenities. The 15-minute city concept involves a city where all residents can access the amenities they need by walking or taking public transport for a maximum of 15 minutes. The researchers used data from open-source geography mapping sites to look at the proximity of residents to essential services under nine categories; outdoor activities, learning, supplies, eating, moving, cultural activities, physical exercise, services and healthcare. They put this data in an open-access platform where the public can view the accessibility of their individual suburb. The researchers say few cities across the world are close to achieving a 15-minute city, with people on the outskirts usually far less connected to amenities than those in the inner suburbs. Most cities that get close are in Europe, while Australian and NZ cities still have a way to go.

Media release

From: Springer Nature

Sustainability: A web-based tool to find 15-minute cities *IMAGES & VIDEO*

Only a tiny fraction of global cities currently meet the definition of a 15-minute city, according to a paper published in Nature Cities. For most existing cities, to become 15-minute cities would require vast relocation of existing services and amenities and/or the addition of an impractical number of new ones. The findings are based on a web-based platform that maps global cities and how close they are to achieving the 15-minute concept.

The 15-minute city concept proposes that a city can function more effectively, equitably and environmentally if essential services and key amenities are accessible to its residents within 15 minutes of travel by public transport. However, transitioning an urban area to a 15-minute city is a challenging prospect and requires efficient urban planning, transportation reform and a commitment to high-quality essential services and resources. While some cities across the world have shown interest in the principles of the 15-minute city, there has not been an easy method to gauge how close a city is to becoming one.

To measure how close cities all over the world are to becoming 15-minute cities, Matteo Bruno and colleagues created a web-based open-access platform using data from the open-source packages GeoPandas and OpenStreetMap. The tool reports the average proximity of urban centres, neighbourhoods and peripheries to essential services and amenities across cities. The researchers quantified how widespread 15-minute cities are now. In their analysis of approximately 10,000 cities, Bruno and colleagues found considerable variation in the percentage of population that actually lives within 15 minutes of essential services, which the authors classify as nine categories: outdoor activities, learning, supplies, eating, moving, cultural activities, physical exercise, services and healthcare. The authors note that this spread is dependent on the city’s culture (for example, how car-dependent it is) and that city centres were better served than peripheral areas; this was common to many cities, including Paris, France, Atlanta, Georgia, and Tokyo, Japan.

The authors note that relying on open data for their tool and analysis may introduce certain biases, including the exclusion of areas with not enough information. They conclude that future research on the state of current 15-minute cities must also include climatic variations and cultural differences between cities in gauging the effective distance between citizens and points of interest.