The city in 15 minutes is one of the strategic goals that the Capitoline Administration is pursuing to create an increasingly citizen-friendly urban reality: proximity services,-from public transportation, to kindergartens, via public health centers and green areas-will be within walking distance in a quarter of an hour, thus falling within an ideal circumference with a maximum diameter of 1,250 meters.

The new city model that will be formed, which has already been tested in other urban contexts, from London to Paris to Barcelona to Milan, will be the place where decentralization, popular participation, inclusion and accessibility will flourish, and where the presence of quality services and facilities within each territorial quadrant will be guaranteed, so as to reduce the gap between the center and the periphery.

IZILab has renewed its engagement with the Department of Decentralization, Participation and Land Services for the 15-Minute City, having last year produced an initial model to represent accessibility related to education, health and public rail transportation services. An excerpt of the first research can be viewed here.
In this second edition of the “Rome at your fingertips” conference, research focused on the issues of the digital divide, urban greenery and culture.

Three maps were then made for the three dimensions investigated , on which a complex indicator was constructed based on the combination of the level of importance and sustainability of the sub-service composing the individual pillar investigated and the distance of the same from the center of the hexagon having a circumference of diameter 1,250 meters. In addition, with regard to green areas, an analysis was conducted on the Roman park of Villa Ada, to define the uses related to urban greenery by citizens and what improvements could be made.

OUR SPEECH DURING THE CONFERENCE

The second edition of “Rome at your fingertips” was hosted at the Quarticciolo Library Theater on Wednesday, April 5, 2023. Taking part in the conference were Andrea Catarci, Roma Capitale Councillor for Personnel Policies, Decentralization, Participation and Territorial Services for the 15-Minute City,Mayor Roberto Gualtieri, Andrea Modica, Board Member of IZI spa, and La Sorbonne University of Paris professor Carlos Morenourban planner and the first theorist of the 15-minute city.

Download meeting materials.

MAP 1. THE CITY IN 15 MINUTES – DIGITAL DIVIDE

The digitization map shows AGCOM data (updated as of March 15, 2023) on the type of connection present in different areas of the city. The types of connections surveyed are (from least efficient to fastest):

• adsl
• fiber to the cabin cruiser
• fast adsl
• fiber home

Using this data, a choropletic map of the city is obtained: areas with darker coloring represent those that are better connected.
Note that areas within the GRA are almost entirely reached by fiber to the home but that there are gaps in the more peripheral areas.
The city of Rome presents an excellent level of connection and obtains the primacy of the most connected province in Italy with as much as 72 percent of residential territory covered by “fiber to the home.” It also presents clear improvements over the beginning of the previous year.

The Gigabit Society goal of the NRP envisage reaching 100 percent of the country with a download speed of at least 300mb/s (fast adsl) by 2026 with an investment of 3.8 billion

Added to this are projects for 5G (2.02 billion) and interventions on public services such as Schools (261 million) and Health (12 thousand connected facilities with 3.14 billion)

MAP 2. THE CITY IN 15 MINUTES – URBAN GREEN

The urban green map shows the degree of accessibility (and proximity) to green in different areas of Rome. The data are extracted from Openstreetmap and refer to all accessible green areas in the City of Rome.

The darker areas are those with a better degree of accessibility; the map shows that almost all areas within the GRA offer access to a green area within a 15-minute walk. In contrast, the time to reach a green area increases for areas outside the GRA.

Accessible green is important, but what use is made of it? To further study the use of green areas, the IZILab team conducted an analysis of a city park: Villa Ada.

This park performs an Ecosystem Adjustment Service as it absorbs 9,000 tons of PM10 and 1,000 tons of CO2a year, with an economic value of 90,000 euros annually (considering the Carbon Price as of March 31) and offsetting the CO2 produced by about 6,000 people.

However, Villa Ada also performs a Cultural Ecosystem Service, which can be traced through the shares that people who use the park post on social media. Thus, by investigating Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr, the various uses that are made of the park emerge: sports, cultural and musical entertainment, summer music festival, fall festival dedicated to fashion, and nature excursions.

In this way, a greater complexity of the urban green studied, the activities that are carried out there, and the improvements that can be implemented emerge.

MAP 3. THE CITY IN 15 MINUTES – CULTURE

The culture map shows the degree of proximity to cultural services such as:

• museums
• theaters
• libraries
• concert halls

The data were downloaded through services provided by Google.

The map shows, as in the other cases, a strong inequality between the areas inside the GRA, with a high density of cultural services and consequently a high degree of proximity, and the more peripheral areas where the time to reach a cultural service on foot is up to an hour and more.

A simulation carried out on the territory of Municipality V, with respect to the construction of new libraries with funds from the PNRR, allows us to see how targeted interventions, which take into account the current state of distribution of services and their accessibility, can fill the gaps in the territorial cultural offer and contribute to the realization of a true 15-minute city.

The first map on the left shows the library services that can be used (indicated by red circular icons), at a maximum distance of 15 minutes for the inhabitants of Rome Capital City Hall V: areas with greater accessibility to libraries show a darker gradation color and those with less accessibility a lighter gradation.

In the map on the right, however, thanks to the construction of three new libraries with funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (indicated by blue icons), the renewed density of services also changes the gradation of individual areas, which turn toward darker tones, indicative of greater cultural offerings.