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

Source abstract

The 15-minute neighbourhood is a planning concept that aims to address environmental, health and social challenges in cities by enabling residents to meet their daily needs within a 15-minute walk or cycle. One major consideration associated with the 15-minute neighbourhood, which has been underexplored, is its relationship with access to affordable housing. This issue is increasingly relevant in North American cities like Los Angeles, which faces a growing unhoused population alongside rising rent and home values. To explore the relationship between 15-minute neighbourhoods and affordability, this study first investigates how the 15-minute neighbourhood is measured through a review of state-of-the-art international literature. It then assesses neighbourhoods based on their 15- minute neighbourhood elements in the case of Los Angeles. Affordable housing availability is also mapped and analysed in relation to 15-minute neighbourhood evaluations. Results show a weak, but positive relationship between affordability and 15-minute neighbourhood scores. While pockets in Los Angeles achieve high 15-minute neighbourhoods scores and include affordable housing stock, greater efforts are needed to increase the number of such neighbourhoods. Notably, the study finds that residents of affordable housing often have relatively high access to amenities traditionally perceived as less accessible to low-income populations, such as green spaces and grocery stores. The study contributes methodologically by proposing an integrated spatial analysis approach that combines affordability and accessibility metrics, along with a framework for transitioning to affordable 15-minute neighbourhoods. These approaches can be applied in other urban contexts to evaluate the intersection of local living and affordability.