EURA 2023 – Call for abstracts submission
19/12/2022
9th Winter School on Research Methodology
27/12/2022
Conversation #49
The ‘15-minute city’: questioning the obvious
by Mick Lennon
University College Dublin, Ireland
The ‘proximity-city’ is an umbrella term used to describe a range of chrono-urbanistic approaches focused on the provision of all one’s needs with a time-defined walking and/or cycling range. The most famous version of these approaches, and the one now receiving considerable attention, is the ‘15-minute city’ championed by the mayor of Paris. In a superficial sense, the 15-minute city echoes Jane Jacobs’ walkable communities, albeit more with a focus on travel time than the bohemian diversity of organically evolving physical forms and social interactions that Jacobs sought to protect. Indeed, while the roots of Jacob's work lie in experience and journalistic reflection, the Parisian version of the 15-minute city is grounded in a cybernetic view of urban dynamics where the planner’s role is to understand the city as a complex system, identify possible lines of development and steer it onto the most favourable path (Moreno et al., 2021).
At the core of the 15-minute city concept is the assumption that a high quality of life is predicated on the capacity of one’s local (15 minute) area to supply a series of functions – living, working, services/retail, education, healthcare and leisure/recreation. For advocates of this concept, the urban landscape needs to be reshaped to deliver these functions. This produces a polynucleated morphology characterised by relatively self-contained neighbourhoods. Consequently, it appears to represent a sensible approach for advancing urban sustainability.
While the long-standing concern with neighbourhood walkability and the provision of accessible local services is praiseworthy, the presentation of the 15-minute city concept as ‘the’ direction for the future also reflects some enduring problems with how we think about urban planning. Specifically, the 15-minute city (or any proximity-city concept), speaks of jobs, healthcare, parks, retail, recreation, education, and a host of other services being within a prescribed walking and/or cycling duration from one’s residence. Yet it is unclear how in a free market economy the location of the private enterprises required to realise this vision of proximate living is to be ensured. Zoning may work in some circumstances, but likely only in those where there is already a demand. What of poorer areas where the rule of profit renders delivery of certain services commercially unattractive? Some may counter that density makes services locally viable. Yet, density is not a panacea for proximity as cities around the world demonstrate with many socio-economically disadvantaged high-density districts suffering from the under-provision of services (Anguelovski and Connolly, 2021).
Although proximity city concepts conceive of lively walkable well-serviced neighbourhoods, the vision can also gloss over the social complexities sedimented across the urban landscape. For example, schools are not all equal, some have better facilities, better reputations, cater for certain religious denominations, and often serve as attractions in themselves. Likewise, green space ‘quality’ is not always equal between neighbourhoods, even in situations where green space ‘quantity’ is. In this context, reducing the measure of success to proximity may simply consolidate rather than address spatial inequities. This is because conflating quality with proximity risks increasing access to things without addressing the inequities in the things themselves (e.g. park quality). Many challenging issues in cities are not simply about access. Rather, they are about access to what, by whom and why.
As urbanists, we are working with the given material of city spaces, which are contemporary manifestations of change-resistant economic, environmental and social forces overlain like a palimpsest. While it may be argued that the 15-minute city is more an aspiration than a prescription (White, 2021), it is cautioned that uncritical attention to fashionable planning concepts that intuitively make sense because they resonate with our normative conceptions of what planning ‘should do’, risks ignoring how urban planning has a lengthy back catalogue of action taken on the basis of seemingly self-evident truths whose consequences subsequent generations have struggled to remedy. Many such actions made sense in the epistemic contexts from which they emerged and in the practice paradigm of the time. However, even the swiftest review of history reveals a landscape littered with the wreckage of well-intentioned planning approaches misguided by hubris and a failure to identify their blind spots.
The proximity-city concept as a recent turn in the laudable effort to create more sustainable communities reflects positively on our desire to do better. Yet its popularity also alludes to the weaknesses carried by this desire – our danger of lapsing into uncritical thinking in an effort to efficiently resolve the multiplicity of complex issues that characterise city living. The proximity-city concept may indeed be a way forward in an emerging polycentric governance landscape (interested readers are encouraged to also read Conversation #2 on Proximity). But before rushing headlong with a voguish concept of seemingly enormous promise we should first pause for critical debate on its limitations. This way we can identify how its drawbacks should be addressed before scratching enduring marks across the urban palimpsest.
References:
Anguelovski I and Connolly JJT. (2021) The Green City and Social Injustice: 21 Tales from North America and Europe, Abingdon, England, U.K.: Routledge. Moreno C, Allam Z, Chabaud D, et al. (2021) Introducing the “15-Minute City”: Sustainability, Resilience and Place Identity in Future Post-Pandemic Cities. Smart Cities 4: 93-111. White N. (2021) The 15 Minute City: Global Change Through Local Living, Edinburgh. Scotland, U.K.: Luath Press Limited.
As attractive as it may appear at first sight, the 15-minute city is probably not the complete and ultimate urban planning concept that will resolve all mobility and related liveability issues at neighbourhood level. While it rightfully prioritises walking and cycling in combination with shared and collective transport and attractive public spaces – elements which are also at the core of any credible Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan – it may not be able to guarantee the full access to services it is associated with.
Although many European cities are making commendable efforts in bringing public services closer to citizens (e.g., providing opportunities for education, medical support, social assistance, affordable housing, culture, sports etc.) and in creating favourable conditions for local businesses, they do not have the leverage to also guarantee local jobs for all residents. Recent EUROSTAT data shows that 40.3 % of employed persons living in cities have commuting times that are over 30 minutes, which seems difficult to reconcile with the concept of the 15-minute city. These longer commuting times – and distances – are usually associated with higher educated workers that perform more specialized jobs in the service economy. To accommodate short distance commuting for technical workers, cities would also be required to bring back manufacturing and industry, which in turn may affect the liveability of residential areas, which is at the core of the 15-minute concept.
In connection with local economic development, the question also needs to be considered how logistics will be organised in the 15-minute city and how this will impact local businesses and individual customers. If indeed seen as an aspiration, the 15-minute city concept and its focus on proximity, safe and active mobility and quality of public space rightfully deserves the attention of urban planners and local decision makers, but it should not ignore the (economic) reality that also in the future cities will be required to accommodate large flows of incoming and outgoing (longer distance) commuter traffic. This does not imply that local residents will need to continue suffering the consequences: by creating more opportunities for multimodal travel across the functional urban area (e.g. through high quality public transport, shared mobility services and multimodal hubs) and by further limiting through traffic and car use in general (e.g. by introducing circulation plans, parking management and urban vehicle access restrictions), many of the benefits associated with the 15-minute city concept are potentially within reach.
In my mind, the whole idea of cities – that is densely populated human settlements – is imbued with proximity. How is it possible to have a city without proximity of people, goods, services and other functions? Indeed, compared to villages and towns, cities amass greater numbers of such things within their boundaries – creating a gravitational pull that draws even more people, goods, and services into the city in a haphazard way which in turn creates the sort of problematic dynamics which call for solutions like ’15 minute cities.’ I do agree that it is good practice to critically examine the risks related to such projects, not in the least the risk of amplifying already heightened spatial inequalities. Another thought experiment might concern the question of what happens when cities are made up of self-contained islands that have no motivation or desire to mix.
What do we lose when people do not connect outside of their comfortable spaces, and how do we compensate for such a loss? Yet another thought experiment concerns what we really stand to gain from such spaces. The most obvious one being time. We might ask whether cutting down on commuting really will change our relationship with time or whether we will manage to squander these gains, as research on the rebound effect seems to suggest. My lived experience has me wanting to return to the question of spatial inequalities. I have lived in spaces that resemble 15-minute cities in many ways from their shopping centres to their schools, pubs, dental centres, and green spaces. And for me, that is the rub. As wealthier city areas are able to and do self-organize into 15 minutes even without help from the city, others continue to be left behind and my concern is, what is to happen to them?
Really interesting debate. Rather than proximity I would argue what we need to be considering is 15 minute accessibility. In the contemporary capitalist city as discussed here, it will be impossible to steer all private development into 15 minute neighbourhoods. However what we can do is ensure access within 15 minute walk or cycle to high quality, efficient and regular transport infrastructure that can connect us to these service/activities.
That’s a good point and could be a workable alternative. However, I do imagine that realizing 15 minute accessibility – while aided by recent innovations in transportation and transportation planning – may also suffer from some similar problems (e.g. in terms of fairness in service provision and how to finance this concept given how we organize non-monetizable activities) and perhaps from new ones (who will be displaced in order to enable these transportation pathways?). That said, it is an interesting proposition that merits investigation.
Hi Mick, hi Peter, have either of you heard this (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/15-minute-cities-conspiracy-climate-denier) or are you aware of similar developments?