Contemporary cities are facing profound transformations associated with climate change, demographic pressure and the demand for a better quality of life. In this scenario, two highly relevant urban dynamics are emerging but with divergent trajectories: the 15-minute city, conceived as a normative model that promotes proximity and neighbourhood self-sufficiency, and gentrification, understood as a social and economic process that displaces lower-income populations.
This paper focuses on analysing the spatial and conceptual overlap between these two realities, with the aim of identifying the extent to which the implementation of proximity strategies can generate exclusionary effects in certain contexts.
Although the 15-minute city, promoted by Carlos Moreno in 2016 and incorporated into international agendas such as the C40 network, seeks to guarantee equitable access to essential services within walking or cycling distance, its practical implementation has shown limitations. At the same time, gentrification, as defined by Ruth Glass in 1964 and widespread globally since then, transforms working-class neighbourhoods into revalued areas, generating physical, commercial and cultural changes that exclude vulnerable sectors. The central hypothesis of this study argues that the positive conditions of accessibility, environmental quality and diversity of services that characterise the 15-minute city often coincide with the areas where gentrification is most intense.
The methodology combines the construction of composite indicators -income, accessibility, age, land use- with geospatial analysis using GIS and statistical techniques, applied to the case of Madrid. Neighbourhoods such as Lavapiés and Chueca, traditionally multicultural, simultaneously show high levels of proximity and clear signs of residential displacement, rising housing costs and loss of sociocultural diversity. This intersection of variables highlights the tension between urban sustainability and spatial justice, where the goal of democratising access to services can lead to privileges concentrated in certain social groups.
In conclusion, the comparison shows that the 15-minute city cannot be understood solely as a technical planning strategy, but rather as a political project that requires redistributive frameworks and real estate market regulations to avoid reproducing inequalities. Only under these conditions can urban proximity be consolidated as a collective right and not as a new driver of exclusion.
