The impact of proximity to amenities on housing affordability: Insights from Mediterranean 15-minute cities

Research on the 15-minute city has greatly expanded over the last decade, yet little has been studied about how this urban model affects access to affordable housing. This paper examines the relationship between proximity to everyday amenities and rental prices in four Spanish cities (Barcelona, Valencia, Palma, and Granada) that already meet the requirements of a 15-minute city. Spatial analysis and segmented regressions are employed to account for non-homogeneity and non-linearity in this relationship. Our findings yield three main insights. First, the relationship between proximity and rental prices is non-linear: prices rise in the most accessible areas, fall in moderately accessible areas, and rise slightly again in the least accessible areas. Second, education and care amenities deviate from this pattern; closer proximity to these services is consistently associated with lower rental prices. Third, these relationships are spatially heterogeneous and differ markedly between monocentric and polycentric cities. Together, these results offer policymakers a deeper understanding of how the 15-minute city framework shapes housing affordability, and therefore the social composition of the city.