Public Participation in the 15-Minute City. The Role of ICT and Accessibility to Reduce Social Conflicts

The 15-minute city is a well-known concept and widely analysed in academic research. Experiments have often taken place with top-down pilot cases, often without citizen involvement. Experiences show that the 15-minute city has given rise to some syndromes, which leads us to reflect on how to realise an accessible city by incorporating participation and limiting oppositional phenomena. To support this, digital smart governance tools, such as e-democracy and e-participation, aim to provide citizens with information services, listening channels and promote their participation in public life and urban processes. This research aims to analyse the 15-minute city in its critical aspects that have emerged in the literature, assessing whether it is a correct model in its approaches and what relationship exists between participation in public life, ICT and the 15-minute city. The study analyses the Italian national context to identify the relationship between accessibility, job satisfaction, and public participation, to understand whether the living conditions of citizens and the proximity and accessibility of places are linked to the emergence of syndromes. The objective is to identify possible relationships, to understand what happens in daily life that could lead to the emergence of syndromes, and to suggest practical measures based on the evidence from this survey.