Principles for place-based accessibility planning

Accessibility-based transport and land-use planning concepts, like the 15-minute city, are often interpreted prescriptively based on a narrow set of actionable elements. While these prescriptions are relatively easy to meet in dense urban contexts, their application beyond such settings risks producing unrealistic goals or adverse effects on sustainability, opportunities and social inclusion. This limits the potential for upscaling accessibility planning across diverse spatial contexts. Drawing on a complexity theory perspective, which highlights that diversity in urban forms arises from the interactions among multiple actors without much scope for centralized control, this paper proposes a condition-based accessibility planning framework. Rather than pursuing static spatial ideals, this approach focuses on shaping the conditions that enable diverse development pathways aligned with contextual dynamics. Planners and policymakers can enhance their grip on autonomously emerging accessibility configurations by creating adaptable transport and land-use systems and by investing in longitudinal participatory practices that support mutual learning among actors and iterative normative assessment of desired development paths. Such a condition-based approach would enable diverse context-specific accessibility configurations while remaining grounded in the core values of accessibility-based planning.