Reacción a "New online map to find 15-minute cities"

The study presents an interesting method to apply the concept of the 15-minute city and quantify how close (or far) any city in the world is to this urban ideal, based on proximity to basic services/resources (educational, cultural, healthcare, etc.). The most striking aspect of the study is that through an online platform, the results of this analysis can be visualized cartographically for around 10,000 cities worldwide, allowing one to see the enormous differences between them (and between countries, continents). For example, the article highlights Barcelona more than once as a city that is very close to this 15-minute ideal, in contrast with U.S. cities like Atlanta, which follow an urban sprawl model and have low residential density.

However, the authors claim to study urban inequalities in accessibility to these basic services, considering the 15-minute model, but in reality, they do not take into account the socioeconomic differences of urban populations, that is social equity. Many wealthy neighborhoods have few basic services nearby due to their low density, but this obviously does not pose the same accessibility problem for their inhabitants as it does for those in disadvantaged peripheral neighborhoods. Additionally, as the authors themselves acknowledge, many of these basic services (parks, hospitals) are very difficult to redistribute in already built cities, and it wouldn’t be economically sustainable to implement the 15-minute model in low-density suburban areas.