Title: Social and environmental dimensions of urban mobility in X-minute cities

Abstract: Proximity-based planning — exemplified by X-minute city initiatives — has been adopted in cities worldwide to advance both sustainability and equity, on the premise that locating opportunities closer to home lowers travel emissions and broadens access. But do closer destinations really deliver greener, fairer mobility? In this talk, I argue that we cannot answer that question, or reach genuinely sustainable mobility futures, without considering the social and environmental dimensions of mobility together rather than one at a time. Drawing on examples from Finland and Chile, I show how combining large-scale human mobility data with carbon-aware spatial accessibility analysis can reveal how people really move: who can reach what, by which modes, and at what environmental cost. The picture that emerges often departs from the tidy 15-minute city ideal, suggesting that proximity is necessary but not sufficient. Along the way, I look at where transport emissions are concentrated, how the gains and burdens of accessibility fall unevenly across social groups, and just how far today's mobility systems remain from international climate targets. The talk makes the case for carbon-aware, equity-sensitive accessibility planning, and for treating who can reach what as inseparable from the emissions of doing so.

Bio: Henrikki Tenkanen is an Assistant Professor of Geoinformation Technology at Aalto University (Finland), and director of the GIST Lab, an interdisciplinary research group working at the intersection of spatial data science, sustainability science, and GeoAI. Trained as a quantitative geographer, Henrikki has broad research interests and he has built cross-disciplinary collaborations spanning various fields (incl. network science) with key research areas focusing on sustainable mobility, spatial accessibility, and human–environment interactions. He develops computational methods, open-source software, and geospatial data infrastructures that support socially and environmentally sustainable urban and regional planning. His research has been published in diverse venues including Nature, Nature Communications, ACL (main conference) and Sustainable Cities & Society.