12 ms·

The 15-minute city (2020)

127 points by nephanth 4y ago

planetsprite 4y ago
The problem with converting cities to walkable paradises is that a portion of the highest profit margin customers for any large business (rich people) will always drive cars. Creating a walking only city limits the option for these people to separate themselves from the masses.
- isubkhankulov 4y ago
  I can see how you might feel this way but have you ever visited NYC, London, Moscow, or Madrid? All are good counter-examples of your supposition.
  - planetsprite 4y ago
    Each one of those cities is flooded with cars.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    It all boils down to the direction urbanization is going. My country has been actually slowly de-urbanizing for the past 20 years or so: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=PL https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat... It's an exception to the rule in the region, but a significant one. Affluent people, who could afford cars, moved out to have more living space in exchange for having to drive everywhere. A more recent version of this is just not being able to afford an apartment in the city - those people opted for what must be the weirdest type of housing there is - an apartment in the middle of nowhere. Statistics say that indeed it's still the rich who drive.
waynesonfire 4y ago
oh is the shopping mall with a large parking lot and a taco-bell within a 15 minutes driving distance in every suburb formula not working anymore? /s
- scrumbledober 4y ago
  No, not really.
- wussboy 4y ago
  Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but the answer to your question is "no, it doesn't scale and is too expensive to maintain".
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Got to scale in 3 dimensions to the stuff within a given radius scales like O(n^3) rather than O(n^2).
    - nayuki 4y ago
      I joke that an elevator is an autonomous electric car in the vertical direction.
      - tomjakubowski 4y ago
        It's not a car, it's mass transit
- blamazon 4y ago
  "The Real Reason Your City Has No Money" : https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
r5Khe 4y ago
https://archive.ph/id7ev https://archive.ph/id7ev
NegativeLatency 4y ago
> “We’re often mixed up with Paris,” jokes Chris Warner, director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT). Portland looks good by comparison to other cities in the US that are doing literally nothing, or actively trying to maintain the existing car centric planning methods. The greenways in Portland are really nice compared to other places, but it still requires a lot of bravery from cyclists which limits the appeal of biking for a lot of people. Haven't been hit by a car since moving out of SF though so that's something.
- cammikebrown 4y ago
  As someone who lives in Portland in what I’d consider to be a 5-minute neighborhood (NE 28th), the bike infrastructure is pretty good, but limited to certain streets. Biking on Burnside, Sandy, and much of 28th itself is quite dangerous, and there’s often no bike lane at all. However, there are many nearby streets (SE Ankeny, 30th) which are safe and actually designated as bike streets. But I often see clueless cyclists biking on the major streets instead. I’m not sure what we need to do to educate, because as a daily cyclist it’s really frustrating to see.
  - NegativeLatency 4y ago
    I feel/understand the bit about "clueless cyclists biking on the major streets" but that feels like a failure of infrastructure to me (sort of like how rust is a improvement over c). Anything from: - bad signage & route marking - bad navigation instructions (Apple maps and sometimes google maps sending people down streets they shouldn't be on as a inexperienced bike rider) - longer routes around (Thinking of Sandy here where cars get to drive the hypotenuse while bikes are supposed to bike at right angles to the city grid) - lack of completely separated bike roads (if these existed I would almost never want to mix it up with cars) - lack of options for connecting between bikeways can end up with someone being in a bad spot pretty quickly through accident or intention. I live out a bit closer to the airport and agree it's still a lot better than most cities but still end up biking around and on Sandy which is always unpleasant in its current state. Also even on the bike streets you end up with frustrated drivers who are trying to use it as a shortcut or find it unacceptable to travel a couple of MPH less when they're behind a bike for a few blocks. Specifically not allowing non-local traffic would make the bike/slow streets a lot more welcoming to people in my life who don't want to drive but feel trapped by having to own a car.
gumby 4y ago
SF should reinvent itself along these lines. I used to live in Paris and believed that this sort of transformation would be impossible.
- ceeplusplus 4y ago
  This would never happen in SF. The local store block would be instantly taken over by homeless druggies [1]. To have this sort of transformation, the local culture needs to have little tolerance for disruptive behaviors and peoples. Ex: in Europe many public bathrooms require payment, in the US you can't even allow stores to require a purchase to use the restroom due to public pressure (not laws, yet). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2CVMCZ6F2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2CVMCZ6F2M
  - uoaei 4y ago
    Wow, what an intolerant, judgmental, and useless comment. At least you live your values...
    - _dain_ 4y ago
      Intolerant, judgemental, and correct.
      - uoaei 4y ago
        Not sure how you can claim that since "correct" only applies to factual claims and above is purely hypothetical. Or do you always assume ideology can stand in place of reality?
        pookha 4y ago
        I live in a major US city that has expansive "outdoor camping" w homeless who harasse and terrorize(rob) the locals. The progressives live in fear of the homeless AND saying anything about the problem because they don't want to be the bad-guy. It's very interesting. From what I can tell people have become extremely hyper-socialized and are willing to put their safety at risk.
kuldeep_kap 4y ago
I'm dreaming of the day when US cities start adopting car-light (if not car-free), walkable & bikeable urban designs. I have no interest in car centric 15-min cities. They are hard to scale and even when you achieve that goal with cars, the standard living is poor. Portland & Detroit comparison is a bit laughable. May be we'll see this one day, but I'll believe it when I see it.
- bdcravens 4y ago
  Climates in Texas and other southern areas make this borderline impossible during the summer. Ditto for northern cities in winter months.
  - milkytron 4y ago
    I think there are steps that could help reduce the affects of heat. Things such as more street trees, less asphalt (reduce the heat island effect), heat reflecting building roofs, etc. It's not like the south is a lost cause, improvement can still be made.
    - bdcravens 4y ago
      Perhaps but 102 is still 102. I think you can make the same argument in Chicago when it's 10 and snowing.
      - bobthepanda 4y ago
        Plenty of people walk to do things like get groceries in Chicago. Heck, there is a subartic city in Finland with 12% cycling share, which is a lot higher than pretty much any city in North America. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/amp/2021/01/22/meet-the-bike-loving-finnish-city-that-keeps-pedalling-even-in-the-snow https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/amp/2021/01/22/meet-the-b...
        dhosek 4y ago
        I lived car-free in Chicago for 7 years. I now live in an inner-ring suburb (Oak Park), car-light (my wife and I share a car that I drive as little as possible). If we define 15 minutes as ¾ mile walking distance, I have within that range, two supermarkets, a library, health clubs, coffee shops, two drug stores, dry cleaners, banks, doctors, dentists, schools, daycare and a number of restaurants not to mention a stop on the “L” and at least half a dozen bus routes within my 15-minute zone. If I didn’t prefer Trader Joe’s to a mainstream super, I wouldn’t drive to go grocery shopping (and TJs is just over a mile away). If I expand my range a bit more, I add in even more of all the above plus a book store and movie theater.
robertlagrant 4y ago
> It’s a utopian vision in an era of deep social distress—but one that might, if carried out piecemeal, without an eye to equality, exacerbate existing inequities. Progress and equality (of outcome) are almost always in opposition. You can't have Tesla model 3s without much wealthier people having bought Roadsters to prove the concept in low scale.
- Nevermark 4y ago
  I would argue the opposite conclusion. Tesla leveraged existing inequality to get the funding to bring the advantages of quality electric cars to more people (i.e. reducing inequality of options). This can be contrasted with dysfunctional dynamics that maintain or expand the differences between rich and poor options.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    I know why they did it, but it meant that to start with, rich people got electric cars. Progress is often made by lifting the top of what's possible before raising the floor of what's acceptable. It must happen that way almost by definition.
ramesh31 4y ago
Fifteen minutes might as well be 20 or 30. As soon as I have to get in my car, it doesn’t make much difference. Living somewhere that you can meet your daily needs without a car is lifechanging. But just having a shorter commute only makes things slightly more convenient.
- nevinera 4y ago
  > but as mosaics of neighborhoods in which almost all residents’ needs can be met within 15 minutes of their homes on foot, by bike, or on public transit. The goal they're describing is the one you're proposing.
truth777 4y ago
rsaz 4y ago
Its really incredible the ways in which living in a walkable neighbourhood can improve your life. More activity from walking around, less pollution, better views etc. One thing I’ve noticed is I tend to see small businesses in walkable areas more often. Not sure why that is, but its another benefit I haven’t seen discussed quite as much.
- abeppu 4y ago
  Regarding small businesses in walkable areas, I think maybe the flip side of the same phenomena is a partial explanation. Big box stores, large corporate office parks, etc, don't work in walkable areas; they need a large footprint and wrap themselves in a lot of parking and they want people to get in and out of those parking lots easily so they do best on an arterial. If the big businesses are structurally pushed away from walkable areas, small businesses will naturally be over-represented there. Plus they can benefit from serendipitous discovery in those locations, since their marketing budgets may be nil.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    It's interesting but that isn't actually always the case - a lot of cities use oversized blocks (blocks that are both taller and wider than a row of buildings - see Barcelona[1]) if this is the case then large department stores can expand into the courtyard or gardenspace interior of the block and, of course, in a lot of European cities a lot of malls are built vertically and underground - sometimes lying underneath a road with entrances on both sides. Large stores can work in walkable cities and they do have a place - but they are usually for relatively rare needs (so more likely to be focused on clothes or specialty groceries). 1. https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/aerial-view-of-barcelona-main-street-and-city-skyline-with-blue-sky-picture-id1037961710?k=20&m=1037961710&s=170667a&w=0&h=XjK8M-XXVP7KVjCtYXkhIsBKk_6_06cYn5EWnLPFBp0= https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/aerial-view-of-barcelon...
    - presentation 4y ago
      In Tokyo usually the large stores have small footprints but many floors, like the new Ikea in Shibuya (formerly Forever 21) - 7+ floors but each floor is maybe the size of 2-3 boutiques.
abeppu 4y ago
I was struck by the level of ambition in this article vs the bar being set decades ago in some Soviet planned cities: (timestamped link) https://youtu.be/JGVBv7svKLo?t=420s https://youtu.be/JGVBv7svKLo?t=420s Now, admittedly there's a huge difference between a new planned neighborhood and updating existing ones, and I'm not saying I want to live in the planned one ... but a cap of 500m to some amenities is a much higher bar to reach for.
- kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
  I'm waiting eagerly for the day when people in the west can grow up enough to learn from Soviet city and housing policies. Too many people just turn their minds off when they hear that godless commies did it.
- Tade0 4y ago
  I grew up in a 16 hectare commie superblock - every common errand could be done via walking - that includes medical services. One thing I wish urban planners internalized is that you don't have to create an incredibly dense human pile-up to have walkability. It's actually worse like that because even if few people have cars, the vehicles will still be a nuisance. Also the 5% that is in the habit of littering will be that more of a problem. My neighbourhood consisted of buildings with an average total of 4 floors (including ground level) and a few higher ones dotted here and there with squares and playgrounds in between and this is what I consider an ideal population density.
stakkur 4y ago
Nobody seems to stop and ask "are super high density cities what's best for human health?", and that seems rather odd. No, I'm not talking about 'study x showed people like walkable cities', I'm talking about efforts like making connections between the correlated explosion in mental and physical health issues and the rise of large, dense cities. Portland covers 145 square miles, is geographically diverse, and has a profoundly hollowed out middle class that comes in part from pandering to failed ideas like those of Richard Florida (who has himself admitted being wrong). Now, 1 in 5 Portland kids live in poverty, Californians and foreign investors buy entire neighborhoods and build block upon block of condo boxes, and the cost of living is through the roof. There is no 'Portlandia' here, just caricatures and deepening poverty and a bizarrely out of touch municipal government elected based on pet ideas. And the average age of Portland residents? ~37 and rising. The percent of the population that are children (<19 years) has declined over 30% in the last two decades. It's a city for tourists, real estate speculation and arbitrage, and amenities pandering to an ever-older base.
- oangemangut 4y ago
  People do wonder whether low-density, un-walkable, cites are _bad_ for human health, and studies show that they typically are bad health. I recall some studies on urban form and it's relationship to life expectancy, crime, happiness at certain socioeconomic statuses. Poor people in much of Montreal are able to live in walkable cities with low housing cost and decent transit, and it turns out they live longer, are more economically mobile, and are happier than equivalent SES populations in large cities with car-centric design.
- kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
  I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that density itself is the cause of higher rates of mental illness. Density is more likely to correlate with exposure to car exhaust, for instance, and programs to care for mentally ill people tend to be located in denser areas. The crushing economic pressures of modern life regardless of location, combined with continued urbanization, seem to me more likely to be the cause than dense urban spaces.
  - 4y ago
BurningFrog 4y ago
In Tokyo most everything is nearby, because tall buildings have enormous amounts of space.
- potatolicious 4y ago
  Extra bonus to tall buildings having enormous amounts of space: rent is cheaper, and as a result more businesses are viable! There is a depressing "sameness" to American cities and their amenities that's oft remarked-upon but I remain convinced that the single biggest contributor to that is real estate. When real estate costs that much the level of business to break even is astronomical, and only businesses with the broadest possible (and correspondingly, blandest possible) reach survive. The thing I love most about the Tokyo is the absolutely off-the-walls level of tiny businesses catering to incredibly niche interests. A great majority of these businesses would be totally unviable in the US - real estate in major cities is too expensive, and real estate outside the major cities have too small of a market.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I feel like you can get this in most cities if you pick the right spot. I live in Adelaide, Australia which is one of the smaller cities and I virtually never have to leave about a 1.5km radius from home because everything I need exists within it. When I moved here I got rid of my car and don't even use my bike for transport, I just walk everywhere. A side effect was I stopped eating at drive through takeaway places and started going out to eat at healthier options since they are now just as accessible as the junk food.
antonymy 4y ago
>Moreno recognizes that large segments of the population might never enjoy the slower-paced, localized life he envisions. “Of course we need to adapt this concept for different realities,” he says. “Not all people have the possibility of having jobs within 15 minutes.” But he emphasizes that many people’s circumstances could be profoundly changed—something he believes we’re already seeing because of the pandemic’s canceled commutes. In his view, centralized corporate offices are a thing of the past; telework and constellations of coworking hubs are the future. An embarrassing case of "oh yeah we forgot low-wage people" which shows where his priorities are and who these cities are actually designed for.
- solraph 4y ago
  Which low wage people? Super low wage people can't afford cars, and benefit from the improved low cost transit provided by public transit and walkable neighbourhoods. In the Anglosphere, these neighbourhoods have typically been expensive because they are so uncommon, and the laws of supply and demand push up the prices. However, as more neighbourhoods move to a more walkable model, they become more affordable. In the meantime, those who need to travel for work (tradespeople, delivery drivers) benefit from vastly decreased traffic.
rhapsodic 4y ago
bane 4y ago
I don't know that it can be universally achieved car or no car, great public transit or no. But it's important to try for it. The key of course is to provide plentiful housing in varieties that support people at a variety of incomes and at every life stage, places to shop for everything from daily consumables to appliances, public services, and most importantly a large center of offices and places of employment. Basically build an arcology and set a transit goal of 15 minutes across the radius of it. Repeat this pattern whenever the transit gets too long, which is usually about a subway stop or two across -- creating many "town" centers. Pubic transit needs to include buses, trams, and maybe subways each feeding into each other from slow and low density (buses) to faster modes at higher density. I think the best city I've ever been in that featured this was Tokyo. It looks like a giant megalopolis, and it is and acts that way for a part of the population, but for many people it's a bunch of small neighborhoods and towns. Even then, the average commute time is about 40 minutes each way. Even relatively small European cities seem to hit about 40 minutes plus/minus 5-10 minutes. In the U.S., you might experience <40 minute commutes maybe in either very small car centric towns, or close to the core of a few cities like Portland, or maybe Chicago. Even within NYC, you can easily hit over 1 hr each direction. One place I've been to and know folks from near Washington D.C., Reston VA seems to offer consistent under <30 min door to door commutes, and that's without major public transit in place yet. It's growing, but toss in a tram-line and it'll be as good as any U.S. city can get to a European core. It's not without accident, it was apparently originally build and modeled off of European towns.
- nephanth 4y ago
  Problem with commute times, is that you can’t easily change your job to get one that is closer (compared to changing your gym / grocery store…). Plus a lot of companies like to congregate together in sorts of business districts (I don’t really get why? Maybe those places are more attractive. Or maybe proximity helps foster business relationships). That makes it hard to get a low commute time unless you live in/close to one of those business districts
- pjerem 4y ago
  > I don't know that it can be universally achieved car or no car, great public transit or no. It can totally be achieved. In fact, there already are working examples everywhere. Most inhabitants of European capitals (and a lot of metropolitan cities) don’t even own a car. You can live totally car free in Stockholm, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and in mostly the entire Switzerland. Working examples are in fact everywhere, the only thing that is needed is political will to invest in really heavy transport infrastructure but boy how could you even like driving a car in any city when you have a great metro/train system and bikeable cities. I know most people don’t even know it’s possible but solutions already exists and are just waiting to be copied. If anyone is interested in the topic, I recommend the YouTube channel « Not Just Bikes ». Just remember that 30-40 years ago, Amsterdam was an horrible unlivable car centric city and that it became a fantastic livable city with just political will in a really short period of time. In a totally different design, there is also the (pretty unique, I think) Switzerland example (Not Just Bike recently made a video about it) where you have basically no real « big » city but where every little town is reachable by trains that stop everywhere every 30min even in hundreds inhabitants towns. Switzerland example is really hard to replicate, imho, but it is a masterpiece and it deserves to be inspiring of what should be a civilized country.
drunkenmagician 4y ago
Singapore has been this way for a long time - living essentials are localised, public transport is great. Car congestion is still a problem though, even in a city with such a good public transport system. Better bike paths is still something that needs to be addressed though - here bike paths are called - 'footpaths' ...
ivan1783 4y ago
I think a better term would be a 15m neighborhood, rather than city. I live in Stuttgart in Germany and there is no way that you can walk this city in 15m, however my neighborhood has everything I need (store, bank, pharmacy, doctors, dentists, hair cut places, kindergarten, school, metro station, train station, etc) within 10m walking from my house (the food shop is 700m away - the furthest of all). This becomes even more apparent in a city like Paris, it has its own quarters where everything is locally available - you don't need to cross the city to reach anything because its all already available in your quarter.
- Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
  Yes, "15-minute neighbourhood" is certainly the phrase used in UK urbanist circles.

127 points by nephanth 4y ago

The problem with converting cities to walkable paradises is that a portion of the highest profit margin customers for any large business (rich people) will always drive cars. Creating a walking only city limits the option for these people to separate themselves from the masses.

isubkhankulov 4y ago
I can see how you might feel this way but have you ever visited NYC, London, Moscow, or Madrid? All are good counter-examples of your supposition.
- planetsprite 4y ago
  Each one of those cities is flooded with cars.
- Tade0 4y ago
  It all boils down to the direction urbanization is going. My country has been actually slowly de-urbanizing for the past 20 years or so: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=PL https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat... It's an exception to the rule in the region, but a significant one. Affluent people, who could afford cars, moved out to have more living space in exchange for having to drive everywhere. A more recent version of this is just not being able to afford an apartment in the city - those people opted for what must be the weirdest type of housing there is - an apartment in the middle of nowhere. Statistics say that indeed it's still the rich who drive.

waynesonfire 4y ago

oh is the shopping mall with a large parking lot and a taco-bell within a 15 minutes driving distance in every suburb formula not working anymore? /s

scrumbledober 4y ago
No, not really.
wussboy 4y ago
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but the answer to your question is "no, it doesn't scale and is too expensive to maintain".
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Got to scale in 3 dimensions to the stuff within a given radius scales like O(n^3) rather than O(n^2).
  - nayuki 4y ago
    I joke that an elevator is an autonomous electric car in the vertical direction.
    - tomjakubowski 4y ago
      It's not a car, it's mass transit
blamazon 4y ago
"The Real Reason Your City Has No Money" : https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

r5Khe 4y ago

https://archive.ph/id7ev https://archive.ph/id7ev

NegativeLatency 4y ago

> “We’re often mixed up with Paris,” jokes Chris Warner, director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT). Portland looks good by comparison to other cities in the US that are doing literally nothing, or actively trying to maintain the existing car centric planning methods. The greenways in Portland are really nice compared to other places, but it still requires a lot of bravery from cyclists which limits the appeal of biking for a lot of people. Haven't been hit by a car since moving out of SF though so that's something.

cammikebrown 4y ago
As someone who lives in Portland in what I’d consider to be a 5-minute neighborhood (NE 28th), the bike infrastructure is pretty good, but limited to certain streets. Biking on Burnside, Sandy, and much of 28th itself is quite dangerous, and there’s often no bike lane at all. However, there are many nearby streets (SE Ankeny, 30th) which are safe and actually designated as bike streets. But I often see clueless cyclists biking on the major streets instead. I’m not sure what we need to do to educate, because as a daily cyclist it’s really frustrating to see.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  I feel/understand the bit about "clueless cyclists biking on the major streets" but that feels like a failure of infrastructure to me (sort of like how rust is a improvement over c). Anything from: - bad signage & route marking - bad navigation instructions (Apple maps and sometimes google maps sending people down streets they shouldn't be on as a inexperienced bike rider) - longer routes around (Thinking of Sandy here where cars get to drive the hypotenuse while bikes are supposed to bike at right angles to the city grid) - lack of completely separated bike roads (if these existed I would almost never want to mix it up with cars) - lack of options for connecting between bikeways can end up with someone being in a bad spot pretty quickly through accident or intention. I live out a bit closer to the airport and agree it's still a lot better than most cities but still end up biking around and on Sandy which is always unpleasant in its current state. Also even on the bike streets you end up with frustrated drivers who are trying to use it as a shortcut or find it unacceptable to travel a couple of MPH less when they're behind a bike for a few blocks. Specifically not allowing non-local traffic would make the bike/slow streets a lot more welcoming to people in my life who don't want to drive but feel trapped by having to own a car.

gumby 4y ago

SF should reinvent itself along these lines. I used to live in Paris and believed that this sort of transformation would be impossible.

ceeplusplus 4y ago
This would never happen in SF. The local store block would be instantly taken over by homeless druggies [1]. To have this sort of transformation, the local culture needs to have little tolerance for disruptive behaviors and peoples. Ex: in Europe many public bathrooms require payment, in the US you can't even allow stores to require a purchase to use the restroom due to public pressure (not laws, yet). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2CVMCZ6F2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2CVMCZ6F2M
- uoaei 4y ago
  Wow, what an intolerant, judgmental, and useless comment. At least you live your values...
  - _dain_ 4y ago
    Intolerant, judgemental, and correct.
    - uoaei 4y ago
      Not sure how you can claim that since "correct" only applies to factual claims and above is purely hypothetical. Or do you always assume ideology can stand in place of reality?
      - pookha 4y ago
        I live in a major US city that has expansive "outdoor camping" w homeless who harasse and terrorize(rob) the locals. The progressives live in fear of the homeless AND saying anything about the problem because they don't want to be the bad-guy. It's very interesting. From what I can tell people have become extremely hyper-socialized and are willing to put their safety at risk.

kuldeep_kap 4y ago

I'm dreaming of the day when US cities start adopting car-light (if not car-free), walkable & bikeable urban designs. I have no interest in car centric 15-min cities. They are hard to scale and even when you achieve that goal with cars, the standard living is poor. Portland & Detroit comparison is a bit laughable. May be we'll see this one day, but I'll believe it when I see it.

bdcravens 4y ago
Climates in Texas and other southern areas make this borderline impossible during the summer. Ditto for northern cities in winter months.
- milkytron 4y ago
  I think there are steps that could help reduce the affects of heat. Things such as more street trees, less asphalt (reduce the heat island effect), heat reflecting building roofs, etc. It's not like the south is a lost cause, improvement can still be made.
  - bdcravens 4y ago
    Perhaps but 102 is still 102. I think you can make the same argument in Chicago when it's 10 and snowing.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Plenty of people walk to do things like get groceries in Chicago. Heck, there is a subartic city in Finland with 12% cycling share, which is a lot higher than pretty much any city in North America. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/amp/2021/01/22/meet-the-bike-loving-finnish-city-that-keeps-pedalling-even-in-the-snow https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/amp/2021/01/22/meet-the-b...
      - dhosek 4y ago
        I lived car-free in Chicago for 7 years. I now live in an inner-ring suburb (Oak Park), car-light (my wife and I share a car that I drive as little as possible). If we define 15 minutes as ¾ mile walking distance, I have within that range, two supermarkets, a library, health clubs, coffee shops, two drug stores, dry cleaners, banks, doctors, dentists, schools, daycare and a number of restaurants not to mention a stop on the “L” and at least half a dozen bus routes within my 15-minute zone. If I didn’t prefer Trader Joe’s to a mainstream super, I wouldn’t drive to go grocery shopping (and TJs is just over a mile away). If I expand my range a bit more, I add in even more of all the above plus a book store and movie theater.

robertlagrant 4y ago

> It’s a utopian vision in an era of deep social distress—but one that might, if carried out piecemeal, without an eye to equality, exacerbate existing inequities. Progress and equality (of outcome) are almost always in opposition. You can't have Tesla model 3s without much wealthier people having bought Roadsters to prove the concept in low scale.

Nevermark 4y ago
I would argue the opposite conclusion. Tesla leveraged existing inequality to get the funding to bring the advantages of quality electric cars to more people (i.e. reducing inequality of options). This can be contrasted with dysfunctional dynamics that maintain or expand the differences between rich and poor options.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I know why they did it, but it meant that to start with, rich people got electric cars. Progress is often made by lifting the top of what's possible before raising the floor of what's acceptable. It must happen that way almost by definition.

ramesh31 4y ago

Fifteen minutes might as well be 20 or 30. As soon as I have to get in my car, it doesn’t make much difference. Living somewhere that you can meet your daily needs without a car is lifechanging. But just having a shorter commute only makes things slightly more convenient.

nevinera 4y ago
> but as mosaics of neighborhoods in which almost all residents’ needs can be met within 15 minutes of their homes on foot, by bike, or on public transit. The goal they're describing is the one you're proposing.

truth777 4y ago

rsaz 4y ago

Its really incredible the ways in which living in a walkable neighbourhood can improve your life. More activity from walking around, less pollution, better views etc. One thing I’ve noticed is I tend to see small businesses in walkable areas more often. Not sure why that is, but its another benefit I haven’t seen discussed quite as much.

abeppu 4y ago
Regarding small businesses in walkable areas, I think maybe the flip side of the same phenomena is a partial explanation. Big box stores, large corporate office parks, etc, don't work in walkable areas; they need a large footprint and wrap themselves in a lot of parking and they want people to get in and out of those parking lots easily so they do best on an arterial. If the big businesses are structurally pushed away from walkable areas, small businesses will naturally be over-represented there. Plus they can benefit from serendipitous discovery in those locations, since their marketing budgets may be nil.
- munk-a 4y ago
  It's interesting but that isn't actually always the case - a lot of cities use oversized blocks (blocks that are both taller and wider than a row of buildings - see Barcelona[1]) if this is the case then large department stores can expand into the courtyard or gardenspace interior of the block and, of course, in a lot of European cities a lot of malls are built vertically and underground - sometimes lying underneath a road with entrances on both sides. Large stores can work in walkable cities and they do have a place - but they are usually for relatively rare needs (so more likely to be focused on clothes or specialty groceries). 1. https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/aerial-view-of-barcelona-main-street-and-city-skyline-with-blue-sky-picture-id1037961710?k=20&m=1037961710&s=170667a&w=0&h=XjK8M-XXVP7KVjCtYXkhIsBKk_6_06cYn5EWnLPFBp0= https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/aerial-view-of-barcelon...
  - presentation 4y ago
    In Tokyo usually the large stores have small footprints but many floors, like the new Ikea in Shibuya (formerly Forever 21) - 7+ floors but each floor is maybe the size of 2-3 boutiques.

abeppu 4y ago

I was struck by the level of ambition in this article vs the bar being set decades ago in some Soviet planned cities: (timestamped link) https://youtu.be/JGVBv7svKLo?t=420s https://youtu.be/JGVBv7svKLo?t=420s Now, admittedly there's a huge difference between a new planned neighborhood and updating existing ones, and I'm not saying I want to live in the planned one ... but a cap of 500m to some amenities is a much higher bar to reach for.

kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
I'm waiting eagerly for the day when people in the west can grow up enough to learn from Soviet city and housing policies. Too many people just turn their minds off when they hear that godless commies did it.
Tade0 4y ago
I grew up in a 16 hectare commie superblock - every common errand could be done via walking - that includes medical services. One thing I wish urban planners internalized is that you don't have to create an incredibly dense human pile-up to have walkability. It's actually worse like that because even if few people have cars, the vehicles will still be a nuisance. Also the 5% that is in the habit of littering will be that more of a problem. My neighbourhood consisted of buildings with an average total of 4 floors (including ground level) and a few higher ones dotted here and there with squares and playgrounds in between and this is what I consider an ideal population density.

stakkur 4y ago

Nobody seems to stop and ask "are super high density cities what's best for human health?", and that seems rather odd. No, I'm not talking about 'study x showed people like walkable cities', I'm talking about efforts like making connections between the correlated explosion in mental and physical health issues and the rise of large, dense cities. Portland covers 145 square miles, is geographically diverse, and has a profoundly hollowed out middle class that comes in part from pandering to failed ideas like those of Richard Florida (who has himself admitted being wrong). Now, 1 in 5 Portland kids live in poverty, Californians and foreign investors buy entire neighborhoods and build block upon block of condo boxes, and the cost of living is through the roof. There is no 'Portlandia' here, just caricatures and deepening poverty and a bizarrely out of touch municipal government elected based on pet ideas. And the average age of Portland residents? ~37 and rising. The percent of the population that are children (<19 years) has declined over 30% in the last two decades. It's a city for tourists, real estate speculation and arbitrage, and amenities pandering to an ever-older base.

oangemangut 4y ago
People do wonder whether low-density, un-walkable, cites are _bad_ for human health, and studies show that they typically are bad health. I recall some studies on urban form and it's relationship to life expectancy, crime, happiness at certain socioeconomic statuses. Poor people in much of Montreal are able to live in walkable cities with low housing cost and decent transit, and it turns out they live longer, are more economically mobile, and are happier than equivalent SES populations in large cities with car-centric design.
kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that density itself is the cause of higher rates of mental illness. Density is more likely to correlate with exposure to car exhaust, for instance, and programs to care for mentally ill people tend to be located in denser areas. The crushing economic pressures of modern life regardless of location, combined with continued urbanization, seem to me more likely to be the cause than dense urban spaces.
- 4y ago

BurningFrog 4y ago

In Tokyo most everything is nearby, because tall buildings have enormous amounts of space.

potatolicious 4y ago
Extra bonus to tall buildings having enormous amounts of space: rent is cheaper, and as a result more businesses are viable! There is a depressing "sameness" to American cities and their amenities that's oft remarked-upon but I remain convinced that the single biggest contributor to that is real estate. When real estate costs that much the level of business to break even is astronomical, and only businesses with the broadest possible (and correspondingly, blandest possible) reach survive. The thing I love most about the Tokyo is the absolutely off-the-walls level of tiny businesses catering to incredibly niche interests. A great majority of these businesses would be totally unviable in the US - real estate in major cities is too expensive, and real estate outside the major cities have too small of a market.
Gigachad 4y ago
I feel like you can get this in most cities if you pick the right spot. I live in Adelaide, Australia which is one of the smaller cities and I virtually never have to leave about a 1.5km radius from home because everything I need exists within it. When I moved here I got rid of my car and don't even use my bike for transport, I just walk everywhere. A side effect was I stopped eating at drive through takeaway places and started going out to eat at healthier options since they are now just as accessible as the junk food.

antonymy 4y ago

>Moreno recognizes that large segments of the population might never enjoy the slower-paced, localized life he envisions. “Of course we need to adapt this concept for different realities,” he says. “Not all people have the possibility of having jobs within 15 minutes.” But he emphasizes that many people’s circumstances could be profoundly changed—something he believes we’re already seeing because of the pandemic’s canceled commutes. In his view, centralized corporate offices are a thing of the past; telework and constellations of coworking hubs are the future. An embarrassing case of "oh yeah we forgot low-wage people" which shows where his priorities are and who these cities are actually designed for.

solraph 4y ago
Which low wage people? Super low wage people can't afford cars, and benefit from the improved low cost transit provided by public transit and walkable neighbourhoods. In the Anglosphere, these neighbourhoods have typically been expensive because they are so uncommon, and the laws of supply and demand push up the prices. However, as more neighbourhoods move to a more walkable model, they become more affordable. In the meantime, those who need to travel for work (tradespeople, delivery drivers) benefit from vastly decreased traffic.

rhapsodic 4y ago

bane 4y ago

I don't know that it can be universally achieved car or no car, great public transit or no. But it's important to try for it. The key of course is to provide plentiful housing in varieties that support people at a variety of incomes and at every life stage, places to shop for everything from daily consumables to appliances, public services, and most importantly a large center of offices and places of employment. Basically build an arcology and set a transit goal of 15 minutes across the radius of it. Repeat this pattern whenever the transit gets too long, which is usually about a subway stop or two across -- creating many "town" centers. Pubic transit needs to include buses, trams, and maybe subways each feeding into each other from slow and low density (buses) to faster modes at higher density. I think the best city I've ever been in that featured this was Tokyo. It looks like a giant megalopolis, and it is and acts that way for a part of the population, but for many people it's a bunch of small neighborhoods and towns. Even then, the average commute time is about 40 minutes each way. Even relatively small European cities seem to hit about 40 minutes plus/minus 5-10 minutes. In the U.S., you might experience <40 minute commutes maybe in either very small car centric towns, or close to the core of a few cities like Portland, or maybe Chicago. Even within NYC, you can easily hit over 1 hr each direction. One place I've been to and know folks from near Washington D.C., Reston VA seems to offer consistent under <30 min door to door commutes, and that's without major public transit in place yet. It's growing, but toss in a tram-line and it'll be as good as any U.S. city can get to a European core. It's not without accident, it was apparently originally build and modeled off of European towns.

nephanth 4y ago
Problem with commute times, is that you can’t easily change your job to get one that is closer (compared to changing your gym / grocery store…). Plus a lot of companies like to congregate together in sorts of business districts (I don’t really get why? Maybe those places are more attractive. Or maybe proximity helps foster business relationships). That makes it hard to get a low commute time unless you live in/close to one of those business districts
pjerem 4y ago
> I don't know that it can be universally achieved car or no car, great public transit or no. It can totally be achieved. In fact, there already are working examples everywhere. Most inhabitants of European capitals (and a lot of metropolitan cities) don’t even own a car. You can live totally car free in Stockholm, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and in mostly the entire Switzerland. Working examples are in fact everywhere, the only thing that is needed is political will to invest in really heavy transport infrastructure but boy how could you even like driving a car in any city when you have a great metro/train system and bikeable cities. I know most people don’t even know it’s possible but solutions already exists and are just waiting to be copied. If anyone is interested in the topic, I recommend the YouTube channel « Not Just Bikes ». Just remember that 30-40 years ago, Amsterdam was an horrible unlivable car centric city and that it became a fantastic livable city with just political will in a really short period of time. In a totally different design, there is also the (pretty unique, I think) Switzerland example (Not Just Bike recently made a video about it) where you have basically no real « big » city but where every little town is reachable by trains that stop everywhere every 30min even in hundreds inhabitants towns. Switzerland example is really hard to replicate, imho, but it is a masterpiece and it deserves to be inspiring of what should be a civilized country.

drunkenmagician 4y ago

Singapore has been this way for a long time - living essentials are localised, public transport is great. Car congestion is still a problem though, even in a city with such a good public transport system. Better bike paths is still something that needs to be addressed though - here bike paths are called - 'footpaths' ...

ivan1783 4y ago

I think a better term would be a 15m neighborhood, rather than city. I live in Stuttgart in Germany and there is no way that you can walk this city in 15m, however my neighborhood has everything I need (store, bank, pharmacy, doctors, dentists, hair cut places, kindergarten, school, metro station, train station, etc) within 10m walking from my house (the food shop is 700m away - the furthest of all). This becomes even more apparent in a city like Paris, it has its own quarters where everything is locally available - you don't need to cross the city to reach anything because its all already available in your quarter.

Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
Yes, "15-minute neighbourhood" is certainly the phrase used in UK urbanist circles.