How to characterize a 15-minute city? A study case of Saint-Fons, Lyon, France

The 15-minute city is an emerging concept, developed and theorized by Carlos Moreno. This city model proposes to question the development of the city through the analysis of the proximity of the inhabitants to the six essential social functions identified by the author: living, working, commerce, healthcare, education and entertainment. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted profound urban issues and among the new urban models, the 15-minute city responds to the challenges of developing a more resilient, sustainable, inclusive and smart city.The objective of our study is to understand how to characterize and how to understand the capacity of a city to be and become a 15-minute city. Our study is focused on the territory of the city of Saint-Fons and its neighboring municipalities. This territory of the metropolitan area of Lyon (France) is going through an important urban transformation with the construction of a tramway line which will allow it to open up and vitalize this very industrial territory, with a difficult socio-economic context and environmental issues (air pollution and noise), and to integrate vegetalization on this new infrastructure and its right of way. This new dynamic will also allow for a response to the important land pressure in the metropolitan area, particularly for the residential sector.A total of 159 variables were collected to characterize the 6 functions of the 15-minute city. We performed a principal component analysis for each function to characterize the territory. The data was collected at the IRIS scale (aggregated units for statistical information created by the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies of France). A total of 95 IRIS were included in our study. Our analysis was completed with a study of the residential real estate market in the municipality in order to highlight several urban and real estate potentialities and opportunities of the territory.Thus, the purpose of the present study is to perform a diagnostic method of the potential of a territory to become a 15-minute city, to develop a decision-making tool in land use planning and to better understand the global dynamic of a territory.