Taking his daughter to the doctor down well-maintained streets and efficient trams is a common activity for Luke Harris and many residents of Zurich, Switzerland. For them, their trips to healthcare and education services are often uneventful and quite mundane. This could be considered unimaginable for inhabitants of San Antonio, Texas, given that, as recent studies show, only 2.5% of them can access essential services within a 15-minute walk, compared to a staggering 99.2% of people living in Zurich.
Having moved from the US to Zurich, landscape architect Luke Harris describes the Swiss city as extraordinarily accessible by foot, and if necessary, public transport. A recent study in Nature Cities revealed that only a minute portion of 10,000 cities worldwide can be described as an “accessible city,” where essential services like supermarkets, schools, hospitals, and parks are within a 15-minute walk or bike ride for residents.
The inequality of accessibility to vital services in various cities across the globe astonished lead author of the study, physicist Matteo Bruno of Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Rome. Deeper research into 54 cities revealed that access was best in medium-sized European cities like Zurich, Milan, Copenhagen, and Dublin, where over 95% of those living there can reach vital services within 15 minutes. In contrast, sprawling North American cities like San Antonio, Dallas, Atlanta and Detroit, largely reliant on cars, did not fare as well.
However, research revealed that even some larger cities, like Berlin and Paris, have managed to maintain good accessibility figures, with over 90% of their residents being able to reach needed services in a quarter of an hour on foot.
The researchers designed a process to examine how different urban centres need to reshape themselves to increase accessibility. It was discovered that Atlanta would need to shift 80% of its facilities to ensure an equal division per inhabitant, whereas an adjustment of only 10% would suffice for Paris and Dublin. London and Edinburgh would require 19% and 31% reallocations, respectively.
Hygor Piaget, one of the authors of the study who was raised in São Paulo – a city where 32% of residents live within a 15-minute walk from vital services, clarified that the study wasn’t advocating the destruction of cities and redistribution of their resources. It was instead a theoretical exercise meant to spark dialogue about how to enhance the lives of most people.
In recent times, the concept of a ’15-minute city’ has been misunderstood and criticized by certain factions who misinterpret it as a governmental attempt to limit movement and constrain liberty. Scientists, urban designers, and health professionals express their irritation with this line of thinking, emphasizing that the reduction of reliance on cars is a potent means to boost well-being and safety.
Piaget defended the idea as not being a novel concept and noted it has been a point of research for scholars for many years. However, the authors also acknowledged the study’s boundaries; they utilised open-source data, which was variable in quality, particularly outside of Europe and North America. They also took into consideration various geographical or socio-cultural factors, like heavy traffic, high crime rates, adverse weather, or hilly terrains, that might dissuade people from walking even short distances.
Natalie Mueller, a Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) environmental epidemiologist who wasn’t part of this study, noted that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution wouldn’t be viable for every city, but the study could contribute to encouraging more welcoming and sustainable urban landscapes.
She said that by reducing the dependency on cars, promoting active and public commuting, and introducing environmentally friendly solutions like planting trees and extending green areas, the quality of the urban environment could significantly improve, ultimately benefiting public health.
The scholars warned that enhancing city accessibility alone is not sufficient to completely shift residents away from private car use. Even though the Netherlands possesses some of the best cycling infrastructure in Europe, it has a higher per capita number of cars than relatively more rural countries like Ireland and Hungary.
Zurich inhabitants voiced their approval for the construction of 50km of cycling network in 2020, with 71 per cent voting for the proposal. While the dearth of bike lanes and apparent dangers to cyclists have long been a concern in the local community, no substantial changes have been noticed. Harris expressed that while Zurich is a delight for pedestrians, and possibly unmatched in its ease for walking compared to other cities, there remains an uncomfortable relationship between cycling and motoring. This, according to him, continues to create tension. – Guardian News and Media