Our Story

20-minute neighbourhoods can certainly be great. I recently lived in one in the West End of Glasgow, and before that in a similar area in Manchester. Never mind all the services I could want, in Glasgow I could even get to my desk at work within 8 minutes’ walk from my front door (I was still occasionally running for a meeting, of course)!

We’ve recently moved, though, to somewhere with very few services within such a short walk – definitely not a 20-minute neighbourhood. Partly, this is because my wife and I recently had a baby and we wanted a bit more space for the growing family. We also wanted to buy our own home, though, and the cost difference of buying (or indeed renting) in a lovely 20-minute neighbourhood versus one in a less accessible neighbourhood a bit further out is substantial.

Health & Services within a 20-minute neighbourhood

Particularly for health inequalities, we need to be careful with price changes as neighbourhoods are intervened upon. Desirable places to live are desirable places to live. Increasing demand generally increases price. If those improvements to neighbourhoods do generate better health for local residents, we need to know who can afford to be a local resident within any newly improved neighbourhood.

We also know from previous work by OPTIMA colleagues (Jon Olsen and others) that many 20-minute neighbourhoods are not producing good health outcomes currently. Some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in Scotland are very accessible to services, but not particularly desirable places to live in many other ways.

We can’t expect health benefits to simply arise from having services nearby. We also need to consider the quality of services, or the density of unhealthy services that might also be nearby. If there are quality services, then local people also need to be able to afford to access these, otherwise they can’t necessarily use them.

Pros and cons of a 20-minute neighbourhood

Some people do also worry that the 20-minute neighbourhood is a front for increased government control over people’s freedoms. While there’s no evidence that this is intended (quite the opposite, with plans focused on the many potential benefits), it’s perhaps not surprising post-COVID lockdowns that people have this idea in their mind of potential government overreach into freedoms of movement. For some of us, being told to stay in our beautiful 20-minute neighbourhood while the sun was shining was no bad thing. For others, feeling trapped in a horrible neighbourhood, perhaps within an abusive household or with antisocial neighbours, was a completely different matter.

As outlined above, any potential harms of these planned neighbourhoods, for instance potential to exacerbate health inequalities by displacing poorer residents as neighbourhoods are improved and local prices increase, are far more likely to be unintended rather than intentional.

Policy

That’s why, while definitely exploring the many potential benefits, we also really want to apply a critical lens to these policies. What are they actually likely to achieve in terms of health and health inequalities? And can we generate evidence to suggest better ways of implementing that leans us toward the good, and away from the potentially bad consequences?

First published: 14 January 2025

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