Question
Which part of everyday life is far away, and who decides that it stays that way?
We applied the same proximity index in 17 metropolitan areas in Mexico, four cities in Colombia and Montevideo. The sources and the shape of each city change, but the same picture repeats: what the market provides arrives on its own, and what the state provides stays far away.
Colombia: public health care and culture
In Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Barranquilla, public health care and culture are the most distant functions in almost every city. In Bogotá, half of the people do not have a public health facility within a fifteen-minute walk. In the UPLs with the least proximity, such as Usaquén, Britalia and Tibabuyes, the median distance to a public health facility is about 2 km.
Uruguay: culture and health care
In Montevideo, food, school, recreation and a transit stop are less than a fifteen-minute walk away for more than 96% of people. Culture is farther than that for 39% and health care for 24%.
Mexico: care services and school
In Mexico’s 17 metropolitan areas, between 3% and 9% of the population has no care service within a fifteen-minute walk, and up to 15% has no school. In Cancún, care services are the scarcest service in 86 of 264 superblocks, and 395,837 people have no public daycare within walking distance. In Guadalupe, Nuevo León, daycare is the most distant service for 62% of the population.
Why it matters that it is public
The difference between countries lies in which service is missing, not in the pattern. Shops open where there is demand; public health care, the library, the cultural center or the public daycare open where someone decides to build them. That is why the proximity gap is, above all, a public investment gap, and it can be closed with decisions about location.
Another rule also repeats: proximity depends more on density and mixed uses than on the size of the city. In Mexico, San Luis Potosí and León score higher than Monterrey, which has four times their population, and Nezahualcóyotl, with its dense grid and neighborhood shops, is the municipality with the most proximity in the 17 metropolitan areas.