Lisbon accessibility analysis. An application of the 15-Minute City concept

The concept of the 15-Minute City has its roots in past planning theories, but has received increasing attention in recent years, especially following the outbreak of the global pandemic. This emergency situation has highlighted the importance of neighbourhood-based services that can be reached by active travel modes. This work aims to investigate the 15-Minute City concept applied to the city of Lisbon, highlighting its shortcomings, strengths and possibilities for future development. The study is divided into six main parts. The first chapter gives an overview of the 15-Minute City concept dealing especially with its relation to active mobility and is mainly based on scientific publications. The second chapter discusses cities that have adopted this strategy worldwide and analyses documents from three case study cities where the concept has been made operational. The third chapter focuses on the case study of the city of Lisbon, analysing the stratification of the city at the administrative level and the existing tools for urban mobility planning and management. The fourth chapter adopts a methodology developed by Professor David Vale of the University of Lisbon to operationalise the concept of the 15-Minute City and to analyse Lisbon's accessibility. The objective is to show the percentage of the population that has access to certain services through the pedestrian and bicycle network, within the time thresholds of 5, 10 and 15 minutes, and the portions of the city where these services are lacking or in excess. The fifth chapter critically compares the methodologies used and the results obtained in this study and in a scientific article on the city of Turin (Staricco, 2022). The last part focuses on the neighbourhood scale, studying accessibility in relation to the elderly population (over 65) and identifying some neighbourhoods in Lisbon where services are lacking. Finally, neighbourhoods are identified and some activities are reallocated to currently disused areas to show how the percentage of the population that can access them changes. The objective is to propose a solution that can have a concrete application on the territory and to show how the concept of the 15-Minute City can be implemented, adapting it to the context of reference.