The 15-minute neighbourhood and housing affordability: insights from Los Angeles

The 15-minute neighbourhood is a planning concept that aims to address urban environmental, health and social challenges by enabling residents to meet their daily needs within a 15-minute walk or cycle. While widely promoted, equity concerns have emerged regarding 15-minute neighbourhood transitions, particularly the tension between livability and accessibility gains and housing affordability protection. This work addresses two gaps in the existing 15-minute city literature. First, it presents empirical evidence on the relationship between local accessibility and housing affordability; second, it provides actionable guidance on how to ensure that interventions balance accessibility gains with affordability protection to promote just transitions that actively address, rather than exacerbate, existing inequalities. To assess the potential for 15-minute neighbourhoods to contribute to just transitions towards sustainable and healthy urban environments, we evaluate linkages between 15-minute neighbourhood status and affordable housing in Los Angeles county which faces a growing unhoused population alongside rising rent and home values. Informed by a literature review, we apply a scoring methodology that accounts for access and choice to different categories of amenities to assess 15-minute neighbourhood status, which we compare against different housing affordability metrics using geospatial analysis. Findings reveal a weak but positive correlation between 15-minute neighbourhood scores and affordable housing availability. Notably, residents of affordable housing in Los Angeles often have relatively high access to amenities traditionally perceived as less accessible to low-income populations, such as green spaces and grocery stores. Our findings suggest that cities may be able to pursue proximity-based planning without inherently exacerbating inequities, provided that affordability is explicitly considered. Beyond our immediate empirical findings, our proposal to jointly evaluate affordability and 15-minute neighbourhood scores, as well as the resulting neighbourhood typology and suggested interventions offer a practical approach to help cities support a just transition to affordable 15-minute neighbourhoods. This approach is especially relevant for other car-dependent metropolitan regions that are promoting proximity-based planning while facing affordability challenges.