# Most Americans do not live in a 15-minute city

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2024-04-01

15-minute-city, atlanta, cell-phone-data, gps-data, mixed-use, new-york-city, urbanism, walkable, walkable-communities

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The 15-minute city is a popular topic these days. So [here is a recent study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01770-y) that used GPS data from 40 million US mobile phones to estimate the percentage of consumption-related trips that actually adhere to this concept. [The unsurprising result](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-05/new-research-shows-the-15-minute-city-can-work-in-the-us?srnd=citylab):

> _The overwhelming majority of Americans have never experienced anything resembling a 15-minute city. The median resident, we found, makes only 14% of their consumption trips within a 15-minute walking radius._

There is, of course, regional variation. For New York City, the data suggests that 42% of consumption-related trips occur within a 15-minute walking radius. Whereas in more sprawling cities like Atlanta, it's only 10% of trips. Again, this is not surprising. But it begs the question: What should we do?

The challenge is that 15-minute cities generally require built environments that are dense, conducive to walking, and filled with a concentration of different amenities. And this is more or less the opposite of the prototypical suburban model, where the car and single-use zoning tends to spread everything out.

The good news is that zoning is _relatively_ easy to change. For instance, if we want to allow corner stores in our residential neighborhoods, [that is a decision we can make](https://brandondonnelly.com/2022/01/06/neighborhood-retail-in-residential-calgary/). The greater hurdle will be transforming car-oriented communities into places where people might actually want to walk. This is much more difficult.

But of course, it too can be done.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/most-americans-do-not-live-in-a-15-minute-city)*