The influence of urban structure types on the x-minuteness of cities: An accessibility analysis of 15 German cities

The concept of the 15-minute city has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Numerous studies have looked at a wide variety of cities, providing insights into the extent to which the 15-min-city has been achieved, or the specific x-minuteness that has been achieved so far. In a context of competition between cities in terms of quality of life and sustainability, statements about their performance in terms of x-minuteness dominate. However, to date there has been no research on the quantitative measurement and comparison of x-minuteness for different urban structure types. Urban structure types are defined by specific combinations of characteristics of the built environment. In this study, the pedestrian x-minuteness is computed for the fifteen most populated cities in Germany and compared across six characteristic urban structure types. The results underline that pedestrian accessibility varies greatly based on different urban structural types and that it is important to look more closely at the spatial composition of cities at the neighbourhood level. This spatially differentiated information helps to target improvements more efficiently and, thus, to increase quality of life more equitably.