Well, the population in Sheffield City Centre has risen from 6000 to 36,000 between 2008 and 2018. Then of course if you want quiet you can walk out to the Peak District or do the Five Weirs (Blue Loop) Walk. It beats commuting crack of dawn to work only to return after dusk for over half the year.
Well, the population in Sheffield City Centre has risen from 6000 to 36,000 between 2008 and 2018. Then of course if you want quiet you can walk out to the Peak District or do the Five Weirs (Blue Loop) Walk. It beats commuting crack of dawn to work only to return after dusk for over half the year.
Not for me it wouldn't. I wouldn't live in Sheffield (or any other) City Centre if you paid the rent to me instead of the other way round.
Mrs BF and I nearly bought a house in Sheffield city centre many lustra ago - we could have afforded it simply by using our credit cards!
It would have been quite a lucrative investment, I think. We would have rented it out (this would have been about 40 years back - IIRC, the students were starting to arrive in numbers...), though I've always rather liked Sheffield.
It has Trams (again).
The 15 minute city is an attractive idea. I'm sure there must be places, not necessarily in this country, where it has been tried, and is working. Somewhere in The Netherlands, perhaps? Or Germany?
Suburban Christchurch is as flat as a pancake, apart from the Port Hills (Volcanic). There is one supermarket to the east about twenty minutes walk away and one to the west about 10 minutes walk. I can walk beside the river watching the ducks when I'm heading west and through the wetlands heading east. When I moved here the easterly supermarket and surrounding shops were still paddocks, while the westerly shopping area was one of the oldest boroughs in Christchurch. Buses travel through the area every 15 minutes.
Why would children not work well in such a place? I have three kids. My daughter likes living in a place where in normal days she has the freedom to go home from school on her own, something she would not have if she had to depend on a car. She takes woodwork, and she may take pottery too once covid is done. My other two also have improved opportunities because of their city. And we live in one of the densest zip codes in the United States. Literally, we make the top hundred, so clearly population density is not a barrier to such an area.
That 15 minute live-work-play area exist within cities is not proof that the entire city can live that way. I would argue that one person's 15 minute life exists because other people live in a much different way.
I am living this already, and it's good. The Fine City is very unusual, because of it nearly entirely keeping the city centre within the mediaeval walls, meaning that suburbia starts the other side of the ring road that travels around the outside of said walls (more or less), and it's very good, if transferrable. I have a local butcher five mins' walk away, and (when it's functioning) market stalls from which all my fresh food can be, and often is, obtained. I enjoy this aspect of my life, particularly since I don't drive and therefore can't raid supermarkets at will. There is one 10 mins' walk away though.
Yes; here, that infrastructure died rather than being removed, perhaps because the rise of the car meant people didn't use it to the extent that had been predicted. My parents are older, and old-fashioned at that; I remember their contempt 40 years ago for people who _drove_ to the supermarket, which probably went along with owning a freezer, microwave and video recorder. But they changed too, eventually. I wonder if we can change back.
I don't think we can easily. Who wants to live next to a factory, in an industrial park, or have the waste transfer centre next door? If you can work from home, you are one step up, but how many different jobs can you cram together? Or must al the blue collar people live together based on industry? White collar workers get the city and the parks?
15 minute cities for everyone means loads fewer people and loads fewer comforts. Or loads fewer options
High-Density housing is a phrase which terrifies me.
I lived in London for three years, in a modest-sized flat. The man above us used to come home drunk in the small hours and apparently spent the next hour or so bouncing marbles on the concrete floor. The council did fuck all about it. I will never live in a flat again (and will try hard not to live in a terrace or semi).
Yes; here, that infrastructure died rather than being removed, perhaps because the rise of the car meant people didn't use it to the extent that had been predicted. My parents are older, and old-fashioned at that; I remember their contempt 40 years ago for people who _drove_ to the supermarket, which probably went along with owning a freezer, microwave and video recorder. But they changed too, eventually. I wonder if we can change back.
I don't think we can easily. Who wants to live next to a factory, in an industrial park, or have the waste transfer centre next door? If you can work from home, you are one step up, but how many different jobs can you cram together? Or must al the blue collar people live together based on industry? White collar workers get the city and the parks?
15 minute cities for everyone means loads fewer people and loads fewer comforts. Or loads fewer options
I agree. A 15 minute city may just be universally possible in terms of leisure and retail facilities, but not in terms of jobs.
Not unless everybody works in the leisure and retail sectors, anyway.
Yes, I agree with Marvin. I pretty much have a fifteen minute (well, half hour, but I'm happy to walk half an hour) city for all my needs except work. Work is the one thing where I need to take a bus to get there. In theory, I could get a job closer to home, but it wouldn't be the job I have and want, that I am good at, that I really enjoy. But I can walk to the supermarket, to the gym, to the woods, to a coffee shop, to the post office, to the pharmacy, to a couple of charity shops, and if I didn't have to go to work, there would be no real need for me to take a bus at all.
While still on the original thread it was recognised that employment is by far the biggest problem with the concept. For someone on their own it's possible to move to within 15mins of work - but it's not unusual for properties that close to a place of employment to either be totally unsuitable (eg: too expensive), not be within 15 mins of other services or simply non-existent. For those with partners or families then even that may not be possible - if your partner works within 15 mins of home then moving would mean you don't have to travel but your partner does, some areas only flats would be available which may be too small for large families.
So, instead of a strict application of 15 mins for active travel to work it seems we need to be much more flexible, maybe as a step towards that ideal which we may never meet. When I moved here I had the option to live wherever I wanted, but chose to limit my carbon footprint by living within walking distance of work - 25 years later and onto my fourth home I'm still within walking distance of work. Of course, I didn't have the complications listed above of a partner or family, and the local properties are of good quality and affordable. Maybe the suggestion is that when moving home we seek somewhere where our carbon footprint associated with getting to work is minimal - ideally walking/cycle distance, otherwise on a bus or rail route (and, use it!) and only as a last resort needing to use a car for all or part of the journey. Of course, balancing work needs to different members of the household.
It will probably need to be accompanied by other changes in town systems - that schools everywhere need to be of sufficient quality that choice of where you live isn't dictated by the quality of the local school (or that you send your children to more distant schools thus breaking the 15 min), that public transport is of good quality (goes where people need it to at times it's needed) and affordable.
Other people have mentioned that the extent to which the 15-minute city is viable for you depends on the extent to which the things you do are popular things. I think we've established that you can plan a city to have everyone within 1km of a mainstream supermarket, a gym, hairdresser, playground, and a bunch of other "normal" things.
If you're abnormal, your needs can't be met in a 1km radius. Specialty or ethnic food stores, sports clubs for almost every (or possibly absolutely every) sport, anything competitive where you want a decent level of competition rather than competing against the people that live closest to you, pubs catering to particular interests, even bog-standard mainstream nightclubs - you won't have a big enough population to support one of these in each of your 1km circles.
There's no real point comparing my current abode in US suburbia, because the whole setup here assumes that everyone is surgically attached to a car, but back when I lived in London, I'd walk to church, cycle 10 minutes to get to a supermarket, cycle 20-25 minutes to get to work, and cycle about 45 minutes to get to every one of my social / leisure activities except the pub. I'd go to the pubs near my place of work, because I drank with the people I worked with. I think I could walk to the post office, but I almost never used the post office for anything. I've no idea where the nearest barber to my house was, because I'd go to one near my place of work.
So getting me within 15 minutes cycle of my leisure activities would require increasing the population density of London by a factor of 10.
'If you're abnormal' - heh. I'd say I'm very far from normal, whatever that is, but being abnormal doesn't necessarily mean being unusually high maintenance. More abnormal, perhaps, is the ability to need very little, and adapt to what is there, and do your own odd things. Perhaps it is also to do with money though - an abnormal rich person is perhaps likely to 'need' many more things, from a far wider radius, than an abnormal poor person.
So, instead of a strict application of 15 mins for active travel to work it seems we need to be much more flexible, maybe as a step towards that ideal which we may never meet.
I can get to a shopping mall with a large grocery in 20 minutes by bicycle, and it's mostly shopping malls here. With large amounts of car parking as something you must manage carefully through. The getting to the grocery requires illegal sidewalk cycling, cutting across a patch of park where there is a "desire path" (path worn to show it is there by pedestrians and cyclists).
In my view the biggest obstacles to a 15 minute city is low density suburban sprawl which is all about the dystopian dreams of city planners who think cars cars cars cars cars. Which coupled with generally low density and low population make anything like a 15 min city a pipe dream. There's something really mind-warping about cars, where as soon as you're in one, it's "the car and I are one" and "get out of my f***ing way". You want a 15 minute city, do something about cars.
Why would children not work well in such a place? I have three kids. My daughter likes living in a place where in normal days she has the freedom to go home from school on her own, something she would not have if she had to depend on a car. She takes woodwork, and she may take pottery too once covid is done. My other two also have improved opportunities because of their city. And we live in one of the densest zip codes in the United States. Literally, we make the top hundred, so clearly population density is not a barrier to such an area.
That 15 minute live-work-play area exist within cities is not proof that the entire city can live that way. I would argue that one person's 15 minute life exists because other people live in a much different way.
I completely agree up until the last sentence and might agree with that. I just need clarification. If it is meant to say we live in a tony lifestyle, we don't. We live in a zip code full of immigrants and refugees, as well as hipster white people. That's why it's so dense. They're good neighbors too. But certainly the whole city wouldn't be like my neighborhood. To be honest most parts of the city wouldn't want to be. We're the weird part of the city that protested a Walmart until they gave up trying to come and tried to keep a target out because it's a big box store. (We failed on that.) We're not as diverse as we were* due to some nasty displacement, but the elected official who did that is out and replaced by a much better one. Even so we're the kind of place that scares lots of white people. They say they are terrified of our crime, but place seems very safe to me, so I rather feel that's a them problem.
*Currently 42% white in our zip code, 23% African American and 22% Hispanic, used to be about 30/30/30
Why would children not work well in such a place? I have three kids. My daughter likes living in a place where in normal days she has the freedom to go home from school on her own, something she would not have if she had to depend on a car. She takes woodwork, and she may take pottery too once covid is done. My other two also have improved opportunities because of their city. And we live in one of the densest zip codes in the United States. Literally, we make the top hundred, so clearly population density is not a barrier to such an area.
That 15 minute live-work-play area exist within cities is not proof that the entire city can live that way. I would argue that one person's 15 minute life exists because other people live in a much different way.
I completely agree up until the last sentence and might agree with that. I just need clarification. If it is meant to say we live in a tony lifestyle, we don't.
No, it is meant to say the population density supports your lifestyle, but that most of the people in that density likely have to work farther away from home than 15 minutes and/or work in jobs they wouldn't necessarily choose. That the activities and stores that allow your lifestyle require support from outside your area and the people who are part of that chain likely cannot live the 15-minute life, at least not with the same level of comfort and choice.
I do not think it is possible to have as many people as we do on this planet and have even a significant number of people live that 15-minute lifestyle. I think that reconfiguring our cities to be the best they can be will be struggle enough and I have my doubts that it will happen. Though we should still try.
Suburban Christchurch is as flat as a pancake, apart from the Port Hills (Volcanic). There is one supermarket to the east about twenty minutes walk away and one to the west about 10 minutes walk. I can walk beside the river watching the ducks when I'm heading west and through the wetlands heading east. When I moved here the easterly supermarket and surrounding shops were still paddocks, while the westerly shopping area was one of the oldest boroughs in Christchurch. Buses travel through the area every 15 minutes.
And a very attractive city overall. The Port Hills give definition to the southern edge as well as a place for exercise (I'd imagine). The river and all the parklands are a bonus.
My city is (well, was...) a frequent destination for town planners from all over the world - I've accompanied several delegations. It's worked hard to mix social and private housing, preserve green space, and create an 'archipelago' of developing outlying villages.
During our lockdown, our limit for exercise was a 1km radius around home, which for me is a bit less than a 15-minute walk. Eight weeks on, I'd walked just about every square metre of that circle which I could. It includes several supermarkets, one of the few post offices that stayed open during lockdown, part of the second-roughest high-rise estate in the city, a private clinic, three primary schools, a parish church, offices, a huge 'green ribbon' (a four-lane road into the city centre that never happened), a little bit of woodland, a canal, a river (just), and the (very edge of) a huge park. By next year it will contain a metro station which will put central Paris less than two hours from my front door by public transport. I think my local repair garage is just outside the 1km radius and the fuel station is a little further still, and I do most of my work from home, so maybe I'll just ditch the car.
Because I have so much available locally and there are good transport links, I cannot justify having a car where I live. I do have a bicycle and have commuted by bike and/or public transport, but I've also worked in town. I usually travel all over the place.
Apparently this access to this town means there are a lot of construction and cleaning companies based here (I did look to try and work out what is based on the industrial sites), and comparatively those industries are relatively high compared to the country's usual base, health and education have a lower incidence, even though there is a hospital, GP surgeries, dentists, a secondary and three primary schools, but that might be more to do with this being a commuter area and health and education workers are priced out.
There are a few industrial areas:-one alongside the tube line with housing either side, some in farmyards where the farms are diversifying or other odd corners around the edges, another one on one of the bigger roads, which I wonder if replaces the old brewery. There used to be an electronics company fairly centrally placed, but that's gone and been flattened for housing after the owner died.
Hidalgo's anti-car policies have been rather controversial. Personally I'm in favour - one of the downsides of living somewhere so densely populated is that our air quality is terrible. Lockdown sucked in many ways, but I think many of us felt that the reduced traffic was a silver lining.
No, it is meant to say the population density supports your lifestyle, but that most of the people in that density likely have to work farther away from home than 15 minutes and/or work in jobs they wouldn't necessarily choose. That the activities and stores that allow your lifestyle require support from outside your area and the people who are part of that chain likely cannot live the 15-minute life, at least not with the same level of comfort and choice.
I do not think it is possible to have as many people as we do on this planet and have even a significant number of people live that 15-minute lifestyle. I think that reconfiguring our cities to be the best they can be will be struggle enough and I have my doubts that it will happen. Though we should still try.
I live in cheapest neighborhood easily around, so I highly doubt that the people in retail jobs who help me can find a cheaper neighborhood easily. It's true that a single mother with a couple kids would struggle to live in RP and pay rent on retail wages here. But it's also true that there's nowhere nearby she would live more easily. It's one reason that we worry (as a neighborhood) when the rent goes up. Such a person could drive in a long distance from the suburbs to pay less rent but the gas would more than make up for it. West Garfield Park across the city is certainly cheaper, but downtown is much closer than here, so I doubt a significant number people come here to work when retail jobs are available twice as close downtown. No, Rogers Park, where I live is the place that has decent rent and thus gets sneered at for being not nice enough for some. The decent rent is one reason we are so densely populated. People are more likely to take on roommates to pay the rent than move. When well off people move into the neighborhood because it's liberal, diverse, welcoming of all types, walkable, or whatever, that drives rents up. When crime happens or overt racism increases for various reasons* that helps keeps rents down. Our current alderman is working on affordable housing and other healthy things that help balance the neighborhood. But if people get driven out, they won't be likely to be coming here for their retail jobs if they can help it.
Though yes there are always exceptions. My husband cares for developmentally disabled people for an employer who really tries to do right for their people. They pay well for the industry and take better care of their residents than most. People definitely travel a long way to work for said employer. They are probably not the only such employer, but they are not the norm either, I think.
*Some ten years back police took out a gang leader who had been keeping the peace so gang fighting went up for a while and a white woman was shot in the crossfire. Overt racism became very nasty
Because I have so much available locally and there are good transport links, I cannot justify having a car where I live. I do have a bicycle and have commuted by bike and/or public transport, but I've also worked in town. I usually travel all over the place.
Apparently this access to this town means there are a lot of construction and cleaning companies based here (I did look to try and work out what is based on the industrial sites), and comparatively those industries are relatively high compared to the country's usual base, health and education have a lower incidence, even though there is a hospital, GP surgeries, dentists, a secondary and three primary schools, but that might be more to do with this being a commuter area and health and education workers are priced out.
There are a few industrial areas:-one alongside the tube line with housing either side, some in farmyards where the farms are diversifying or other odd corners around the edges, another one on one of the bigger roads, which I wonder if replaces the old brewery. There used to be an electronics company fairly centrally placed, but that's gone and been flattened for housing after the owner died.
Go on, PM me where you are. I had you for Essex, maybe Chelmsford, but 'tube line' has me stumped (I grew up in Upminster).
I can just hear someone who's angry at the prices the blacksmith charges bitching about how everyone used to make their own horseshoes, dammit, what's the world coming to blah blah
I'm not sure that this "we depend on other people outside of our community to survive" thing is unique to major metro areas.
How many of y'all could live without going to a grocer that gets its food delivered by semi? Anyone?
Food easily, but I live in a rural farming area and most of what I buy is local. Meat, vegetables, eggs, bread, wine, soap, honey, candles all local Other things no.
I'm not sure that this "we depend on other people outside of our community to survive" thing is unique to major metro areas.
How many of y'all could live without going to a grocer that gets its food delivered by semi? Anyone?
Few people now. But it would be possible with small populations, it isn’t with large
How would it be possible? Also, my comment wasn't directed to an ideal hypothetical world of extreme locavorism, but to modern reality. Your comment seems to single out metro areas as if everyone outside a major city is some kind of perfectly self-sustaining locavore. And I simply do not think that is true.
I'm not sure that this "we depend on other people outside of our community to survive" thing is unique to major metro areas.
How many of y'all could live without going to a grocer that gets its food delivered by semi? Anyone?
Food easily, but I live in a rural farming area and most of what I buy is local. Meat, vegetables, eggs, bread, wine, soap, honey, candles all local Other things no.
Fair point, so let me widen my net a bit.
Where were the components of the machine you're using to type this message to me made? Is this device locally sourced? Know anyone who takes medications? Where do they get those?
We are 10 minutes from most stuff, as there is a High St nearby. But I am used to it in London, living here for 40 years. The exception for many people would be work, but I have worked at home for 30 years, wife walks 20 minutes to a clinic. We also have lots of green spaces and the river, yes, saaf London, sort of.
I'm not sure that this "we depend on other people outside of our community to survive" thing is unique to major metro areas.
How many of y'all could live without going to a grocer that gets its food delivered by semi? Anyone?
Few people now. But it would be possible with small populations, it isn’t with large
How would it be possible? Also, my comment wasn't directed to an ideal hypothetical world of extreme locavorism, but to modern reality. Your comment seems to single out metro areas as if everyone outside a major city is some kind of perfectly self-sustaining locavore. And I simply do not think that is true.
Wow, no. First, I made no such claim about rural areas. When I talk about population densities, I am talking about the world, not just cities. Fewer people overall, living in smaller communities, could live a more localised life. But that would mean massive reduction in overall population and a massive restructuring. My point is that it is possible from small communities to have that lifestyle for everyone and in large cities, it is impossible.
IMO, a 15-minute lifestyle for everyone is pie in the sky. Some people can manage it, but not everyone unless there is a lot less of everyone.
Note that the 15-min lifestyle is related to the final step in a supply chain. Being 15 mins from a shop is not the same as being 15 min from the suppliers to that shop.
Obviously, as the idea is developed within a paradigm of reducing carbon footprints most advocates for the idea would also promote buying local where possible and not buying items with a lot of airmiles except where necessary. But, they're related ideals, not necessarily interdependent - you can move towards a significantly more local purchasing pattern without moving to within 15 mins of all your service needs, or you can move to within 15 mins of your service needs and still buy stuff from very much further afield.
Also worth mentioning that local doesn't always mean lower carbon footprint. Sometimes it really is more efficient to grow things in Spain and ship them to Scotland than try to grow them here.
Note that the 15-min lifestyle is related to the final step in a supply chain. Being 15 mins from a shop is not the same as being 15 min from the suppliers to that shop.
And comes down to only some will be allowed the idyllic 15-minute lifestyle. Like self-driving cars and utopian futures, it only really works for the rich.
Probably the poor won't have much choice - if you can only afford the lowest priced housing that's where you live, if you can't afford a car then you shop where you can get to by foot and if you're offered a job you can't get to then you can't take it (and, in the UK get sanctioned for not taking a job you couldn't get to). Which of course highlights a lot of other problems in society that need to be tackled, but while tackling them why not also do so by building in a 15 minute city ideal rather than building to exclude that option?
Affordable housing - we need a massive increase in the availability of genuinely affordable, quality housing. Currently developers put in a token number of "affordable" houses in locations that are less than ideal (they use the prime plots for the houses they'll sell for massive profits), often to a low standard and even so they're out of the price range of lots of people needing a home. We need a lot of social housing, and if we have a 15 minute city model in mind we'll build them in locations where services are within 15 minutes, or include those services within the housing development. Even for the private housing developments planning permissions could stipulate the same requirement for access to services.
Public transport - we need a significant increase in public transport to move people around because we recognise that for many getting to work will never be a 15 min bike ride or walk. That needs to be of good quality, with frequent and reliable services on routes that serve people (rather than just those which make money). If you need to travel outwith that 15 min range then you shouldn't be barred from doing so by the absence of public transport.
Note that the 15-min lifestyle is related to the final step in a supply chain. Being 15 mins from a shop is not the same as being 15 min from the suppliers to that shop.
And comes down to only some will be allowed the idyllic 15-minute lifestyle. Like self-driving cars and utopian futures, it only really works for the rich.
Why do self-driving cars only work for the rich? (I realise I may regret asking that)
If the 15-minute lifestyle gains traction with urban planners, we will see an entrenchment of stratified society. Society needs to change first.
The only way to currently build 15-minute areas is to accept that the poor will be poor and that the middle will slide into poverty.
If one designs with mixed economic levels in mind, low income housing mixed with higher, then part of the problem is solved. But it still misses the supply side and still ignores that jobs are not interchangeable. The only people that come out of this on the plus are rich people.
It depends on which version of the self-drive model you're working with.
One model is that self-drive cars will replace normal cars, so everyone has their own car that mostly sits around doing nothing. By their very nature, the technology behind a self-drive car would cost more than a standard car, and hence this will be an option for the rich. It's effectively a gadget that supposedly improves safety, and gives people options in life such as a glass of wine with dinner before driving home (if the technology develops to the point where the driver doesn't need to be alert and ready to take over at all times).
The other model is that self-drive cars will replace taxis; you use an app on your phone to summon a car which takes you where you want to go and then collects someone else. In this case the fare you pay for the car will be less than for a taxi, because you aren't paying someone to drive you (or providing a tip where that would be expected). Whether the poor can afford a taxi fare even at half the sort of rate currently charged is another matter - I'd expect that to also be beyond the means of many who are poor, but still this is a technology available to more than just the rich.
I don't think it's a given that true self-driving cars will be markedly more expensive than conventional ones. In the price of a car the cost of computer hardware and the necessary connectivity will be a miniscule component, and without steering wheels, manual brakes and the like the mechanical components of the car are drastically reduced.
It depends on which version of the self-drive model you're working with.
One model is that self-drive cars will replace normal cars, so everyone has their own car that mostly sits around doing nothing. By their very nature, the technology behind a self-drive car would cost more than a standard car, and hence this will be an option for the rich. It's effectively a gadget that supposedly improves safety, and gives people options in life such as a glass of wine with dinner before driving home (if the technology develops to the point where the driver doesn't need to be alert and ready to take over at all times).
The other model is that self-drive cars will replace taxis; you use an app on your phone to summon a car which takes you where you want to go and then collects someone else. In this case the fare you pay for the car will be less than for a taxi, because you aren't paying someone to drive you (or providing a tip where that would be expected). Whether the poor can afford a taxi fare even at half the sort of rate currently charged is another matter - I'd expect that to also be beyond the means of many who are poor, but still this is a technology available to more than just the rich.
Self-driving cars only improve safety if they are properly maintained. As they come into service at a higher rate, the older ones will be driven by people who cannot afford to do so. And just be in the hands of more people, reducing the number who care even if they can afford to.
Self-driving, effective public transport is the only reasonable way forward and there simply isn't currently enough in any city. Cornavirus and terror attacks highlight the dangers of mass transit, though. So rich people get self-driving cars and the rest get buses and trains and virus and explosions.
Personal rapid transit is the bridge, but the hardest sell.
I don't think it's a given that true self-driving cars will be markedly more expensive than conventional ones. In the price of a car the cost of computer hardware and the necessary connectivity will be a miniscule component, and without steering wheels, manual brakes and the like the mechanical components of the car are drastically reduced.
Not a drastic reduction at all. The vehicle still needs most of the same components. Many new cars are drive by wire already, so the number of components in the passenger compartment are reduced. But still, the component cost of a steering shaft and a few hydraulic brake lines isn't that much. A hundred quid or so to the manufacturer. Hardly drastic.
Probably the poor won't have much choice - if you can only afford the lowest priced housing that's where you live, if you can't afford a car then you shop where you can get to by foot and if you're offered a job you can't get to then you can't take it (and, in the UK get sanctioned for not taking a job you couldn't get to). Which of course highlights a lot of other problems in society that need to be tackled, but while tackling them why not also do so by building in a 15 minute city ideal rather than building to exclude that option?
Who's going to extend the 15-minute conveniences to poor neighborhoods? It's not cost-effective.
Comments
For about six months I had to source employment and shopping all within walking distance.
It was tough.
But my priority was to jiggle the finances to ensure that a monthly bus ticket was possible.
And Netto as a local supermarket was Dire.......
Not for me it wouldn't. I wouldn't live in Sheffield (or any other) City Centre if you paid the rent to me instead of the other way round.
It would have been quite a lucrative investment, I think. We would have rented it out (this would have been about 40 years back - IIRC, the students were starting to arrive in numbers...), though I've always rather liked Sheffield.
It has Trams (again).
The 15 minute city is an attractive idea. I'm sure there must be places, not necessarily in this country, where it has been tried, and is working. Somewhere in The Netherlands, perhaps? Or Germany?
15 minute cities for everyone means loads fewer people and loads fewer comforts. Or loads fewer options
I lived in London for three years, in a modest-sized flat. The man above us used to come home drunk in the small hours and apparently spent the next hour or so bouncing marbles on the concrete floor. The council did fuck all about it. I will never live in a flat again (and will try hard not to live in a terrace or semi).
I agree. A 15 minute city may just be universally possible in terms of leisure and retail facilities, but not in terms of jobs.
Not unless everybody works in the leisure and retail sectors, anyway.
So, instead of a strict application of 15 mins for active travel to work it seems we need to be much more flexible, maybe as a step towards that ideal which we may never meet. When I moved here I had the option to live wherever I wanted, but chose to limit my carbon footprint by living within walking distance of work - 25 years later and onto my fourth home I'm still within walking distance of work. Of course, I didn't have the complications listed above of a partner or family, and the local properties are of good quality and affordable. Maybe the suggestion is that when moving home we seek somewhere where our carbon footprint associated with getting to work is minimal - ideally walking/cycle distance, otherwise on a bus or rail route (and, use it!) and only as a last resort needing to use a car for all or part of the journey. Of course, balancing work needs to different members of the household.
It will probably need to be accompanied by other changes in town systems - that schools everywhere need to be of sufficient quality that choice of where you live isn't dictated by the quality of the local school (or that you send your children to more distant schools thus breaking the 15 min), that public transport is of good quality (goes where people need it to at times it's needed) and affordable.
If you're abnormal, your needs can't be met in a 1km radius. Specialty or ethnic food stores, sports clubs for almost every (or possibly absolutely every) sport, anything competitive where you want a decent level of competition rather than competing against the people that live closest to you, pubs catering to particular interests, even bog-standard mainstream nightclubs - you won't have a big enough population to support one of these in each of your 1km circles.
There's no real point comparing my current abode in US suburbia, because the whole setup here assumes that everyone is surgically attached to a car, but back when I lived in London, I'd walk to church, cycle 10 minutes to get to a supermarket, cycle 20-25 minutes to get to work, and cycle about 45 minutes to get to every one of my social / leisure activities except the pub. I'd go to the pubs near my place of work, because I drank with the people I worked with. I think I could walk to the post office, but I almost never used the post office for anything. I've no idea where the nearest barber to my house was, because I'd go to one near my place of work.
So getting me within 15 minutes cycle of my leisure activities would require increasing the population density of London by a factor of 10.
In my view the biggest obstacles to a 15 minute city is low density suburban sprawl which is all about the dystopian dreams of city planners who think cars cars cars cars cars. Which coupled with generally low density and low population make anything like a 15 min city a pipe dream. There's something really mind-warping about cars, where as soon as you're in one, it's "the car and I are one" and "get out of my f***ing way". You want a 15 minute city, do something about cars.
I completely agree up until the last sentence and might agree with that. I just need clarification. If it is meant to say we live in a tony lifestyle, we don't. We live in a zip code full of immigrants and refugees, as well as hipster white people. That's why it's so dense. They're good neighbors too. But certainly the whole city wouldn't be like my neighborhood. To be honest most parts of the city wouldn't want to be. We're the weird part of the city that protested a Walmart until they gave up trying to come and tried to keep a target out because it's a big box store. (We failed on that.) We're not as diverse as we were* due to some nasty displacement, but the elected official who did that is out and replaced by a much better one. Even so we're the kind of place that scares lots of white people. They say they are terrified of our crime, but place seems very safe to me, so I rather feel that's a them problem.
*Currently 42% white in our zip code, 23% African American and 22% Hispanic, used to be about 30/30/30
I do not think it is possible to have as many people as we do on this planet and have even a significant number of people live that 15-minute lifestyle. I think that reconfiguring our cities to be the best they can be will be struggle enough and I have my doubts that it will happen. Though we should still try.
And a very attractive city overall. The Port Hills give definition to the southern edge as well as a place for exercise (I'd imagine). The river and all the parklands are a bonus.
During our lockdown, our limit for exercise was a 1km radius around home, which for me is a bit less than a 15-minute walk. Eight weeks on, I'd walked just about every square metre of that circle which I could. It includes several supermarkets, one of the few post offices that stayed open during lockdown, part of the second-roughest high-rise estate in the city, a private clinic, three primary schools, a parish church, offices, a huge 'green ribbon' (a four-lane road into the city centre that never happened), a little bit of woodland, a canal, a river (just), and the (very edge of) a huge park. By next year it will contain a metro station which will put central Paris less than two hours from my front door by public transport. I think my local repair garage is just outside the 1km radius and the fuel station is a little further still, and I do most of my work from home, so maybe I'll just ditch the car.
Apparently this access to this town means there are a lot of construction and cleaning companies based here (I did look to try and work out what is based on the industrial sites), and comparatively those industries are relatively high compared to the country's usual base, health and education have a lower incidence, even though there is a hospital, GP surgeries, dentists, a secondary and three primary schools, but that might be more to do with this being a commuter area and health and education workers are priced out.
There are a few industrial areas:-one alongside the tube line with housing either side, some in farmyards where the farms are diversifying or other odd corners around the edges, another one on one of the bigger roads, which I wonder if replaces the old brewery. There used to be an electronics company fairly centrally placed, but that's gone and been flattened for housing after the owner died.
Hidalgo's anti-car policies have been rather controversial. Personally I'm in favour - one of the downsides of living somewhere so densely populated is that our air quality is terrible. Lockdown sucked in many ways, but I think many of us felt that the reduced traffic was a silver lining.
I live in cheapest neighborhood easily around, so I highly doubt that the people in retail jobs who help me can find a cheaper neighborhood easily. It's true that a single mother with a couple kids would struggle to live in RP and pay rent on retail wages here. But it's also true that there's nowhere nearby she would live more easily. It's one reason that we worry (as a neighborhood) when the rent goes up. Such a person could drive in a long distance from the suburbs to pay less rent but the gas would more than make up for it. West Garfield Park across the city is certainly cheaper, but downtown is much closer than here, so I doubt a significant number people come here to work when retail jobs are available twice as close downtown. No, Rogers Park, where I live is the place that has decent rent and thus gets sneered at for being not nice enough for some. The decent rent is one reason we are so densely populated. People are more likely to take on roommates to pay the rent than move. When well off people move into the neighborhood because it's liberal, diverse, welcoming of all types, walkable, or whatever, that drives rents up. When crime happens or overt racism increases for various reasons* that helps keeps rents down. Our current alderman is working on affordable housing and other healthy things that help balance the neighborhood. But if people get driven out, they won't be likely to be coming here for their retail jobs if they can help it.
Though yes there are always exceptions. My husband cares for developmentally disabled people for an employer who really tries to do right for their people. They pay well for the industry and take better care of their residents than most. People definitely travel a long way to work for said employer. They are probably not the only such employer, but they are not the norm either, I think.
*Some ten years back police took out a gang leader who had been keeping the peace so gang fighting went up for a while and a white woman was shot in the crossfire. Overt racism became very nasty
Go on, PM me where you are. I had you for Essex, maybe Chelmsford, but 'tube line' has me stumped (I grew up in Upminster).
How many of y'all could live without going to a grocer that gets its food delivered by semi? Anyone?
Food easily, but I live in a rural farming area and most of what I buy is local. Meat, vegetables, eggs, bread, wine, soap, honey, candles all local Other things no.
Where were the components of the machine you're using to type this message to me made? Is this device locally sourced? Know anyone who takes medications? Where do they get those?
IMO, a 15-minute lifestyle for everyone is pie in the sky. Some people can manage it, but not everyone unless there is a lot less of everyone.
Obviously, as the idea is developed within a paradigm of reducing carbon footprints most advocates for the idea would also promote buying local where possible and not buying items with a lot of airmiles except where necessary. But, they're related ideals, not necessarily interdependent - you can move towards a significantly more local purchasing pattern without moving to within 15 mins of all your service needs, or you can move to within 15 mins of your service needs and still buy stuff from very much further afield.
What is this semi? @Bullfrog
I believe it's a type of lorry.
A semi-trailer - power unit under or behind the driving cab, and a semi-articulated trailer carrying the load.
Or, if in Australia "That isn't a semi, this is a semi"
Affordable housing - we need a massive increase in the availability of genuinely affordable, quality housing. Currently developers put in a token number of "affordable" houses in locations that are less than ideal (they use the prime plots for the houses they'll sell for massive profits), often to a low standard and even so they're out of the price range of lots of people needing a home. We need a lot of social housing, and if we have a 15 minute city model in mind we'll build them in locations where services are within 15 minutes, or include those services within the housing development. Even for the private housing developments planning permissions could stipulate the same requirement for access to services.
Public transport - we need a significant increase in public transport to move people around because we recognise that for many getting to work will never be a 15 min bike ride or walk. That needs to be of good quality, with frequent and reliable services on routes that serve people (rather than just those which make money). If you need to travel outwith that 15 min range then you shouldn't be barred from doing so by the absence of public transport.
Why do self-driving cars only work for the rich? (I realise I may regret asking that)
The only way to currently build 15-minute areas is to accept that the poor will be poor and that the middle will slide into poverty.
If one designs with mixed economic levels in mind, low income housing mixed with higher, then part of the problem is solved. But it still misses the supply side and still ignores that jobs are not interchangeable. The only people that come out of this on the plus are rich people.
One model is that self-drive cars will replace normal cars, so everyone has their own car that mostly sits around doing nothing. By their very nature, the technology behind a self-drive car would cost more than a standard car, and hence this will be an option for the rich. It's effectively a gadget that supposedly improves safety, and gives people options in life such as a glass of wine with dinner before driving home (if the technology develops to the point where the driver doesn't need to be alert and ready to take over at all times).
The other model is that self-drive cars will replace taxis; you use an app on your phone to summon a car which takes you where you want to go and then collects someone else. In this case the fare you pay for the car will be less than for a taxi, because you aren't paying someone to drive you (or providing a tip where that would be expected). Whether the poor can afford a taxi fare even at half the sort of rate currently charged is another matter - I'd expect that to also be beyond the means of many who are poor, but still this is a technology available to more than just the rich.
Self-driving, effective public transport is the only reasonable way forward and there simply isn't currently enough in any city. Cornavirus and terror attacks highlight the dangers of mass transit, though. So rich people get self-driving cars and the rest get buses and trains and virus and explosions.
Personal rapid transit is the bridge, but the hardest sell.
Who's going to extend the 15-minute conveniences to poor neighborhoods? It's not cost-effective.