walkability

The 15-Minute City: Re-Planning for a Human-Scale Urban Future

Carlos Moreno of Pantheon Sorbonne University in Paris draws our attention to “the 15-minute city”. Due to Moreno, this concept of cities goes in the opposite direction of modern urbanism, it attempts to provide a human-scale urban life experience. The 15-minute city can provide its citizens a walkable or bikeable access to meet their needs within a 15-minute distance. Hence, Moreno calls for rethinking our cities around four guiding principles, seen as key building blocks to this concept: Ecology, Proximity, Solidarity, and Participation. Furthermore, Moreno illustrates three key features of the 15-minute city as the following: “First, the rhythm of the city should follow humans, not cars. Second, each square meter should serve many different purposes. Finally, neighborhoods should be designed so that we can live, work and thrive in them without having to constantly commute elsewhere”.

Furthermore, Andres Duany and Robert Steuteville in their article on “defining the 15-minute city”, draw attention to incorporating transit into the 15-minute city. They explain the necessity of a walkable urban fabric, considering the quality of the pedestrian experience, to make the 15-minute city work. In terms of transit services, they consider two kinds of stations that need to be incorporated: community and commuter transit stops. The former is accessed through “human-powered mobility” or active transportation (walking and biking), and the latter by cars. They illustrate that the community and commuter transit stops should be located at the center and the edge of the 15-minute city successively to allow access to distant locations.

Moving towards post pandemic recovery, the 15-minutes city concept is relevant. It delivers wellbeing, boosts local economies, encourages community building, provids climate benefits, etc. Hence, by promoting self-sufficient communities, the 15-minutes city ensures a sustainable and liveable urban future.

Cities by Citizens: From Planning to Citymaking

'Where is planning in all this?' was a recurrent question I received when I presented my  research on the square movements of 2011, 2012 and 2013 in urban studies, geography and planning conference. The occupations of Tahrir Square, Plaza del Sol and Catalunya in Spain, Zuccotti Park in New York, and Taksim Square in Istambul developed open libraries, kitchens that fed thousands every day, community gardens, art workshops and film screenings. They hosted open-to-the-public assemblies, teach-ins and open conversations to discuss the economy, gender, social change, the environment and the media. They cooked with solar stoves, built structures with recycled wooden skids and used bicycle-powered sound systems in their general assemblies. Here, it is difficult to recognize a hierarchical order but it's impossible not recognizing planning. However, the experience of the protest encampments makes us reconsider planning and think more about citymaking as a broad process of design, use, regulation, interpretation, representation, imagination and, of course, urban planning. The experiment of the square movement has passed. But the impetus to create citizen-driven, citizen-led and citizen-responsive cities is very much alive.