15-Minute City
The secret is in Proximity
If this sounds familiar: everything you do involves taking transportation (and emitting carbon), then this article is a must-read. This is because there is a way to have a better quality of life in cities, to be close to everything that is essential and, even better, to get there easily by foot or by bike!
What is changing in Paris?
✔ The neighbourhood is the core of urban life;
✔ It has more than 1000 km dedicated to bicycles;
✔ Car use has decreased to less than 46%;
✔ It will be 100% cyclable in the near future;
✔ Giving the city back to pedestrians;
✔ Schools are no longer closed off and have opened to the general public, especially in the evenings and at weekends, becoming meeting places, leisure spaces and gardens where people can relax with their children;
✔ 100 hectares have been freed up in the city to dedicate to urban agriculture such as community gardens;
✔ The Paris City Council has bought over 62.000 shops from private individuals and set them out to tender for local use to favour local production: cultural commerce such as bookshops, handicrafts, hardware, groceries, and more;
✔ A new label “Fabriqué à Paris” – made in Paris, to encourage people to produce, create jobs, stimulate the economy and develop social bonding;
Living time
With the concept of the 15-minute city, a city of proximity, the aim is to become a vast network of places so that free time becomes living time. It means rethinking how we move around, explore, and discover our neighbourhoods on foot or by bicycle, thus responding to the effective reduction of CO2 emissions from car traffic.
💡 A hypothetical day in the City of Proximity:
✔ Walk the children to school
✔ With your workplace near you can enjoy the calm of the neighbourhood garden on your lunch break
✔ End your day without wasting time sitting in traffic
✔ Pick up the children and, on the way home, buy whatever is needed for dinner at the Organic Grocery
✔ Arrive home in time to walk the dog as a family
✔ Have a slow leisurely dinner
✔ Head down to the coffee/book shop for some chit-chat with the neighbours and to get to know the new book by the shop’s local featured author:
✔ Sleep in a calm environment (without car noises from the street)
✔ Tomorrow is a new day. A Happy Day in this City.
Multifunctionality
Shortening the distances between some of the main areas of our life – work, services, health, education, and leisure – implies an urban transformation that focuses on the multifunctionality of spaces. Spaces must interconnect several essential functions to answer to the new lifestyles of their inhabitants. Some examples: introducing green spaces in office buildings to allow moments of contact with nature; adding wellbeing concepts into the working day (a stretching session in the middle of the morning sounds great to us!); becoming a stage of cultural events for the local community, namely when the building is not serving work purposes. And there is so much to share about the future of offices that we saved it for another article).
Transformation of sites
Mixed-use real estate can be used by different people, with different needs, and hosts spaces aren’t perceived as only having a single purpose. Together we will regrow the whole community, connecting the places to their surroundings and environment, developing new neighbourhoods where the community comes alive and becomes more satisfied. The creation of a practical city!
Proximity
The notion of happiness associated with proximity and quality of life encompasses the idea of the smart city. The pandemic has highlighted the concept of the 15-minute city, with emerging new lifestyles bringing a different perspective about the future of urban life. How many of us have come to value living near green space and being able to take a deep breath in this challenging time? Or have a local grocery store to buy daily essentials and support small producers? Or going to the vet during lunchtime because we’re with our four-legged friend while working remotely?
The 15-minute city, along with proximity and a new urban lifestyle, will chart the future of practical and sustainable cities and return the city and public space to people.
☝ And where did the concept of a 15-minute city come from?
The 15-minute city concept emerged in 2015 at a United Nations meeting, where participants were discussing ways to reduce CO2 emissions in cities and find fewer polluting solutions for car traffic. At this meeting, it was apparent that the environmental focus had shifted from mobility to proximity and concluded that the most obvious solution to reduce CO2 emissions is to shorten the distances that citizens travel daily in cities. This was the paradigm launched by Carlos Moreno and which is today transforming our cities. Inspiring, right?