The Concept of Proximity in Post-pandemic Architectural Thinking: 15-Minute City and Superblocks

The convergence of the climate crisis and the pandemic associated with the COVID-19 outbreak has exposed many weaknesses in the current fragile socio-economic and spatial structures of cities around the world. In this need to radically rethink the city, the principles of ‘proximity’ emerged in architectural discourse, promoting a notion of civic life within short distances to create sustainable, liveable and healthier urban spaces. In Europe, for example, ‘15-minute cities’ and ‘superblocks’ seem to highlight important, if sometimes different, features of planning and policy efforts to economically restructure the city at the neighbourhood level and provide insights into the design of public space, in the post-pandemic period. Following on from the above, this paper will explore how these two new design models, through their structural elements and spatial characteristics, can help define proximity as a new strategy in design thinking in the post-pandemic city. To achieve this goal, the first part of the paper will provide an overview of proximity policies that have led to design adjustments in response to COVID-19. In the second part, a thorough overview is given of the two cases considered: the ‘15-minute cities’ and ‘the superblocks’. The third and final part of the paper summarises all the new design insights and the various lessons learned from the two cases in order to conceptualise a ‘post-pandemic urbanism’ and provide guidelines for the realisation of proximity principles.