The Aretian Urban Analytics and Design team recently published a scientific article titled “Geospatial analysis framework for evaluating urban design typologies in relation with the 15-minute city standards” (Elsevier, Journal of Business Review). Elsevier is an Amsterdam-based academic publishing company, which specializes in scientific, technical, and medical content.
This research paper presents a science-based methodology to measure and evaluate urban design typologies in relation with the concept of the 15-minute city - recently revitalized by Carlos Moreno and studied in-depth by the Aretian team. The 15-minute city concept is a sustainable development proposition of a decentralized city of smaller neighborhoods containing commercial, residential and employment zones with walkable neighborhoods that provide equal access to housing, education and amenities, all accessible within a 15-minute walking radius. The 15-minute city is an urban solution developed to make cities more sustainable, environmentally friendly, walkable, and community-oriented.
Read the entire publication here.
The research study evaluated the city form and urban performance metrics for 25 metropolitan areas in 12 different countries composed of 8,228 smaller urban geographic units. From this analysis, the research study concludes that the form and arrangement of city features tend to have a measurable impact on urban performance metrics: innovation output and economic growth. Each of the 10 city form typologies presents its own characteristics, network properties, advantages and disadvantages, which were found to be similar around the world: the higher the urban form fractality – the higher the quality of life, the urbanization efficiency, the access to urban services, and the better the social interaction patterns induced. In addition, intermediate levels of urban form entropy, when combined with very high degrees of fractality, present the highest urban performance results overall.
The paper addresses key issues that many planning models previously proposed with the objective of improving resilience, sustainability, social and economic interactions in urban settings. A recent and heavily popularized model, the Smart City concept, purports to help cities improve sustainability and spur economic innovation and growth. However, implementation of the Smart City concept has in many cases aggravated other important aspects of urban life related to social exclusion and inequality. The 15-minute city concept is a good answer to these concerns as it focuses primarily on human interactions within urban contexts.
This paper was authored by Jeremy Burke (Aretian co-founder), Ramon Gras Alomà (Aretian co-founder), Fernando Yu, and Jordan Kruguer, Harvard researchers. Please subscribe to Aretian Urban Analytics and Design for more news about the future of cities and Innovation Districts.
