In the quest for more environmentally sustainable urban areas, the concept of the 15-minute city has been proposed to encourage active mobility, primarily through walking and cycling. An urban area is considered a ``15-minute city" if every resident can access essential services within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their home. However, there is an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of this model in reducing car usage and carbon emissions. In this study, we conduct a large-scale data-driven analysis to evaluate the impact of service proximity to homes on CO$_2$ emissions. By examining nearly 400 cities worldwide, we discover that, within the same city, areas with services located closer to residents produce less CO$_2$ emissions per capita from transportation. We establish a clear relationship between the proximity of services and CO$_2$ emissions for each city. Additionally, we quantify the potential reduction in emissions for 30 cities if they optimise the location of their services. This optimisation maintains each city's total number of services while redistributing them to ensure equal accessibility throughout the entire urban area. Our findings indicate that improving the proximity of services can significantly reduce expected urban emissions related to transportation.

Organizing the 11th International Conference on Computational Social Science (Norrköping, Sweden | July 21-24, 2025).

npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport - The effect of limited mobility on the experienced segregation of foreign-born minorities

Socio-spatial segregation is the physical separation of different social, economic, or demographic groups within a geographic space, often resulting i…

Ports as Energy Transition Hubs

NASA's Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center serves as an "Information Gateway" between Earth sciences and social sciences.