The 15 Minute City
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| San Francisco... formely a 15 minute city, but not anymore |
When I was in architecture school back in the mid 2000’s, one of the core tenets of our schooling was to design buildings and cities to better serve people. Sometimes, that meant easing the struggles of disabled people, unable to navigate existing infrastructure. Sometimes it was providing multi-use space that doesn’t already exist in our urban fabric. Sometimes it was just making something pretty to look at. But most of the time, the emphasis was on making buildings and human construction less wasteful; so that we didn’t burn all sorts of physical and societal resources simply trying to exist. This was where I first learned of the 15 minute city idea; the premise being that every human could access their basic needs within a fifteen minute walk or bicycle of their home, like food, entertainment, employment, social interaction, etc.
Often, when discussing the 15 minute city in school, it was implied that if humans didn’t figure something out quick to solve global warming (this was before the name changed to climate change) then we would all be frogs in a stew within a few decades. One of the many goals of the 15 minute city was that everything we might need would be closer at hand, and would probably reduce our planetary impact, potentially reversing or slowing the changing climate. Now, whether you believe in climate change or not is irrelevant. Because the other more personal aspect of 15 minute cities is that, if our resources are closer at hand, we don’t have to travel as far to get it. Traveling is expensive, both in hard earned money on fuel and in time. Why spend two hours and a tank of gas to get groceries when you can spend fifteen minutes and no gas. Seems like a convenient no-brainer; spend less time driving, more time doing other activities and save money. At least, that is the logic I saw in it.
Recently, while browsing the news, as I do, I came across a phenomenon that is taking the media world by storm; the 15 minute city. There is massive opposition to certain British cities whose governing bodies or planning boards have recently decided to strive towards a more efficient urban plan. These city leaders realized it wasn’t really good for them economically to have their residents spend extra time and hard earned money traveling far and wide to get basic needs when they didn’t have to. That was just wasted resources for no reason. They wrote the goals of the 15 minute city into their planning codes, striving to make it happen sometime over the next decade. And people freaked out.
Politicians and pundits started screaming into the ether saying that this was the first step of a plan for a totalitarian regime that would limit us all to zones that extended no further than a fifteen minute walk from our home. How they came to this conclusion, I don’t know. I think they did have a fair point that there might be some financial segregation if we delineated our cities into smaller resource areas, but hello, we have mega rich and super poor segregation already.
Rather than get riled up at the opponents of the 15 minute city and their end of the world prognostication, I looked out my window at Philipsburg, the town of 900 in rural Montana. Philipsburg is a 15 minute city. You can get anything you need within a 15 minute walk, from groceries to entertainment, healthcare to education. Most people choose to drive, but that only makes it a 3 minute city. No one is being limited by their proximity to services or food. We can literally see food growing in the cow pastures on the edge of town. Commutes are incredibly short. When you can’t get something locally, it is quite easy to have it ordered in; Fedex has two day delivery in rural Montana! At a time when inflation and wage gaps are making life more expensive, we have it the best; we can save boatloads of money because we don’t have to travel to a distant box store to get food or other household supplies. It is all right here! And we have an amazing view which is a lovely bonus.
In the age before cars, everyone lived in a 15 minute city. The nostalgic mid century America was predominantly a 15 minute city. Many thriving urban cores are still 15 minute cities. But the modern sprawling development is the opposite of the 15 minute city. Having to spend hours of your day driving around getting things is inefficient. It is expensive to operate an SUV full of kids and groceries. It is expensive and unsustainable from an economic standpoint. When places are inefficient and expensive, the people are unsatisfied, so they look to move to somewhere where they can have it a bit easier. Lo and behold, places like Philipsburg (and Montana in general) are in high demand for people looking to trim the fat and get back to a simpler life where everything is within easy reach. Alas, the popularity of people moving to more sustainable areas is ironically leading to sprawl on the edges of town.
I could keep going but I won’t. There are many more nuances to the 15 minute city, both positive and negative. If you want to learn more, which I highly encourage, check out the links at the bottom. The people that agree with me already do, and the people that don’t probably never will. I just wanted to comment on the idea of the 15 minute city. I am glad that the 15 minute city is back in vogue, even if it is not all positive press. The 15 minute city shouldn’t have anything to do with climate change or sustainability; it should be about convenience and economics. I would entertain the notion that we promote the 15 minute city in American urban areas. Maybe those of us who live in rural America want urban areas to be happier and healthier; then they won’t want to move here and bother us…
Links to check out
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/16/15-minute-city-planning-theory-conspiracists
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/15-minute-city-stickiness/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/the-downsides-of-a-15-minute-city
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