Do You Live in 15 Minute City?

Imagine stepping out of your home and finding your favorite café, grocery store, and park just minutes away. For residents of New York or Seattle, this is a daily reality. But in sprawling cities like Houston or Indianapolis, such convenience remains a dream for many. Thanks to The Washington Post, you can now discover how walkable your city is compared to other U.S. cities.

The Washington Post has created an interactive map showing how long it takes "to walk to points of interest" in 200 metro areas across the United States. On the WaPo's How Walkable is Your Neighborhood? , neighborhoods are color-coded to indicate the time required to walk to locations in nine categories of amenities.

According to the research underlying the map, cities such as Atlanta, Nashville, Houston, and Indianapolis rank among the least walkable in the U.S. In contrast, Seattle, Washington D.C., New York, and Chicago are some of the most walkable cities.

The WaPo's map is based on a study conducted by Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Rome, titled A Universal Framework for Inclusive 15-Minute Cities. The "15-minute city" is an urban planning concept focused on ensuring that residents can access most of their daily needs - such as work, shopping, healthcare, education, and recreation - within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. This concept aims to create more livable, sustainable, and community-oriented environments where essential services are easily accessible to all residents.

For those outside the U.S. (or without access to the Washington Post's article), the study's own interactive map is an excellent alternative. By selecting a city on the Sony CSL 15min-City users can view a hexbin map that illustrates how accessible services are from each hexagonal area in the city. The color of each hexagon corresponds to the number of minutes it takes to reach essential services by foot or bike. Users can toggle between walking and cycling times and filter accessibility data by specific service categories, such as outdoor activities, education, shopping, dining, transportation, cultural activities, exercise, general services, and healthcare.

For U.S. residents, the Close is another valuable tool. It helps users identify walkable, bikeable, and transit-friendly neighborhoods across the country. Close allows users to prioritize specific amenities and destinations, generating a travel-time map for walking, biking, and public transit options. This feature makes it easy to discover ideal "15-minute neighborhoods" in towns and cities throughout the U.S.