The 15-minute city (part5)

The global spread of the idea of the 15-minute city

In many places in the world, the municipal boards involved look for opportunities for the realization of a 15-minute city.

Because of my new challenging job, I could not post messages in the last two months. I do my best to guarantee continuity in the coming weeks.

In a previous post it became clear that a 15-minute city is ideally consists of a 5-minute running zone, a 15-minute running, also 5-minute bicycle zone and a 15-minute bicycle zone. These three types of neighbourhoods must be developed in conjunction, whereby the accessibility of employment also plays an important role.

In the plans for 15-minute cities in many places in the world, these types of zones run through, and it is often not even clear what type of zone is meant.?? Also, in Paris you miss clear choices about this.

The city of?Melbourne aims to give a local lifestyle a dominant place to all residents. That is why everyone should live at no more than a 10 -minute walk to and from all daily facilities. For that reason, there is a 20-minute city, while in most examples of a 15-minute city, such as Paris, it only goes around or the way back. The policy in Melbourne has received powerful support from health care, which emphasizes the negative effects of traffic and of air pollution.

In Vancouver they talk about a 5-minute city. The intention is for neighbourhoods to become more clearly distinguishable parts of the city. Every neighbourhood should have several locally owned shops as well as public facilities such as parks, schools, community centres, childcare and libraries. High on the agenda is the pursuit of a greater diversity of residents and types of houses. Especially in inner-city neighbourhoods, this is associated with high densities and high-rise buildings. Confronting this idea with reality produces a pattern of approximately 120 such geographical units (see map).

Many other cities picked up the idea of the 15-minute city. Among them: Barcelona, London, Milan, Ottawa,?Detroit and Portland . The organization of world cities C40 (now consisting of 96 cities) has elevated the idea to its most important policy goal in the post-Covid period.

All these cities advocate a change in current urbanization policy. In recent decades, many billions have been invested in the construction of roads with the aim of improving accessibility. This means increasing the distance you can cover in each time. This results in an increase in the scale of the provision of facilities and its concentration in increasingly remote locations. This in turn led to an increase in congestion that offset improvements in accessibility. The response was again further expansion of the road network. This phenomenon is called the 'mobility trap' or the Marchetti constant .

Instead of the concept of 'accessibility', the concept of accessibility is central in the 15-minute city. This means expanding the number of urban features you can access within a given amount of time. This also includes employment. But the pandemic that put the 15-minute city on the map also meant that working from home made the distance between home and work less important.

Everywhere the discussion about 15-minute cities has taken a new turn. The ability to work from home has reduced the relevance of the distance between home and workplace. On the other hand, the importance of a pleasant living environment has increased. An adapted version of the 15-minute city, the 'walkable city', will be very popular. But you can read that in my next post about the 15-minute cities.