Within a short walk or bike ride from their home, everyone can satisfy most, if not all, their needs in a ’15-minute community.’ It is a city made up of neighborhoods that are lived-in, people-friendly,’ full’, and linked. It means reconnecting residents and decentralizing city life and services with their local areas. The 15-minute city is more important than ever as an organizing concept for urban planning as cities work towards COVID-19 recuperation. In the aftermath of COVID-19, it will help cities safely and sustainably revive urban life and deliver an optimistic future vision that mayors can share and develop with their constituents.
The definition of the 15-minute city is in sharp contrast to the paradigms of urban development that have dominated over the last century, separating residential areas from enterprise, retail, manufacturing, and entertainment. However, most of the concepts and principles underpinning the 15-minute city are not new and most cities already contain areas that are consistent with the principles of the 15-minute city, even if some cities have longer-standing urban planning plans that aim for the very results desired by the 15-minute-city model, it is necessary to spread its advantages for all through the entire city.
The 15-minute city notion has gained traction in 2020. To encourage a deeper, stronger recovery from COVID-19 and to help facilitate the more local, safer, and sustainable way of life that many of their people are asking for, more cities are now adopting this model. Here are ideas and suggestions on how to develop and how to execute your 15-minute city vision.
The 15-minute city is a versatile idea that can be adapted by communities to the culture and requirements of their city and to respond to unique local needs. Start by setting a goal or mission, setting out what you want to see in all neighborhoods of the city and what you want the city as a whole to look like, driven by the 15-minute city principles. Next, gather data and gain participatory feedback from residents across the community to map out the existence and absence of services, industries, work types, public spaces, and other elements that have been established as the center of the 15-minute city vision of your city at the neighborhood level.
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The collection of geospatial data at the community level is an important phase in hyperlocal needs assessment, to inform the design and implementation of effective initiatives that can transition to 15-minute city concepts. You may rely on demographics, services, green space, grocery and retail data sets, or any other information that is helpful for local policy growth.
Translate your citywide vision into a plan for each neighborhood using this information, concentrating first on those that are farthest from the target. It is important that lower-income communities and other highly underserved neighborhoods are prioritized for investment in 15-minute urban projects and that their residents and local businesses are active in the implementation of improvement initiatives. One clear example of this is Portland’s scheme.
At the mayoral (or equivalent) stage, a 15-minute city vision is commonly defined and can be related to a transit-oriented development plan, urban development plan, or equivalent land-use plan. It is important to take a participatory, inclusive approach to this phase to ensure that the proposal is grounded in the realities of the city and has a strong support base.
Businesses and residents should be encouraged to participate in the design and selection of local projects to realize it, following local participation to shape the 15-minute community vision. Take measures to ensure that everyone, especially low-income and disadvantaged communities and local small and medium-sized businesses, which are likely to have been hit hardest by the pandemic, has the opportunity to shape the vision and implementation of the 15-minute city.
Cities with participatory budgets designated include:
- Paris, where 10 percent of the city’s spending is calculated by neighbourhood-level participatory budgeting processes. Residents of the community can engage in the design and selection of projects in their local area to be implemented. This is one of the world’s highest participatory budgets. 3
- New York City, where, over the past eight years, the city’s participatory budgeting mechanism ‘myPB’ has committed $120 million to 706 community-designed initiatives, contributing to enhanced local services.
The core of the 15-minute town is to ensure that everybody has access to everything they need in their neighborhood. This implies that in and neighborhood, resources such as community-scale healthcare and education, vital retail such as grocery and pharmacies, as well as leisure parks, and more need to be decentralized and present. In wide and central shopping districts, local retail can also help to minimize crowding, allowing individuals to remain physically distant.
Ensure that stores selling fresh food in all communities are present, removing deserts of food. During the COVID-19 emergency era, many cities have seen increased usage of smaller neighbourhood grocery stores where they operate, as more people shop locally to avoid queues in larger supermarkets. When they step into the recovery process, cities will further promote this. For example, many cities have fast-tracked licensing processes to allow restaurants to serve fresh produce that could not serve customers during the lockdown of the city, often requiring a different form of the operating license.
