City, Neighbourhood and Citizens: Putting the ‘20-Minute’ Idea to Work in Edinburgh

Inspired by international examples and instructed to take a more active lead in neighbourhood sustainability by the Scottish Government, the City of Edinburgh Council has embarked on ambitious plans to turn the city into a place of ‘20-minute neighbourhoods’. Characterised by the capability of residents to reach the majority of their daily and weekly services on foot, the ambition is for Edinburgh's future to be one of healthy, low-carbon, and safe communities. In this chapter, we reflect on a research project of the University of Edinburgh that supported the Council's early steps on this journey during the pandemic. The research project evaluated the city's existing urban landscape for the ‘20-minute’ potential and developed a strategy for enhancing walkability. Bringing Edinburgh's experiences into conversation with the wider literature on the policy-driven pursuit of smarter cities, the chapter outlines the powerful analytical capacity of the 20-minute idea, while also offering some healthy scepticism regarding the capacity of local policies to re-engineer some of the more intimate and granular aspects of urban citizens’ everyday decision-making processes.