The 15 Minute City
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 fi