15-minute cities: What they are, and why some people are lashing out against them
If you’ve spent more than a few minutes on social media recently, chances are you’ve heard debate around the concept of the “15-minute city.”
As governments become increasingly focused on climate change and sustainability, many urban planners are looking for ways to help city dwellers become less dependent on cars. One way to do this, they say, is by keeping the essentials for daily life — entertainment, shopping, green space, work and school — close to home.
The term “15-minute city” is not a new one. It was coined back in 2016 by Carlos Moreno, an associate professor at Sorbonne University Business School in Paris, France.
In a 2020 TED Talk, Moreno outlines the idea of the 15-minute city, which boils down to giving area inhabitants access to the essential services they need “to live, learn and thrive within their immediate vicinity.”
Ideally, residents should be able to walk or bike to work, groceries, health care and more, in approximately a quarter of an hour, he says.
video: https://youtu.be/TQ2f4sJVXAI
In the video, Moreno argues that humans’ sense of time has become “warped” due to urban sprawl, and we now accept long commutes of car-centric cities as normal.
In 2021, Moreno won the Obel Award for developing the concept.
“We need to broaden our focus to include different densities and territories: from the small cities to the mid-sized cities and even to the rural territories,” he said at the time.
“We need to keep the concept of the 15-minute city but imagine new ways to implement its principle of proximity in other densities.”
And while the concept has been picked up by a bunch of cities — Paris adopted the concept in 2020 and a group of cities in the U.K. will begin piloting their own plans next year — it’s Edmonton’s recent interest that’s been causing a bunch of hullabaloo in Canada.
Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi has been peddling his city’s proposal to create its own “15-minute districts” by, in his words, “widening sidewalks or multi-use trails that encourage walking, or sustainable infrastructure in communities where they make sense,” reports the Western Standard.
Read more:
https://globalnews.ca/news/9483836/15-minute-city-edmonton-canada/.
