The north walks less

• Households without a car don’t live closer to services, except in Mexico City

  In Mexico City, households without a car live where more places can be reached on foot (667, versus 579 for households with a car); in Tijuana and Juárez they live as far away as everyone else (131 and 161).

• The lowest proximity is in mass housing on the periphery and in upscale gated subdivisions

  Each city’s lowest values recur in these two kinds of place: for example, Villas del Campo in Toluca, Urbiquinta del Cedro in Tijuana and Valle Alto in Culiacán, and Condado de Sayavedra in the Valley of Mexico.

• The dense working-class neighborhood has the most services within walking distance

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

• 2.2 million people live in dense areas with few services within walking distance

  They live in the densest areas of the 17 metropolitan areas, but with low proximity: 487,000 in Monterrey, 416,000 in Guadalajara, 411,000 in Mexico City and 339,000 in Tijuana, where they are 17% of the population. Conversely, 1.8 million live where there is high proximity and low population: there the city can take in more residents without moving them away from everyday life.

• Northern metropolitan areas have fewer services within walking distance

  The six metropolitan 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).

• Proximity comes from density, not city size

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

• The new periphery is far from everything

  In the Guadalajara metropolitan area, the central municipality has an index of 74 and Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, 25; in Querétaro, El Marqués reaches 19.

• Care and schools are what is most lacking within walking distance

  Between 3% and 9% of each metropolitan area’s population has no care service within a fifteen-minute walk, and up to 15% has no school.

Use the index as a target and a yardstick for urban development programs: bring daycares, primary 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.

Proximity depends not on a city's size but on its form: dense, mixed-use cities keep everyday life within fifteen minutes; sprawling ones have handed it over to the car.