Natalie Mueller

A team from the United States has analysed data on modes of transport in more than 11,500 cities in 121 countries around the world, including Spain, representing 41% of the world's population. In addition to studying the factors that most influence the proportion of journeys made on foot or by bicycle, they estimate that if each city analysed increased the extent of its cycling network to the level of Copenhagen (Denmark), private vehicle emissions would be reduced by 6% and the public health benefits would be equivalent to around £37 billion. The results are published in the journal PNAS.

A new web-based tool analyzes major cities like Tokyo, Paris, Atlanta or Barcelona to see how close they are to the 15-minute city concept, where residents take less than those minutes to access essential services by foot, bike, or public transport. According to the study, published in Nature Cities, few cities fit this concept. The tool, which is freely accessible and uses data from 10,000 cities sourced from the open-source packages GeoPandas and OpenStreetMap, could be useful for developing action plans and estimating how viable it is to transform certain cities to follow this model.