Elderly and Disabled People in the Urban Environment: Does the 15-minute City Paradigm Protect Them?

The 15-minute city is now considered paradigmatic in representations or models of cities. This city should allow all citizens access to all services, with each service located within a distance that takes no more than fifteen minutes to reach from any point in the city. However, would such a city be truly equitable encompassing the diversity of a population, or would it only represent the center of the Gaussian bell curve, with a reasonable deviation from the maximum of the Gaussian? Let us consider a person who is elderly, chronically ill or has limited mobility. This paradigm does not make him/her safe concerning the exposure to a climate risk within the current urban structure. The risk is directly related to climate exposure and thus to the time it takes to perform an “everyday life” task (e.g. going shopping). Studies show that an older adult with limited mobility also has limited ability to remain in a state of physiological well-being when exposed to a heat wave, so the 15 minute-city does not produce as much benefit for those living towards the tail end of the Gaussian. This example of an elderly person with limited mobility can, moreover, be aggravated by the presence of any disabilities. The first results of Horizon Europe Project CARMINE and of the interaction with a group of stakeholders who were asked how they would work to introduce Nature Based Solutions (NBS) in the Metropolitan area of Bologna are presented in the findings. The objective of the CARMINE Project is to create a decision support system, scalable to European cities, for implementing urban climate policies in the Climate Adapt Platform.