Thursday, February 09, 2023

Is Seattle a 15-Minute City?

Nat Henry has released an interactive map that shows which areas of Seattle satisfy the requirements of a 15 Minute City.

The concept of the 15 Minute City was first developed by Professor Carlos Moreno of the Sorbonne. The idea of the 15 Minute City is that urban living can be more liveable and sustainable by ensuring that all the essential needs of individuals can be accessed without having to get in a car or use public transport. In other words residents should be able to access all their essential health, educational, retail and leisure needs within a short fifteen minute walk or bike ride of their home

Nat's 15-Minute Map of Seattle uses travel time data with data on essential services to show how long it takes to walk to different amenities from each Seattle block. Using the map you can select from a number of different amenities (including supermarkets, libraries, parks, stations and schools). When you select amenities from the menu the map automatically updates to show the walking time to these amenities from each city block.

Blocks on the map are colored to show the walking time to the selected amenities. You can also hover over individual blocks on the map to view the average walking time in the block to each of the selected amenities. 

If you live elsewhere in the United States then you can use HERE's 15-Minute Cities map to discover if you live in a 15-minute city. Enter your address or zip-code into HERE's map and you can see all the Groceries, Medical Facilities, Cultural Sites, Educational Facilities, Transit Stops and Leisure Facilities within a 15 minute walk of your home. The map will also tell you if your address currently qualifies as a 15 Minute City or not. 

HERE's 15-Minute Cities map only appears to work for addresses in the USA. If you live in New Zealand you can find out if you live in a 10 Minute City using Urban Intelligence's X Minute City interactive map. This map allows you to discover how far you have to travel in New Zealand's major cities in order to access education, healthcare, greenspace/recreation, food, and other essential services.

If you live elsewhere in the world then you can find out if you live in a 15 minute city using the CityAccessMap. This interactive map from Delft University of Technology visualizes how accessible essential services are to the local population in cities around the world (the map should work for any city with a population over 100,000).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Minor bugs: when I tap on “20 min”, the congrats/not quite text remains “15”. Also doesn’t seem to work just with zip code, only street address. All on iOS, Safari, latest revs. But otherwise really cool!