The 15-minute city in the Global South: Modeling spatial accessibility and measuring social equity across seven major Iranian cities

As cities around the globe strive to improve urban sustainability and resilience while tackling challenges like climate change, Moreno's 15-minute city model is becoming increasingly popular in urban planning research and practice. Several previous studies have applied different spatial modeling frameworks to assess whether contemporary cities align with the vision of this model. To date, few studies have focused on the applicability of this model in Global South cities. As such, further empirical research is required to advance our understanding of the global relevance of the 15-minute city concept beyond narratives predominantly rooted in Western urbanism. Our study aims to fill this gap by operationalizing the model for seven major Iranian cities and highlighting the relationships between social exclusion and inequitable access to everyday needs. We show significant variation in the levels of walking access to different activity location categories within and across the study cities, with inner areas exhibiting better access and marginal areas showing poorer access to essential services. Furthermore, residents’ deprivation level was strongly associated with a higher probability of reaching everyday services beyond a 15-minute walk— except for two cities. We discuss that although in study cities essential amenities are, to some extent, accessible within a 15-minute walk or bike ride, significant socio-cultural, institutional, and infrastructural barriers; such as, imposed restrictions on women’s cycling, inadequate active travel infrastructure, and the persistent non-recognition of walking as a legitimate mode of transportation continue to hinder the meaningful implementation of the model in Iranian context.