Second Life in 15-Minute City

Abstract

Amsterdam has a housing shortage issue. To solve this problem, the Municipality aims to provide 73.660 housing units by 2028, either constructing new housing buildings or repurposing existing buildings which have other functions. The comparison between these two strategies, at the building scale, is the focus of several important research, from energy consumption in the construction process to the structural features of the repurposed buildings and their compatibility with the housing plan. However, the urban scale has seldom been studied when comparing new and repurposed housing projects. In this paper we compare access to the number and diversity of amenities between new and repurposed housing buildings, based on their location in the city. For this, we evaluate amenities within a 15-minute walking distance from each of the 38,061 housing units (554 residential buildings) built between 2015 and 2019. Additionally, we compare whether these amenities are mainly targeted to tourists or residents. Our results contribute to policymakers and urban planners in evaluating how residents in new and repurposed housing projects benefit from their insertion in the city.