The 15-Minute City concept has emerged as a transformative approach to urban planning, aiming to create sustainable, livable, and resilient urban environments by ensuring essential services and amenities are accessible within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. Beyond its functional goals, the concept represents a paradigm shift towards fostering community, inclusivity, and human-centered urban design. This study offers a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the 15-Minute City concept, addressing its spatial and social characteristics, sustainable mobility.

Using data from the Web of Science and Scopus, and employing tools such as Vos Viewer, the study identifies key trends, research gaps, and influential contributions within the field. Three types of bibliometric indicators—quantity, quality, and structural—are applied alongside network analyses, including co-keyword, co-authorship, and co-citation mapping, to cover significant clusters in the 15-Minute City literature.

Despite its growing prominence, the concept lacks a unified definition, with interpretations ranging from 15-minute neighborhoods to similar initiatives like healthy streets. This study systematically examines global research patterns, offering insights into the most productive authors, institutions, and countries, as well as influential topics and sources. It highlights the challenges of integrating theoretical frameworks with practical implementations and addresses gaps in longitudinal and interdisciplinary research.

Findings from this analysis provide actionable insights for researchers and practitioners to develop strategic publication plans and advance the discourse on the 15-Minute City. By identifying critical research directions and fostering collaboration across disciplines, this study contributes to refining the concept’s framework and enhancing its practical applicability. Ultimately, the research underscores the potential of the 15-Minute City to transform urban living by promoting sustainability, accessibility, and community well-being. This study is part of the DUT-funded project, AccessCity4All.

The proposal addresses the concept of accessibility by proximity to reframe the role of proximity in planning initiatives, pursuing the X min city model. It challenges the conventional view of proximity as a purely functional issue – focused on physical spatial-temporal access conditions – and moves beyond the traditional emphasis on dense, compact urban contexts of X min city policies. The paper reconceptualizes proximity as both a functional and relational construct. The latter highlights the impact of collective exchanges of resources spontaneously activated through collaborations within a community sharing specific accessibility-related needs, problems and mobility opportunities. Recognising the collective nature of accessibility and proximity can enhance the inclusivity, sustainability, and accessibility of X-minute city policies. However, the paper argues this is achievable if i) new metrics are developed that capture the dual contribution of functional and relational proximity to accessibility; and ii) accessibility by proximity is pursued, by planning policy, as a proper normative goal rather than (only) as a positive/evaluative one. These objectives are complementary within the X min city model: normative uses of accessibility by proximity require its positive application and both are crucial for dealing with the emerging criticalities of this model such as neglecting relational aspects, standardising or underestimating diverse needs, and perpetuating existing inequalities (Cooke et al. 2022). Additional risks involve limited replicability in suburban, peri-urban and rural areas (Guzman et al., 2021) or potential gentrification and displacement of vulnerable populations (Dunning et al. 2021; Haarstad et al., 2022: Poorthuis & Zook, 2023; Guironnet & Halbert, 2020).

The paper presents a novel interpretation of accessibility by proximity, emphasising its dual dimensions and normative implications to address the challenges of implementing the X-minute city model. Drawing on findings from two research projects (EX-TRA Project and Common Access Project), it offers an operational framework for dealing with new metrics of functional and relational accessibility by proximity - and its positive and normative dimensions – especially in peri-urban regions and urban outskirts.

The 15-minute city concept has become a popular and actionable framework for accessibility-based planning. However, narrow interpretations of the concept are problematic as they prescribe a complete decentralization of urban functions overlooking the holistic nature of the 15 min city concept. Such narrow interpretations may lead to unrealistic goals or adverse effects on sustainability and social inclusion, particularly in less dense urban areas, limiting the concept’s applicability and its ability to achieve desired outcomes. Therefore, this paper proposes pathways for place-based, people-centered accessibility planning to achieve the underlying ideals of the 15-minute city across diverse urban forms. Departing from the view that cities function as complex adaptive systems, characterized by dynamic and partly uncoordinated interactions among urban agents, the paper calls for a condition-based approach that fosters various potential transport and land-use configurations within set but adaptable normative boundaries. Participatory processes and adaptability are central to this approach, as they enable co-exploration of development pathways and responsiveness to change through generating situational accessibility knowledge, mutual learning, and cyclical assessment of normative boundaries.

The 15-minute City has emerged as a promising solution to many challenges associated with urbanisation. However, implementing this model is complex, given the stratified, dynamic, and animated nature of cities. Across Europe, numerous initiatives inspired by the 15-minute City concept are transforming urban spaces. This paper examines the case study of Haakon VII Street (H7) in Trondheim, Norway, focusing on its transition from a car-centred area to a people-centred urban space. Historically, H7 functioned as a peripheral and frequently repurposed site. However, the increasing demand for housing in Trondheim has prompted plans for its redevelopment. Using walking interviews and participatory mapping as data collection methods, this research employs thematic analysis to interpret findings. Three key themes have emerged: (1) centralit-ies, as H7 is analysed not as an isolated fragment but as a generative part of the city, with the potential to evolve into a significant urban centre. This theme explores its role in redefining Trondheim’s polycentric landscape within the 15-minute City paradigm; (2) integration, exploring how the emerging centrality of H7 can be harmonised with the broader urban fabric. The research highlights the importance of fostering connections with other parts of the city while ensuring H7 retains its unique identity, avoiding homogenisation; (3) verticality, inspired by plans to densify the area through mixed-function vertical buildings, this theme examines physical and digital verticalities (the latter being: exploring this site connections with related sites and cities) to support sustainable, vibrant, and inclusive urban development. This study contributes to the discourse on the 15-minute City by examining the identification and potential development of a “new centre” within Trondheim. It offers insights into how a historically peripheral space can be reimagined and provides insights into the implications of such transformations at the city level. The research set the stage to explore what it truly means for a city to embrace the principles of the 15-minute City and how such transformations can inform future urban development strategies.