Who is the X-minute city for? An E2SFCA assessment of wheelchair accessibility in Zurich City Center

Ensuring equitable pedestrian accessibility is a fundamental challenge in urban planning, particularly for individuals with mobility impairments. While concepts such as the x-minute city model promote proximity to essential services, they often assume equal mobility conditions for all individuals, overestimating accessibility. In reality, infrastructural barriers, such as sidewalk surface conditions, steps, and missing curb ramps, can significantly limit mobility, resulting in pronounced accessibility disparities. To address this gap, this study assesses spatial accessibility to different public facilities for wheelchair users and the general population in Zurich’s District 1 by utilizing the Enhanced Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (E2SFCA) method within the x-minute city framework. The analysis includes enriching the pedestrian network with vertical slope information and sidewalk accessibility features (e.g., curb ramps, surface problems) collected through a participatory project, ZuriACT: Zurich Accessible CiTy. The accessibility features were weighted using data from an online survey that captured wheelchair users' reported mobility constraints to represent the perceived severity of hindrance or facilitation. The findings reveal significant disparities in service accessibility, with wheelchair users often facing more restricted access than the general population, demonstrating that purely proximity-based measures that ignore accessibility features are insufficient for equitable planning. By highlighting the impact of infrastructural and mobility-specific factors on accessibility, this study highlights the importance of integrating detailed accessibility information into urban planning frameworks. These insights offer actionable guidance for policymakers and urban planners to design inclusive, human-centered cities that accommodate diverse mobility needs, ultimately contributing to more equitable urban environments.