The Evolutive Meshed Compact City. A pragmatic transition pathway to the 15-minutes city for European metropolitan peripheries.

Research Project, 2023 – 2026

The 15-minute city (15mC) has strong prerequisites in terms of urban form and spatial organisation of the physical city, which should be integrated in any transition strategy for suburbs and car-dependent outskirts. With these demands in consideration, the project proposes a new model for the implementation of the 15mC in the loose structural networks of peripheral locations: the Evolutive Meshed Compact City (EMC2). 

The EMC2 model envisages compact urban forms as corridor developments based on existing main roads, forming a meshed structure across the metropolitan area. Redesigned for pedestrians, these interconnected roads will be turned into vibrant and inclusive main streets, living spaces that offer a high quality of stay, a wide variety of high-frequency mixed uses (services, shops and manufacturing) and connections to wider-range mobility options. They interact with metropolitan ecosystem corridors and require only marginal improvements to the existing suburban forms. 

The project will assess the EMC2 model at different scales in six geographically very different European case studies, through a triangulated research methodology including: innovative geospatial and network modelling; observational usage analyses; comparative morpho-functional analyses. 

The consortium will not only produce a transferable, multi-scale assessment method for modern European peri-urban areas, but also a portfolio of EMC2 design models and guidelines for their implementation and will disseminate these results both in academia and among urban stakeholders.