How ’Smart’ is the 15-Minute City? Evaluating the Role of Technology in Advancing Accessibility, Mobility, and Well-being

• Smart technology boosts 15-min city access, mobility, and well-being. • Balancing proximity and equity is key to inclusive 15-min city planning. • Sustainable mobility fosters health, equity, and cleaner cities. • Smart solutions bridge socioeconomic gaps in urban transport. Interest in the concept of ‘15-minute’ / ‘x-minute city’ exploded during and especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The benefits of this concept identified by the scholarly literature were many, but even more were the identified challenges of translating into policy and implementing this concept in practice, due to the different socio-economic, cultural, political, and even geographical contexts. This study focuses on the impact of the technological context in the implementation of the concept and aims to evaluate how smart & sustainable technologies can contribute to ensuring and improving accessibility, mobility, and the well-being dimensions of residents of cities or neighborhoods built on the principles of the concept of ‘15-minute city’. Using a mixed-method approach, this study investigates the main dimensions of the 15-minute city concept in its classic and extended sense. The results obtained by integrating the disparate findings of different scholarly studies through meta-narrative reviews show a high potential impact of smart & sustainable technologies on the performance of the implementation of the 15-minute city concept. The results of this study have significant implications for public policy and practice, suggesting that the integration of smart and sustainable technologies into urban planning can guide strategic decisions that facilitate the transition to more accessible, healthy, and equitable cities, aligned with the goals of sustainable development and adaptation to social and climate change.