The 15-minute city concept and new working spaces: A planning perspective from Oslo and Lisbon

Abstract

In the last few years, chrono-urbanism has welcomed a novel perspective, namely, that of the 15-minute city concept, which has recently emerged in the present planning debate. During the current pandemic, this has coincided with a drive to highlight the importance of merging more activities in the neighbourhood to improve urban vitality and reduce daily commuting. In addition, increasing digitalization and knowledge-intensive activities have transformed the nature of work itself, thus affecting the choice of the workplace with new working spaces (NWS) emerging for collaborative and flexible work environments. Therefore, within this context, this study discusses recent chrono-urbanism approaches applied to urban planning and the role of NWS. The phenomenon is empirically examined in Oslo and Lisbon through a qualitative analysis of planning documents and a spatial analysis. The results show that most NWS are fairly accessible by public transport to users in both cities; although the NWS neighbourhoods in Lisbon have a greater diversity of functions compared to Oslo. However, in both cities, the distribution of NWS is non-uniform. This may limit residents’ choice to live and work (outside home) in the same neighbourhood. The study contributes to the current planning debate on new urban models for sustainable neighbourhoods.