Recurrent visitations expose the paradox of human mobility in the 15-Minute City vision

Abstract

In the transition towards sustainability and equity, proximity-centred planning has been adopted in cities worldwide. Exemplified by the 15-Minute City (15mC), this emerging planning paradigm assumes that proximate amenity translates into localised utilisation, yet evidence on actual mobility behaviour remains limited. We advance a behaviourally grounded assessment by introducing the \textit{K-Visitation} framework, which identifies the minimal set of distinct visitations needed to cover essential amenities under two orderings: one based on observed visitation frequency ($K_{\text{freq}}$), and the other based on proximity to home ($K_{\text{dist}}$). Applying it to an 18-month, anonymised mobility data from Finland containing 720 thousand users, we directly compared local mobility potentials with recurrent destination choices, revealing a paradox of human mobility within the 15mC framework. A clear misalignment is observed between proximity and recurrent behaviour, most pronounced in urban cores--areas boast with amenities and traditionally viewed as ideal settings for local living--where residents voluntarily overshoot nearest options, while peripheral routines remain more locally constrained. The paradox further revealed asymmetric functions influences, as compared with everyday amenities, individual travels significantly further for to encounter specialised functions. Furthermore, the social consequences of localism are spatially contingent: increased reliance on local options reduces experienced segregation in central districts but can exacerbate it elsewhere. Our findings stress that proximity is necessary but insufficient for achieving the proximity living ideal; implementation of the 15mC should be behaviourally informed and place-sensitive, coupling abundant local provision of routine needs with access enhancement to specialised amenities to avoid unintended equity trade-offs.