The Elusive Dream of the 15-Minute City

The Elusive Dream of the 15-Minute City
The concept that everything should be within a short walk or bike ride keeps coming up, but making it a reality raises challenging questions.

July 20, 2021 • Alan Ehrenhalt


I grew up in a 15-minute city. Or really, to be more precise, I grew up in a 15-minute neighborhood in a city that was packed with them. The New York essayist A. J. Liebling dismissed Chicago in the 1950s as an endless and tedious stretch of “factory-town main streets.” He didn’t realize it, but he was paying the city a compliment. Every one of those streets was the capital of a small world in which a few thousand residents could meet all of their regular needs — physical, social and spiritual — within the space of 15 minutes.

I can’t help finding it ironic that in the 21st century some of the best minds in urban planning are striving to design the sort of communities that used to exist without anybody inside having to give them the slightest thought. But they are hard at work at the task, and they are winning converts.

The 15-minute-city movement was born, or I should say reborn, in Paris, where Mayor Anne Hidalgo, with the guidance of urbanist guru Carlos Moreno, has made it a focus of her seven years in office. Hidalgo built her successful 2020 reelection campaign on the 15-minute goal, and she has done quite a bit to foster it. Hidalgo is creating 900 miles of bike lanes in the city, some of them on the Champs-Élysées. She has banned car traffic from some of the pathways along the river Seine. She is converting schoolyards throughout the city into round-the-clock public playgrounds.

Whether these moves will make Paris a 15-minute city remains to be seen. What is clear is that a significant number of cities around the world are making or at least exploring similar moves. London has removed automobiles from some of its commercial shopping streets. Melbourne has a blueprint for a 20-minute city that will include substantial reworking of its suburban geography. In this country, Portland, Ore., has been working on a 15-minute plan for several years. Detroit, seemingly an unusual candidate, has a 20-minute plan that has increased its network of bicycle lanes from 13 miles to 240. ..........(more)

https://www.governing.com/assessments/the-elusive-dream-of-the-15-minute-city