Assessing Accessibility to Primary Education and Healthcare Services: A Comparison of EU Datasets and Network-Based Analysis

European medium-sized cities are increasingly affected by shrinking dynamics, characterized by sustained population decline, ageing and selective out-migration, which challenge their capacity to remain attractive and competitive in the long term. In this context, everyday accessibility to essential services such as primary education and healthcare becomes a key component of urban livability, social equity and territorial resilience, shaping residential choices of families, older adults and mobile households. This paper investigates these issues proposing a novel approach through an integrated assessment of accessibility to primary schools and healthcare facilities in two mid-sized European cities, Genoa (Italy) and Karlsruhe (Germany). Present choice descends from the aim to evaluate potential attractiveness of urban areas, as well as local administrations commitment against shrinking and ageing trends. Building on Eurostat’s 2025 road-based accessibility dataset, the study compares harmonized EU driving-time indicators with fine-grained, network-based analyses and walking-time maps developed at the urban scale. The methodology adopts a proximity perspective and explicitly considers demographic trends, urban morphology and welfare governance arrangements. Results show that while EU-wide indicators are valuable for macro-regional benchmarking and cohesion monitoring, they tend to conceal significant intra-urban inequalities, particularly in morphologically complex contexts such as Genoa. The paper argues that multi-scalar and multimodal accessibility assessments, integrating EU datasets with local network models and context-specific service typologies, are needed to support more equitable, age-friendly and place-sensitive planning of primary education and healthcare in European shrinking cities.