IS ALMATY A 15-MINUTE CITY? WALKING ACCESS TO SIX EVERYDAY PLACES FROM 170,838 BUILDINGS IN THE CITY'S EIGHT DISTRICTS

Abstract

The "15-minute city" is the idea that people should be able to reach the places they need every day within a short walk of home. This study measures how close Almaty is to that idea. Using OpenStreetMap data for Almaty (extract of 12 October 2026), 170,838 buildings in the city's eight districts were checked for six places chosen by the author before the calculation. These were a grocery shop, a pharmacy, a school, a clinic, a park and a public transport stop. A place counted as reachable if it was within 1.2 km along the mapped walking network, about 15 minutes at 4.8 km/h. Only 19.5% of buildings had all six places within this distance; measured in a straight line, the share would be 38.7%. Parks (39.4%) and pharmacies (45.4%) were reachable least often and stops most often (90.4%), although OpenStreetMap records fewer than half the 870 pharmacies counted in Almaty in 2018. Almaly district came first (76.0%), followed by Auezov (42.7%) and Bostandyk (36.5%), while Nauryzbay (6.1%) and Alatau (2.2%) came last. Before the calculation the author had predicted Almaly and Bostandyk as the most walkable districts and Nauryzbay and Alatau as the least walkable. Almaly ranked first and Alatau last under every definition tested, but the order of the districts in between changed with the definitions. The whole prediction held under four of nine definitions, three of which were narrower place definitions added after the main results. Within Bostandyk, 77.0% of buildings in the northern third had all six places nearby, against 0.5% in the southern third, toward the mountains.

Keywords: 15-minute city, walkability, accessibility, OpenStreetMap, walking network, Almaty, urban planning

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How to cite

Torekhan Sabrina IS ALMATY A 15-MINUTE CITY? WALKING ACCESS TO SIX EVERYDAY PLACES FROM 170,838 BUILDINGS IN THE CITY'S EIGHT DISTRICTS // Central Asian Scientific Journal. – 2026. – No. 4(32), Vol. 1. – Pp. 412–419.