I am pleased to share our latest article, “The implementation of the 15-minute city model in Barcelona and the decline of the city’s nightlife industry”
Co-authored with Jordi Nofre and Álvaro Mazorra Rodríguez, this paper engages with a central tension in contemporary urbanism: how the 15-minute city, widely promoted as a model for more sustainable and livable environments, may also be contributing to the erosion of nightlife.
Over the past decade, the 15-minute city has consolidated itself as a dominant paradigm in urban planning. Its promise is compelling. By reorganizing urban life around proximity, accessibility, and environmental quality, it seeks to improve everyday life at the neighbourhood scale. Barcelona has become one of its most emblematic cases in Europe. Yet, as our research shows, this transformation has unfolded alongside a marked contraction of the city’s nightlife industry, both in terms of venues and spatial presence
This apparent contradiction invites a more critical reading. What kinds of urban life are being enabled through this model, and which ones are being quietly displaced?
A key argument of the article is that the 15-minute city has been conceptualized almost entirely through a daytime lens. Urban policy has devoted considerable attention to mobility, green space, and access to services, but the organization of the city after dark remains largely absent from both planning frameworks and academic debates This absence is not simply theoretical. It materializes in increasingly restrictive regulatory environments, in reduced operating hours, and in the gradual disappearance of venues that once sustained the social and cultural life of the night.
Barcelona’s transformation through superblocks and the redesign of public space has undoubtedly produced tangible environmental gains. Air quality has improved, noise has decreased, and public space has been reclaimed for everyday use. At the same time, these interventions have intersected with regulatory strategies that constrain nightlife activity. The decline of venues along streets such as Consell de Cent, or the disappearance of iconic spaces like Merlín in Poblenou, are not isolated cases, but part of a broader reconfiguration of the urban fabric
What emerges from this analysis is not only an economic or spatial shift, but also a cultural one. The implementation of the 15-minute city can be read as advancing a particular vision of urban life, one that privileges certain forms of leisure while marginalizing others. In this context, nightlife is increasingly framed as problematic, associated with noise, excess, and disorder, while more regulated and domesticated forms of leisure are implicitly normalized. The figure of the “good citizen” that underpins this model appears, therefore, as a distinctly diurnal one
Rather than rejecting the 15-minute city altogether, the article argues for the need to expand it. If the ambition is to build inclusive and vibrant cities, the nocturnal dimension cannot remain an afterthought. Integrating nightlife into urban planning requires recognizing it as a legitimate and essential component of urban life, one that contributes not only to economic activity but also to social diversity, cultural expression, and collective experience.
This contribution forms part of a broader research agenda within night studies, concerned with understanding how urban transformations reshape not only space, but also time, practices, and the conditions under which urban life unfolds.
Open access: https://sociologicamexico.azc.uam.mx/index.php/Sociologica/article/view/1899
Manuel Garcia-Ruiz 