Operationalizing Switzerland-wide democratic transformation to functional resilient 8-minute neighborhoods

Transforming housing and mobility towards sustainability, resilience, and wellbeing requires action at the neighborhood level, where people experience daily life and make mobility choices. While Switzerland's national and cantonal policies set ambitious climate targets and promote building renovation, local implementation remains fragmented due to weak local democratic engagement in housing and mobility governance, as well as inconsistent metrics and planning tools. In this paper, we introduce a structured framework for neighborhood-scale transformation, defining accessibility scores and maps for essential daily services, operationalizing and further developing the 15-minute city concept. These tools can help communes and cantons identify priority areas, sequence interventions, and facilitate democratic deliberation based on objective data. Applying this approach to Geneva, we demonstrate significant potential, improving 8-minute Accessibility Scores from 47.87 to 78.34 for an average-served commune, and 58.63 to 77.59 for the canton of Geneva. Future research should scale this framework nationally, incorporating actual democratic decisions and sensitivity analysis to improve robustness. By bridging the gap between high-level policy goals and local decision-making, our work contributes to more effective, inclusive, and evidence-based urban transformations.