🏙️ The 15-minute city has become one of the most influential ideas in sustainable urban planning.
📍 Paris focuses on proximity and neighbourhood services.
🚶 Barcelona uses Superblocks to reclaim streets from cars.
🚌 Melbourne promotes 20-minute neighbourhoods to support local living.

🌆 Tehran offers a different but highly relevant case. Our 2022 study shows that Tehran’s sprawl is not simply physical expansion. By integrating 🛰️ satellite imagery with 🏛️ Tehran Municipality land-use data, we identified a more complex pattern: rapid built-up growth toward low-density peripheral areas, combined with weak land-use mixing and functional separation inside the city.

🔎 This dual evidence creates a new understanding of Tehran’s urban sprawl. Satellite data show where the city has physically expanded over the past two decades. Municipal land-use data show how separated urban functions generate longer daily trips. Together, they explain why residents often travel across the city for work, education, shopping, treatment, and services—contributing to 🚗 car dependence, ⛽ fuel consumption, 🚦 congestion, and 🌫️ air pollution.

🌍 Lessons from Melbourne, Barcelona, and Paris suggest that Tehran needs a localized 15/20-minute city model, not a direct copy of European or Australian examples.
🏘️ In peripheral districts, proximity planning can reduce forced travel by strengthening local service hubs.
🚸 In central districts, traffic calming and street redesign can reduce car dominance.
🗺️ Across the whole city, GIS, remote sensing, and municipal data can help identify where land-use reform, public transport investment, and spatial equity interventions are most urgent.

❓ Key question:
Can satellite–municipal data integration help rapidly growing megacities detect hidden forms of sprawl and design fairer, cleaner, and more accessible neighbourhoods?

🤝 I welcome discussion and collaboration from researchers and practitioners working on urban planning, transport, GIS, remote sensing, air quality, accessibility, and sustainable cities.