‘15 Minute Cities’

‘15 Minute Cities’ is an urban planning concept originating in Paris and introduced at the COP in 2015 aimed at rethinking urban planning by trying to make sure all essential services are within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

Key elements of ‘15 Minute Cities’ are:

• greater emphasis on services, facilities, education, and leisure being nearby.

• higher investment in infrastructure for public transport, cycling and walking.

• prioritising green spaces / greenery on streets.

The idea is that cities could be more convenient and efficient places to live by reducing the time it takes to access essential services, such as healthcare, childcare, food, educational facilities. This in turn would reduce traffic congestion, and lower air pollution. It would create a healthier, more attractive place to live and help promote a sense of community. The core idea is that we need to move away from planning being just a series of isolated decisions and start to look at the impact on the whole community. 

This sounds uncontroversial, but it’s got mixed up with conspiracy theories forged during the Covid lockdowns. These theories claim that ‘15 Minute Cities’ are aimed to forcibly prevent people from coming and going when they want or from leaving their area at all. These conspiracy theories have then been repeated by some mainstream politicians,

‘15 Minute Cities’ are often lumped together with low-traffic neighbourhoods which allow streets to be blocked off for pedestrian use. There is certainly an assumption with 15-minute cities that reducing traffic volume is key to creating the right kind of environment, but this can of course create local opposition as this may be very inconvenient for some residents.

‘15 Minute Cities’ also require a higher level of density to ensure there are enough residents within an area to support the services that are nearby. This impacts the type of housing envisaged and almost certainly means being more flexible with the existing facilities. For example, playgrounds could be open to the public after hours, rooftops could be used for greenery, churches could be multi-functional etc. Again, these issues are likely to cause controversy.

Another potential issue is whether this concept can adequately recognise the existing huge inequalities within the urban landscape and instead creates islands of convenient living but with traffic routed elsewhere and surrounding property prices driven even further up.

Whilst it is an urban concept it has applicability to smaller towns and villages. For smaller towns this involves creating vibrant town centres or High Streets to create a central hub that is easily accessible from the entire town and nearby villages by foot or bike. For smaller villages the 15-minute connectivity is unlikely to be achievable but there are still opportunities to connect villages in smaller clusters and have services such as leisure facilities shared by villages but easily accessible from each village.