Why the hyper-local ‘15-minute city’ is gaining ground in urban planning circles
Some dream of escaping gridlock with the help of flying cars. But why not just bring the things you need a little bit closer?
Some dream of escaping gridlock and congestion with the help of tunnels or flying cars. The 15-minute city planner counters: why not just bring the things you need a little bit closer? With white-collar workers cloistered at home during the worst of the pandemic – and manyThe term itself was coined by Carlos Moreno, a scientist at the Sorbonne who firstin 2016. He dreamed up a city where “in less than 15 minutes, a resident can access his essential life needs”.
For most Americans, home looks more or less like O’Fallon, Illinois. There’s parks and supermarkets, hospitals and pizza joints – a bit of everything, really – but mostly there are large swaths of land reserved exclusively for single-family homes. When planners in O’Fallon started interviewing citizens for the new master plan, however, what they heard was: we want opportunities to walk and bike, as well as better access to shops, restaurants and cultural amenities.
If I’m working from home more, wouldn’t it be great if there were something close and convenient I could go to without having to drive?“There’s been a lot of discussion about whether traditional suburban zoning is appropriate anymore,” said Walter Denton, O’Fallon’s chief administrator. “What people like about [neighboring] St Louis is the neighborhood character, different uses mixed together, how quaint it is.
Whether those changes can happen in O’Fallon before the NIMBY backlash bell tolls is unclear. Many people like mixed-use housing and bike lanes in the abstract, but not when they show up in their back yard. The conservative Canadian author Jordan Peterson recentlyskepticism about a proposal for a 15-minute city plan in Oxford, England, writing on Twitter: “The idea that neighborhoods should be walkable is lovely.
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