Social Housing and the 15-Minute City: Project-Level Accessibility to Urban Services in Serbia

Ensuring equitable access to urban services remains a major challenge in social housing planning, as favourable aggregate accessibility scores may conceal gaps in essential provision. This study examines potential walkable access to 24 service categories for 252 social housing buildings, aggregated into 25 project-level observations across ten Serbian cities. Using 15 min network-based walking isochrones and points of interest, the analysis combines weighted opportunity counts, capped indices, weighted deficits and service-specific coverage indicators. Favourable count-based scores coexisted with limited coverage of educational, healthcare and cultural services, as numerous commercial and recreational facilities dominated the aggregate indices. Education and healthcare alone accounted for about half of the general weighted deficit, and 60% when cultural categories not identified in any zone were excluded. Capping facility counts changed the assessment of some highly ranked projects, while the weighted deficit identified service categories absent from their walking zones. Accessibility varied substantially among projects, including within the same city, whereas differences among social housing user categories showed overlapping distributions and no consistent within-city ordering. The findings demonstrate why social housing locations should be assessed through aggregate measures alongside explicit checks for essential services: a favourable overall score does not establish comprehensive service provision.