CARTOGRAMA•
Metropolitan Proximity Index by census tract in Mexico City

Metropolitan Proximity Index · 17 metro areas of more than one million people

How much city fits in a fifteen-minute walk?

We measured Mexico's 17 metro areas with more than one million inhabitants with the same yardstick, using open data only: how much of everyday life (shopping, studying, caring for others, working, relaxing) each person can reach on foot from home.

628everyday places or more within a fifteen-minute walk for half of the people in Mexico City
130for half of the people in Tijuana
51 Mpeople measured one by one, from 801,620 points

01 · How it is measured

What each person can reach in a fifteen-minute walk.

From every point of a 100 m grid, we travel the street network for fifteen minutes and count the everyday places within reach. The example is a census tract in Colonia Moderna, Mexico City: the same calculation shown in the demonstration on our home page, repeated 801,620 times across the 17 metro areas.

Grid of points every 100 meters over Mexico City
01 A grid of points every 100 m is laid over the whole metro area, and the census population is distributed among them. The outline is the example census tract.
Each point connects to the nearest street
02 Each point connects to the nearest street: the hollow dot is its place on the grid; the solid dot is where the trip begins.
Walking route along the street network
03 The route follows the streets, not a straight line: fifteen minutes at 3.6 km/h, about 900 m along the network.
Area reachable on foot with the everyday places it contains
04 From all the points at once, the reachable area is drawn and the places to shop, learn, receive care, enjoy, repair and work are counted. For work, we count establishments of any kind with 11 or more employees.

See the full demonstration on the home page →

02 · One scale

From 61.5 in Mexico City to 29.6 in Tijuana.

The index runs from 0 to 100 and compares each person with the 51 million people measured in the 17 metro areas: an index of 30 means that person can reach fewer everyday places on foot than 70% of them; an index of 80, more than 80%. It is calculated for each of six everyday functions (shopping, learning, care, leisure, repair and work) and averaged. A metro area's index is the average of the people who live there.

An average hides a lot, so each bar shows how a metro area's people are distributed. Across the 17, people are divided into five groups of equal size according to their proximity: from the 20% with the least proximity (dark red) to the 20% with the most (cream). If a metro area looked like the whole set, each color would fill one fifth of the bar; the light lines mark those fifths. Hover over a bar to see the percentages; click to open the metro area in the atlas.

How to read the chart

03 · People and proximity

Where many people live far from everything, and where there is city to spare nearby.

Each census tract has a density, how many people live per hectare, and a proximity index. Crossing the two across the 17 metro areas reveals two situations that call for opposite responses. The distinction rests on two cut points calculated over the 17 metro areas together, weighted by population:

In the first situation, many people with little proximity, services are missing: daycare, schools, clinics and food stores where people already live. In the second, high proximity with few people, the city can take in more residents without moving them away from everyday life: that is where new housing belongs, before the periphery.

In each metro area

Four metro areas on the map

Each map colors the metro area's census tracts along both axes. Red: many people per hectare and few places nearby. Dark green: many places nearby and few people. The intermediate shades combine both cut points, as the key shows.

↑ more people per hectare · → higher proximity index. Red: many people, few places nearby. Green: many places nearby, few people.

04 · What is missing

What is missing near home changes from one metro area to another.

The overall index summarizes six functions, but they are not all equally scarce. The table shows each metro area's index for each function, from 0 to 100. A darker color means less proximity in that function; the scale is the same for the whole table, so metro areas can be compared with each other, and functions too.

People without the service within a fifteen-minute walk

The index compares positions; these bars count absences: the share of each metro area's population without a single care service (daycare, childcare center, primary health care or social assistance) or a single school within a fifteen-minute walk.

05 · Interactive atlas

Explore every area of the 17 metro areas.

Choose a metro area and an everyday function, or the cross of people and proximity. On hover, each census tract shows its population, its index and how many places its residents can reach on foot.

Open in a new tab

06 · The 17 metro areas

Every metro area, at the same scale.

The maps share one scale: the size of each footprint is the real size of the metro area. Choose one to open it in the atlas.

07 · What we found

Proximity depends on a city's form, not its size.

  1. The north walks less

    The six metro areas with the lowest index are in the north: Tijuana (29.6), Juárez (31.1), Mexicali (32.0), Saltillo (37.1), La Laguna (37.6) and Monterrey (39.3).

  2. Density matters more than size

    Ranking by urban density closely resembles ranking by proximity; size barely explains it. San Luis Potosí and León outperform Monterrey, which has four times their population.

  3. The new periphery is far away

    In the Guadalajara metro area, the central municipality has an index of 74 and Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, 25; in Querétaro, El Marqués reaches 19. The lowest values recur in mass housing on the periphery and in gated communities.

  4. No car, just as far

    In Mexico City, households without a car live where more can be reached on foot (667 places, compared with 579 for households with a car); in Tijuana and Juárez they live just as far away as everyone else.

  5. The dense working-class neighborhood wins

    Nezahualcóyotl, with an index of 86, is the municipality with the most proximity across the 17 metro areas: its dense street grid and neighborhood shops outperform any financial district.

  6. Many people, little proximity

    Across the 17 metro areas, 2.2 million people live in the densest areas with little proximity; 339,000 of them in Tijuana, 17% of its population.

Use the index as the target and yardstick of urban development programs: bring daycare, primary health care and schools to the areas where the 20% of people in the 17 metro areas with the least proximity live, and make new housing developments conditional on nearby basic services.

How to measure progress: the share of the population within that 20% with the least proximity; today 43% in Tijuana, 34% in Juárez and Mexicali, and 11% in Mexico City.

Dense, mixed-use cities keep everyday life within fifteen minutes; sprawling ones have handed it over to the car.

08 · Documents

The full document behind the atlas.

On request · Cartograma Analysis · in SpanishFull documentConceptual framework, method, quality control, results for the 17 metro areas and a three-page profile for each one. Sent by email on request. On request · 3 pagesCartograma NoteFindings, maps, cross-reading and recommendation in three pages. InteractiveMeasure your neighborhoodShare your location or search for your neighborhood: how many places you can reach on foot and where that puts you among the 51 million people measured.

For your city

We run this analysis for your city, with your data and your question.

The same method works in any municipality in Mexico with open data, and becomes more precise with each government's own records.

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