The Democratic Dimension of the 15-Minute City model
A Preliminary Spatial Analysis of Accessibility, Voter Turnout, and Electoral Volatility across selected European Cities
F. Zimmaro (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
N.Y. Aydin – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
M. Kroesen – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
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Abstract
This thesis investigates whether everyday access to urban services can help explain patterns of democratic engagement in European cities. It treats accessibility not only as a functional condition of daily life but also as a spatial indicator of how present public institutions are in citizens’ neighbourhoods. The study asks to what extent proximity to essential services is associated with voter turnout and electoral volatility, interpreted respectively as symptoms of democratic disengagement and democratic discontent. Empirically, it combines walking Proximity Time measures from the Sony CSL accessibility dataset with electoral results for Paris, Berlin and Rome, mapped on a fine hexagonal grid. Rental costs are used as a proxy for local income in order to check whether accessibility effects simply mirror socio economic composition. The analysis relies on descriptive statistics, cartographic exploration and correlation matrices that link accessibility to turnout and volatility across different service domains, distinguishing between services provided or strongly regulated by the state and private amenities.
The results show that accessibility is related to democratic behaviour but in a context dependent way. In Paris and Rome, longer travel times to state related services are generally associated with lower turnout and, in Rome, with strongly concentrated belts of high volatility in peripheral areas. Berlin displays an opposite configuration in which more distant zones record slightly higher participation, a pattern that reflects its polycentric structure and relatively stable residential communities. Across all three cities, rental costs explain only a small fraction of the variation in accessibility, which suggests that planning legacies and urban morphology play an independent role. Overall, the findings provide suggestive but strictly correlational evidence. They indicate that accessibility can act as a territorial channel through which institutional presence is experienced, while also highlighting the need for longitudinal and quasi experimental research designs to establish whether changes in accessibility have causal effects on democratic engagement.