15-Minute Cities: The Future of Community Planning
How long does it take you to get to your nearest grocery store? How about to your workplace? Or the nearest pharmacy? Depending on what country you are in, whether you choose to live in the city or the suburbs, and what type of work you do, your answer may be very different from those around you or in another part of the world.
However, city planning policies are working towards maximizing land use and transportation outcomes to facilitate 15-minute cities around the globe. This would mean your workplace, basic amenities, public transit stops, primary schools, healthcare facilities, and more would be within a 10 KM radius from your front door.
Since the dawn of the first modern city, progressive planners have sought to achieve compact and complete community planning and are often seeking ways to measure outcomes of land use and its effectiveness, reliability, and impact on daily living. The 15-minute city model provides a way to measure people’s access to the amenities they need to live. Compact, complete communities with a close-knit mix of land uses improves people’s access to work opportunities, recreation, and daily needs. By creating a connected ecosystem of designated amenities for local neighbourhoods, 15-minute cities strengthen the cohesiveness of communities.
The need for these self-contained local economies has been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Around the world, people in hard-hit regions have been placed under stay-at-home orders or limited to traveling within a defined radius from their homes. In one of the toughest orders in the Western world, residents of Melbourne, Australia were limited to traveling just 5KM from their house in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. Melbourne’s history of good community planning made these public health measures more viable. In Paris, the concept of a 15-minute city has been a priority for city planners and local government for some time, with experts believing “each neighbourhood should fulfil six social functions: living, working, supplying, caring, learning, and enjoying”. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Carlos Moreno, an expert in complex systems and innovation and one of the thought leaders behind the 15-minute city model, recognizes the acceleration of the rediscovery of localization in Paris and the appreciation of staying close to home. He now believes that “there ‘will never be’ a return to city life as it was before” the pandemic.
However, the promise of 15-minute cities can only be realized if low income and historically marginalized people are enabled to reap its benefits. Lower-income individuals are more likely to use transit, travel by bike, and may not have a vehicle to travel far for groceries or medication. Increasing the supply of affordable housing in urban areas will give lower- and middle-income individuals and families access to the benefits of a 15-minute city. We need to invest in affordable housing and amenities near public transit to ensure a just recovery.
Furthermore, investing in reliable public transit and active transportation infrastructure is one of the most impactful ways communities can move towards a 15-minute city model. By providing safe and accessible options for people of all ages and abilities to access their basic needs, cities can maximize efficiency, cut down on emissions, and improve overall community health. By going a step further and electrifying public transportation and buildings, cities could be on the precipice of a greener and more economically stable future. As Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, once said: “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.”
At AES, we believe any policies that help move our communities towards 15-minute cities, or equally diversified and balanced land use outcomes, are critical. As major Canadian cities including Vancouver and Ottawa look towards condensed city and neighbourhood planning, it’s encouraging to see the adoption of localized living underway. Creating complete urban ecosystems that support the challenges and requirements of modern life are what AES is all about. With collaboration across a variety of government and private enterprise strategies, we look forward to playing our part in making more accessible, compact, and complete cities for a better tomorrow.