Beyond Proximity: Open Data and Explainable AI for Spatial Equity in X-Minute Cities

In this article, the review and critical evaluation of the proximity-based urbanism will be provided with an explicit focus on the 15-minute city and similar X-minute city ideas. The key point is that proximity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving spatial equity because proximate facilities might still be either too expensive, dangerous, difficult for usage by disabled people and elderly people, temporal unavailable, low-quality, or not appropriate for local conditions. The review will be based on the peer-reviewed and landmark literature available until June 2026 and will cover four main themes including proximity-based urban planning, accessibility and spatial equity, open geospatial data, and AI urban analytics. In particular, the research will be conducted not as PRISMA review, systematic review, bibliometric analysis, or empirical validation but as conceptual review and framework paper.The article provides several contributions including clarification of the conceptual differences between proximity, accessibility, and spatial equity, organization of the evidence base via the use of the transparent corpus and the evidence role framework, and development of the Open-Data Explainable Proximity Planning Framework. The framework includes nine interconnected layers including (1) proximity planning goals, (2) open geospatial data infrastructure, (3) accessibility measurement, (4) spatial-equity diagnosis, (5) AI/urban analytics, (6) explainability, (7) governance safeguards, (8) planning decision support, and (9) policy intervention and monitoring. The paper promotes the idea of the planning led with the assistance of AI where the open data and explainable analytics can facilitate the diagnosis, scenario comparison, and public justification of decisions.