How short are the distances in your city? interactive map

2024-09-17 13:44:46

Long trips by bus and train to the doctor, stressful car trips to the shops: these should be a thing of the past. This is the promise of the “15-minute city”. This concept describes cities where all important places from the office to the doctor can be reached within a quarter of an hour, either on foot, by bike or by public transport. In Germany, this is already true in many areas, according to a study by Italian scientists.

The team, led by Vittorio Loreto from the European Complexity Science Hub, first received the product. The researchers want to know how today’s cities approach the 15-minute model. To do this, they have defined nine categories of relevant locations, including educational institutions, shops and medical practices. In around 10,000 cities around the world, they identified places belonging to these categories using publicly available data.

Interactive maps for around 10,000 cities

In the next step, the researchers placed a honeycomb pattern of hexagons with sides of 200 meters on each city. Finally, for each of these hexagons, they calculated the average travel time to the 20 closest locations from the nine categories. The result is a summary of how long the distances are in the analyzed cities.

The team has its analysis in the magazine “Nature Cities” published. You can also see the results on the interactive map respect Individual cities are shown as icons. Shades of blue correspond to cities that meet the 15-minute mark on average, red dots represent cities where you have to travel a long way to important places. If you click on a city, you can see a honeycomb pattern and see which residential area has the shortest routes. Here you can see the travel times on foot and by bike, as shown here in Berlin:

Even at first glance you can see that Germany is doing very well. Although take it with you Geneva we had Basel two Swiss cities took the first two places, followed by the French one Grenoble. But already in the ninth place can be seen Göttingen Germany comes first, followed by Berlin at number 20. A total of seven German cities are represented in the top 50.

Of all the 92 German cities in the list, 80 meet the criterion that relevant places of daily life can be reached within 15 minutes on foot. According to the researchers’ analysis, this also applies to cyclists in all German cities.

What a little different world. There are big differences between individual cities, scientists write. They are clearly indicated Atlanta in the U.S. state of Georgia, where no county has shorter travel times.

Paris On the other hand, despite its size, it fits very well into the shape of the 15-minute city. This is the result of another study. There are no big differences between individual cities. The researchers were also able to see large inequalities between certain cities. This means that there are places from which people have to travel long distances to meet daily needs and others from which the distance is short.

Typically, spaces in urban centers are shorter than in the suburbs. But some cities are breaking this expected pattern, as scientists report. These are Paris and Barcelonawhere there are clear political efforts to increase local access to services, as the study authors write.

How do you write 15 minute drums?

Two further analyzes show how other cities can manage to get closer to the 15-minute model. First, the researchers calculate which key areas in a city will have to be redistributed so that as many residents as possible can benefit from short distances. As expected, there are few in already developed cities; In Atlanta, on the other hand, 79.29 percent of the appropriate locations will have to be relocated to ensure the shortest possible distances for as many residents as possible.

Finally, the researchers also calculated how many key points per population would be needed to achieve a 15-minute urban cycle. Even in the most populated, homogeneous cities of Asia such as Mumbai or Bogotá, around 0.5 such places per 1000 inhabitants will be enough. At the other end of the spectrum are the sprawling cities, the car cities of North America, where Atlanta, for example, will need 15 ports suitable for 1,000 inhabitants.

Short distances should not be the only criterion

However, the researchers’ analysis should be viewed with caution. You yourself wrote that the mark of “15 minutes” could raise concerns. It says nothing about the quality of the important sites. Two parts of a city can have short distances to supermarkets, doctors and offices. However, if these resources are provided more in one sector than the other, this will also lead to inequality. In addition, a city change to a 15-minute city can be at the expense of large green spaces that actually stand in the way of short distances.

The database also leads to limitations. Since the analysis is based on freely available open source data, some important contact points for citizens may be missing. In addition, individual categories are not weighted. But cultural and climatic differences in particular mean that in some outdoor activities are more important than traditional institutions.

Future studies should take this into account, the researchers wrote. They describe their findings not as guidelines, but as a “catalyst for city planners” to create cities that are fair, more and more sustainable.