Where is your favourite place to go for a walk or to meet friends? Which routes and places do you avoid?

With these and other questions, the 15minESTATES project („Co-creating Spatial Strategies for Just and Sustainable Mobility in Large-Scale Housing Estates“) started its field phase. Over the next three years, the project team aims to investigate what requirements and strategies are needed to implement the 15-minute city concept in large housing estates.

As part of a neighborhood event in Halle-Neustadt, there was a district walk where residents shared their views of the area. The walk was also used to conduct initial experiments to collect geodata using OpenStreetMap tools. At the joint picnic afterwards, the participants marked their favourite places on a map and also explained where there is still room for improvement in Halle-Neustadt. Using the so-called ‘flower of proximity’, participants were able to visualise which supply facilities or services they would like to have in their immediate residential environment and for which a greater distance would be acceptable.

The City of Halle (Saale) with its large housing estate Neustadt is the German case study in the 15minESTATES project; which is part of #DUTPartnership. It is also analysing large housing estates in Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Netherlands. Halle-Neustadt serves as a pilot area. Different formats for the organisation and implementation of co-creative approaches and participation formats are used here. The experience gained by the project team will be used to support the partners in the other case study areas.

On July the 15minESTATES project leader professor Sandra Treija (Riga Technical University, Latvia) and researcher professor Thomas Verbeek (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands) was visiting Paris to present the project to the participants of the AESOP congress and give presentation Understanding Mobility​ Behaviour in Large Housing​ Estates: A Critical Application​ of the 15-minute City Concept​.

The presentation outlined present challenges of large scale estates and introduced the goals and objectives of the project.

On June 17 and 18, 2024, the participants of the project 15minESTATES gathered at the Institute of Architecture and Design of the Riga Technical University (RTU) to evaluate the work done in the first six months of the project and solve the identified challenges.

Project partners created a lively discussion about the theoretical settings of the 15-minute adaptation of the concept to the specifics of oversized residential areas.

To present the current projects and research in the development of the urban environment, Riga Technical University (RTU) organized Research Platforms seminar.

The focus of this seminar was mobility and micromobility issues. The transport and mobility sector has always played an important role in the urban environment. Currently, the Green Course determined by the European Commission and the development concepts of modern cities foresee new changes in mobility. Green and smart technologies are increasingly dominating – starting with various drive technologies, fuels, up to IoT and artificial intelligence. The participants of the research platform seminar tried to find an answer to what the city of the future will be.

Our lead researcher Sandra Treija took part in this seminar with a presentation on 15minESTATES project – objectives and goals of the project and the use of its results in the modeling of the future urban environment.