15-minute city
[4] This approach aims to reduce car dependency, promote healthy and sustainable living, and improve wellbeing and quality of life for city dwellers.
[5] Implementing the 15-minute city concept requires a multi-disciplinary approach, involving transportation planning, urban design, and policymaking, to create well-designed public spaces, pedestrian-friendly streets, and mixed-use development.
This change in lifestyle may include remote working which reduces daily commuting and is supported by the recent widespread availability of information and communications technology.
The 15-minute city concept suggests a shift toward a decentralized network of workspaces within residential neighbourhoods, reducing the need for long commutes and promoting work-life balance.
[7] The concept's roots can be traced to pre-modern urban planning traditions where walkability and community living were the primary focus before the advent of street networks and automobiles.
[1] Since then, a number of cities worldwide have adopted the same goal and many researchers have used the 15-minute model as a spatial analysis tool to evaluate accessibility levels within the urban fabric.
[13] A manifesto published in Barcelona in April 2020 by architecture theorist Massimo Paolini proposed radical change in the organization of cities in the wake of COVID-19, and was signed by 160 academics and 300 architects.
[14][15][16] In early 2023, far-right conspiracy theories began to flourish that described 15-minute cities as instruments of government repression, claiming that they were a pretext to introduce restrictions on travel by car.
[11][24] Urbanist Carlos Moreno's 2021 article introduced the 15-minute city concept as a way to ensure that urban residents can fulfill six essential functions within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their dwellings: living, working, commerce, healthcare, education and entertainment.
[11] Diversity in this 15-minute city model refers to mixed-use development and multicultural neighborhoods, both of which Moreno and others argue would improve the urban experience and boost community participation in the planning process.
[32][33][34] (The term "isobenefit" is a portmanteau word from "iso" meaning equal, and "benefit", which he defines as advantageous amenities, services, workplaces and green space.)
[11][4] In their 2019 article, Da Silva et al. cite Tempe, Arizona, as a case study of an urban space where all needs could be met within 20 minutes by walking, biking, or transit.
Among them, "15-min pedestrian-scale neighborhood" means "residential area divided according to the principle that residents can meet their material, living and cultural demand by walking for 15 minutes; usually surrounded by urban trunk roads or site boundaries, with a population of 50,000 to 100,000 people (about 17,000 to 32,000 households) and complete supporting facilities."
These included plans "to stop councils implementing so called '15-minute cities', by consulting on ways to prevent schemes which aggressively restrict where people can drive".
[53][2] Similar to the Weng et al. model, the Portland plan emphasizes walking and cycling as ways to increase overall health and stresses the importance of the availability of affordable healthy food.
[2] There is also a large focus on access to green space, which may promote positive environmental impacts such as increasing urban biodiversity and helping to protect the city from invasive species.
[58] In a paper published in the journal Sustainability, Georgia Pozoukidou and Zoi Chatziyiannaki write that the creation of dense, walkable urban cores often leads to gentrification or displacement of lower-income residents to outlying neighborhoods due to rising property values; to counteract this, the authors argue for affordable housing provisions to be integral with 15-minute city policies.
However, the reliance on population-wide conventions, such as gait speed, to estimate the buffer zones of accessible areas may not accurately reflect the mobility capabilities of specific population groups, like the elderly.
[17] QAnon supporters have claimed a February 2023 derailment of a train carrying hazardous chemicals in Ohio was part of a deliberate plot to force rural residents into 15-minute cities to restrict their personal freedom.
[68][69] In February 2023 the Conservative MP Nick Fletcher called 15-minute cities an "international socialist concept" during a debate in the UK Parliament, which was met with laughter.
[63][18] At the Conservative party conference in October 2023, Transport Secretary Mark Harper announced that he was "calling time on the misuse of so-called '15-minute cities'", criticising as "sinister" the idea that local councils could "decide how often you go to the shops and that they ration who uses the roads and when".
[61][66] Despite being specifically debunked in a guide given to MPs by the Leader of the House of Commons,[70] Health Secretary Maria Caulfield included the fiction in a local election leaflet and reiterated it in a BBC interview.
