Guiding principles for the 15-minute city in peripheral areas: the emc2 model

Abstract

Developing a 15-minute City (15mC) is a new planning strategy for affordable and sustainable mobility. Through pedestrian-based proximity, inhabitants and city users should be able to walk to destinations catering to most of their daily needs (Moreno et al. 2021, EIT Urban Mobility 2022). Compact European urban cores have already implemented 15mC solutions with some success, as in Paris and Barcelona. However, the implementation of the 15mC is much harder in post-war car-dependent outskirts and suburbs, lacking some of its key morphological pre-conditions: centrality, density, proximity to services and public transport, mixed land use, quality of walking and cycling, and attractive public spaces. These pre-conditions influence people’s behaviours through intermediate concepts like walkability, sense of place, ease of reach, and liveliness (Gehl 2011, Dovey et al. 2017). We think that interventions aimed at improving pedestrian accessibility alone, without addressing these morphological challenges, won’t be able to successfully implement the 15mC in peripheral areas. What is needed is a new coherent framework to guide interventions on the different facets of the 15mC.