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Agence France-Presse

Paris and Milan are among the cities closest to reaching the urban planning goal of being a “15-minute city”, while car-dependent metropolises in the United States and elsewhere lag behind, a worldwide analysis said.
In fact, the central areas of many cities already meet the definition of a 15 minute-city, which means that residents are within a quarter-hour walk or bike ride from everything they need to a lead a good life, the analysis found.
But even within a city, there are often stark differences between the wealthy inner cities and the urban sprawl on their outskirts, according to the Italian researchers behind the new study.
The concept of the 15-minute city gained traction during the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns put more focus on local neighbourhoods.

It has since been embraced by dozens of mayors around the world - and become the target of conspiracy theorists online.
For the new study, published in the journal Nature Cities, the researchers built an online database looking at roughly 10,000 cities globally.
They used open source data to map out how far of a walk or cycle residents were from different services, including shops, restaurants, education, exercise and healthcare.
“A lot of people already live in a 15-minute city,” study co-author Hygor Piaget Monteiro Melo said.
But it depends on where you look within a city, he said, because of the inequality in access to services between the centre and periphery.
What is clear, the researchers noted, is that population density is a crucial factor - if enough people are living close enough to each other, it is much easier for them to have easy access to services.

This meant that somewhat smaller yet relatively dense cities such as Italy’s Milan or Spain’s Barcelona scored well on their map, which was made available online.
When it came to the biggest cities, “Paris is an outlier,” lead study author Matteo Bruno said.
The mayor of Paris embraced the concept in 2020, and a “considerable fraction” of the city is below the 15-minute mark, the study said.
Some European cities have a head start because they were built centuries ago at a time before cars - when basically all towns had to be 15-minute cities, the researchers said.
Cities built more recently with cars specifically in mind - particularly in the United States - fared far less well on the map.
Atlanta in particular stood out as being a long way from being a 15-minute city. Future Olympic host Los Angeles also lagged behind most others for walkability, as did several Chinese cities including Chongqing.

But when it comes to cities, there are always trade-offs - and there is no single right answer, the researchers said.
“The 15-minute city is often presented as a utopia - it’s not,” Bruno said.
Americans in sprawled-out cities usually have their own houses and backyards, while Europeans in densely populated cities tend to live in apartments, illustrating the important role played by culture, Bruno said.
And central parts of US cities such as New York, San Francisco and Milwaukee were under the 15-minute threshold.
“Manhattan is definitely one of the most 15-minute places ever in the world,” said Bruno, a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Rome.
There has been confusion about the concept in the past, the researchers lamented.
For example, “traffic has nothing to do with the 15-minute city,” Bruno said.
In fact, slow traffic could indicate an area is more pedestrian friendly, he added.
Yet it was new “low-traffic zones” in the UK that turned the ire of conspiracy theorists towards 15-minute city proponents.
Confusing the two ideas, online groups including vaccine and climate sceptics falsely claimed that 15-minute cities were part of a secret plot to restrict the movement of citizens.
The Italian researchers, who have themselves been targeted by “Twitter haters,” emphasised that nothing about the 15-minute city concept involves confining anyone.
Researcher Carlos Moreno, a high-profile proponent of 15-minute cities who has advised Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, was also “attacked by the worldwide conspiracy mongers,” he said.
Moreno welcomed the new study, praising how the idea had swiftly become a topic of interest for researchers around the world.
Just last week, Valerie Pecresse, the right-wing head of the greater Paris Ile-de-France area, presented a plan for a 20-minute region, he pointed out.
Bruno said that the 15-minute metric is just one element in the “recipe” that makes a good city.
Other parts of the recipe include tackling inequality and segregation, improving public transport, reducing traffic and so on, he said.


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Urban planning

Where in the world is closest to becoming a ‘15-minute city’?

A ‘considerable fraction’ of Paris is below the 15-minute mark. Photo: AFP

A view of the Barcelona skyline, Spain. File photo: Shutterstock

‘Manhattan is definitely one of the most 15-minute places ever in the world’. Photo: AFP 

Traffic on a Los Angeles freeway. File photo: TNS

At Pakistan’s pink palace, ghostly tales and TikTokkers complicate preservation

A worker moves a peacock from the lawn of Mohatta Palace in Karachi, which was built in the 1920s and has since been turned into a museum. Photo: AP

High-rise buildings in Karachi. The city’s population grows by around 2 per cent every year and there’s little effort to protect its historic sites. Photo: AP

Statues of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah (left) and his sister Fatima Jinnah (right) on a horse-drawn carriage at the Pakistan Monument Museum in Islamabad. Photo: AFP

Nasreen Askari, director of the museum set up in Mohatta Palace. Photo: AP 

Mohatta Palace prohibits fashion shoots, weddings and filming for commercials. Photo: AP

Hong Kong companies in social marketing, urban farming sign up for Middle East expansion

A view of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on September 6, 2024. Photo: Xinhua

(From left) Dr Sadeddine Mneimne of Access Group International, Patrick Lau of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and Decem Yuen of FansWave post during a signing ceremony at the Belt and Road Summit in Hong Kong on September 11, 2024. Photo: Handout

New York to the Hudson Valley, cycling from urban jungle to a land of white picket fences

Cyclists and pedestrians take the Walkway Over the Hudson bike path, part of the Empire State Trail, in upstate New York. Photo: Shutterstock

People look out from the Edge observation deck at 30 Hudson Yards over Midtown and Lower Manhattan, and the Hudson River. Photo: Shutterstock

Suburbia in the Hudson Valley. Photo: Shutterstock

The entrance sign to Sleepy Hollow is one of the few in the town that does not display an illustration of a decapitated man on a horse. Photo: Shutterstock

Lyndhurst Manor in Tarrytown. Photo: Shutterstock

South Division Street in downtown Peekskill. Photo: Shutterstock

China-US study finds urbanisation worsens extreme droughts

Researchers say the loss of vegetation due to urbanisation could lead to more intense local atmospheric drought.  Photo: Reuters

Singapore’s master urban planner, Liu Thai Ker, has 2 regrets for the city state’s land-use

Liu Thai Ker, former master planner of the Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Liu Thai Ker, former master planner of the Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority helped build public housing flats and oversaw the development of the city’s land-use plans. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Modern buildings of Singapore’s skyline. Photo: Shutterstock

Private residential houses and Housing & Development Board public housing estates of Singapore. Photo: Bloomberg

A cyclist on Pulau Ubin, an island near the Malaysian border where one of the last traditional kampong villages can be found. Photo: Tamara Hinson

The Merlion statue, a Singapore symbol. Photo: Shuttersotck

News

World

Study maps progress towards an urban planning ideal, highlighting disparities globally


Study maps progress towards an urban planning ideal, highlighting disparities globally.


France

Spain

United States