Various comments about how it's not affordable to live within 15 minutes...
The whole point is not to have absolutely everything centralised in one great big downtown surrounded by suburbs that have nothing in them besides houses. Of course we can't all live within walking distance if you have vast numbers of people all trying to live within walking distance of the same place.
The whole design concept is a fundamentally different one where there are a lot fewer things you want to go to the 'city centre' for.
Canberra has some reflection of this (though too spread out), in that we have half a dozen 'town centres', and then within the larger 'towns' there will be smaller centres each servicing a group of around 4-5 suburbs, and then most suburbs have their own little shopping centre as well (though my neighbourhood supermarket is sadly closed down... there's still a hairdresser).
At present I am really only doing basic shopping like groceries and the chemist, while working from home. But for that, I can go many days without using the car if I go to the closest group centre (ie the second-closest shops now that the nearest supermarket is gone). Where we don't do so well is with offices.
FWIW, in my locality if you want really cheap food (fruit and veg especially) you go to the market. Doesn't work so much on the 15 minute front, though - markets in working class areas are much cheaper than in chic neighbourhoods.
The whole point is not to have absolutely everything centralised in one great big downtown surrounded by suburbs that have nothing in them besides houses.
In fact that centralised model of a downtown surrounded by nothing but houses is almost in direct opposition to the ethos of those advocating a 15-minute city. The suburbs would be a mix of housing, schools, shops, recreational facilities, and commercial units.
FWIW, in my locality if you want really cheap food (fruit and veg especially) you go to the market. Doesn't work so much on the 15 minute front, though - markets in working class areas are much cheaper than in chic neighbourhoods.
Same where I live, but street markets are in the city centre, five miles from me, not in the odd little district where I live. In non-lockdown times, I've got some good bargains from street markets, especially when they're selling stuff off cheap before closing at the end of the day. Though never such good bargains as I can get in supermarkets when they do their yellow sticker reductions for food that's reached its use-by date.
The irony being that earlier generations the poor did all their shopping at small, local stores ... and it was the wealthy who went into town for the bigger stores.
Yes. It's come full circle. The rich folks made the big shops look appealing, and so everyone wanted them, and over time they were made cheaper, and everyone had access, so now they've discarded them! Perhaps part of it is rich folk wanting to have something that sets them aside as different and better. No point being richer if there's nothing to set you aside from the hoi polloi!
At the same time, it's also a thing that people think that thrift is virtuous. So suddenly saving money becomes a mark of pride even if you're at the income bracket where it'd be more sensible to spend more money on higher quality products, because "efficiency" is considered inherently virtuous.
The irony being that earlier generations the poor did all their shopping at small, local stores ... and it was the wealthy who went into town for the bigger stores.
Yes. It's come full circle. The rich folks made the big shops look appealing, and so everyone wanted them, and over time they were made cheaper, and everyone had access, so now they've discarded them! Perhaps part of it is rich folk wanting to have something that sets them aside as different and better. No point being richer if there's nothing to set you aside from the hoi polloi!
At the same time, it's also a thing that people think that thrift is virtuous. So suddenly saving money becomes a mark of pride even if you're at the income bracket where it'd be more sensible to spend more money on higher quality products, because "efficiency" is considered inherently virtuous.
So weird.
Yes, thrift is very popular these days. And upcycling. Though I'm in a few frugal groups on FB, and I find it's quite popular, among the people who are frugal by choice and could afford not to be, to point out that there is a big difference between frugal and cheap. These people like to emphasise that they are not cheap! This is a great mark of pride. Cheap is bad; frugal is good. They are frugal, but they never scimp on quality. People who are cheap (which I assume means compromising on quality of purchases) are often looked down upon!
I find that it is very related and middle to upper class to be proud of being minimalist, which of course means throwing out things and then rebuying them later.
I find that it is very related and middle to upper class to be proud of being minimalist, which of course means throwing out things and then rebuying them later.
That's funny, and true
I'm cheap; if you live near me, I've probably been through your bins. I need some of Gwai's minimalists around me, or where would I replenish my stash?
Since I am anonymous here and virtue signalling is therefore futile, I'll point out that for those of us who are older, for the time being financially stable, and who enjoy being cheap, giving the money saved away is also a satisfying thing to be able to do. And, frightened soul that I am, I remain secure in the knowledge that living in a skip is not beyond me next time the shit hits the fan. Like, errr, now.
Not poverty level, of course, but we don't need fifty brands of breakfast cereal, or even breakfast cereal at all. The more choice we have, the more people feel the need to try more and more, and feel they are missing out if they don't have everything available. It's like the who scenario of 'the more you have, the more you want.' I don't think the amount of choice we now have is healthy.
I don't feel the need to try more and more breakfast cereal. I buy precisely one kind of cereal for my own use. Add in the rest of the family, and you get to either 3 or 4 depending on whether you count porridge oats as a breakfast cereal. I've eaten more or less the same breakfast most days since I was a small child. It doesn't make a difference to me whether the other 45 kinds of cereal are there or not, as long as mine is there.
But I don't want to eliminate the other cereals, because I imagine there could be people similar to me, but with a different preferred cereal. I don't see any of us as being burdened by excess choice.
One of the issues of reducing choice is limiting people on restricted diets. My daughter is currently eating the one breakfast cereal that doesn't include anything she can't eat. Now, I can make something that works from ingredients, and often do, but it's nice to be able to just put cereal in a bowl and pour on non-dairy milk.
Not poverty level, of course, but we don't need fifty brands of breakfast cereal, or even breakfast cereal at all. The more choice we have, the more people feel the need to try more and more, and feel they are missing out if they don't have everything available. It's like the who scenario of 'the more you have, the more you want.' I don't think the amount of choice we now have is healthy.
I don't feel the need to try more and more breakfast cereal. I buy precisely one kind of cereal for my own use. Add in the rest of the family, and you get to either 3 or 4 depending on whether you count porridge oats as a breakfast cereal. I've eaten more or less the same breakfast most days since I was a small child. It doesn't make a difference to me whether the other 45 kinds of cereal are there or not, as long as mine is there.
But I don't want to eliminate the other cereals, because I imagine there could be people similar to me, but with a different preferred cereal. I don't see any of us as being burdened by excess choice.
Yes, you said. Whereas, for me, as I said, I simply don't see breakfast cereal as essential. There have been all sorts of processed foods over the years where my preferred one was discontinued, and though it was incredibly disappointing at the time (especially the tandoori flavoured Golden Wonder crisps when I was twelve!) it wasn't a big deal in the long run. Because I have had to adapt, I have adapted, and it was fine. And I have come to generally more appreciate food from scratch, like fruit and veg and rice and meat and fish and eggs, as my body better digests these, and such foods tend to be available everywhere.
However, as Ck says, for people whose health requires a restricted diet, things can be more problematic. I'd imagine in a small town environment, if there was a person know to have a restricted diet, a shop might order things in specially, as small shops often do for particular regular customers. Or the person might order online. I was thinking about such people when I was saying this is not going to be an absolute thing, and there will be reasons for ordering online. And equally, if you, having had the same breakfast cereal all your life, would find your health, mental or physical, adversely affected by the shock of having to change your breakfast food, you might order your breakfast cereal online, maybe even get it cheaper, in bulk. So I'm not seeing it as necessary for each fiften minute district to have fifty types of breakfast cereal in their grocery stores. Just like I'm not expecting them to have specialty tea leaves, and I would order those online. I imagine most of us might have a couple of unusual, specialty things that cheer us up, and that a fifteen minute district could still exist, with a simpler set of choices in general, while plenty of us have the occasional thing we order online. I don't see that as being a big deal.
Yeah, I was wondering when online ordering would come into this. We get almost all our non-perishables online, partly a habit from before we had a car, partly because we can get things that aren't stocked locally and partly because we like to keep a bulk stash and it's easier to manage this way. Heck, we even bulk buy meat online and freeze it. The logistics of ordering a butchered side of beef a few years back were certainly interesting.
Well, it makes sense that some things will need to be delivered. Even putting aside things like specialty foods, if you order a new bed or sofa, it will need to be delivered. You can't carry it home in your backpack.
I also order things in bulk because it's easier - things like loo roll (which everyone has been making fun of stocking up on because of the rush to stock up at the beginning of lockdown) I've always found easier to order in bulk online, because it's awkward to carry, takes up lots of space in your bag, so you can't buy much else - plus, it's easy to forget to buy more of it and not something you want to realise you've run out of in the middle of going to the loo!
The carbon footprint of online ordering and delivering from a local store will be smaller than driving to that same store, providing you don't also do grocery runs to that store on top of the deliveries. Possibly marginal compared to shopping at a local store on the way back from somewhere else with a minimal detour. Obviously a higher carbon footprint compared to walking to the local store. In many places where the delivery route is short (total <100mile) the delivery vehicle could easily be electric, recharge points at the local store being a relatively straight forward installation, which will result in a very low carbon footprint. The carbon footprint is higher than going to the shops if your order comes in several deliveries, and especially if items are ordered and then returned (eg: clothing, where in the store you'd have tried it on and confirmed it fitted before buying).
things like loo roll (which everyone has been making fun of stocking up on because of the rush to stock up at the beginning of lockdown) I've always found easier to order in bulk online, because it's awkward to carry, takes up lots of space in your bag, so you can't buy much else
My normal shop will be 2-3 times a week at a local Sainsbury's which is a short detour on my walk home. As you say, getting loo roll in those shops isn't easy. About every 4 weeks or so I'll do a bigger shop at one of the larger supermarkets with the car, this allows me to stock up on canned food (again, you can't carry a lot of cans home) and if the loo roll stock in my flat is running low I'll buy a big pack (which is also less plastic per roll compared to the small packs I could feasibly carry home). Friends on FB made all sorts of comments about knowing where to come if they ran out of loo roll when I noted that towards the end of November I bought a big pack of loo roll, though at the time I wasn't that low I knew the next time I'd be at the big store I'd be buying Christmas stuff, and when all the shelves were empty I had more than 20 rolls still in my cupboard. Two months later my stock is still about 15 rolls, but that's because none of my friends here have run out and come to ask for some.
Our loo roll comes in boxes of 48 double length rolls from Who Gives A Crap. No plastic wrap at all.
Yes, and then you take the empty carton out to a nearby re-cycling centre (in our case about a quarter hour drive).
To go back to what La Vie en Rouge's post about stopping off at a whole range of shops as she gets home from work - I can understand that that works well in Paris where there are a lot of people living in flats, although it does depend on store staff remaining there late. Most people in suburbs around here, indeed most of any Oz city, live in houses. The numbers living in flats (which we generally call home units) is increasing but the preference for the substantial majority is to live in a house with its own grounds and garden. There just isn't the density of living that would make what she describes practical or economic. Much of the US and Canada would be the same.
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Other issue is that at least in my country very few people are willing to walk everywhere whether or not they could. People tell me they can't imagine carrying groceries home from the store even when they know how close our local stores are. To be fair, Google tells me that the average American only walks 5k steps a day, so walking to the grocery store and then back carrying stuff--and doing it regularly since most of us can't carry the shopping for a week--would be a lot of walking.
I think you may have cause and effect inverted here. Yes, if Americans only walk 5k steps a day on average, walking to the grocery store every day or so would be a lot. But you can just as easily note this apparently USDA survey-based factoid, that
The average household traveled 3.79 miles to their primary grocery, even though the closest store was 2.14 miles way.
To unpack that, it means that the average American has more than a four-mile round trip to go shopping, even if it's to the convenience store at a gas station--and over a seven-mile round trip to go to their preferred store, which is likely a full-service grocery store with fruit, veggies, meat rather than convenience foods only. Four miles is a long way to walk, even with food in a backpack or cart--through all sorts of weather and temps that range from 115 F to -20 F, depending on where and when you go. Seven miles--well, imagine that biweekly so you can get your healthy foods. And God help you if you have to trail a child or two along...
Now note that word 'average' again, and consider that it means HALF of Americans have further to go.
So, why are we not getting our steps in? Because in a choice between 5k steps with shopping by cars and 25K steps without, guess which one wins?
Our loo roll comes in boxes of 48 double length rolls from Who Gives A Crap. No plastic wrap at all.
To go back to what La Vie en Rouge's post about stopping off at a whole range of shops as she gets home from work - I can understand that that works well in Paris where there are a lot of people living in flats, although it does depend on store staff remaining there late. Most people in suburbs around here, indeed most of any Oz city, live in houses. The numbers living in flats (which we generally call home units) is increasing but the preference for the substantial majority is to live in a house with its own grounds and garden. There just isn't the density of living that would make what she describes practical or economic. Much of the US and Canada would be the same.
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Post-WW2 Canadian suburbia is pretty much as you describe. Much of pre-WW2 Toronto was built along the concept of streetcar suburbs, where the expectation was that the man of the house would take the streetcar downtown to work on weekdays but life could otherwise generally be managed within walking distance (including shops, but importantly also church, because the streetcars didn't run on Sundays). The houses and lots are not as big as those that later became available in post-war suburbia, but the housing stock is heavily single-family dwellings of one kind of another on the side streets (heavily but not exclusively semi-detached) and apartments over stores and the like on the main streets. Perhaps surprisingly, this structure is still basically intact in many of these neighbourhoods.
I'm doubtful about the viability of any "pure" 15-minute city concept, but I think it's worth looking at how we have historically built neighbourhoods if we're trying at least to move a bit closer to the concept where not every trip involves a significant amount of distance. Mind you much of North America is built on the post-WW2 model and this infrastructure isn't likely going anywhere anytime soon.
Our loo roll comes in boxes of 48 double length rolls from Who Gives A Crap. No plastic wrap at all.
Yes, and then you take the empty carton out to a nearby re-cycling centre (in our case about a quarter hour drive).
No, I re-use it or put it in the recycling bin to be picked up.
Either your bin is bigger than ours (from memory around 350 litres) or you have a lot less other paper recycling than we do.
Obviously we squash boxes but the bin is a 240 litre, collected once a fortnight.
We break them flat rather than squash them. Not really sure where all the waste comes from. Paper waste, green waste (same size bins, and we have 2 of them) and glass/cans waste all collected fortnightly.
Lots of cities are designed around car use, particularly in North America or Australia. Lots of cities actually got rid of public transport systems and favoured highways.
My lengthy trip to North America back in 2013 had several fascinating stops, because in most places I was relying on either public transport or my feet.
Boston was highly instructive, because they've documented a fair bit of the history of this. 1. These streets are too narrow for traffic! Build a highway! 2. Whoops, that highway completely isolated part of the city and made it not much good for anything besides being a giant car park. Bury the highway! 3. Hey, now there's a line of parks marking the old highway route, and the wharves are super trendy.
And then when I got to Seattle... there was a dirty great big multi-level road basically discouraging anyone from going to the waterfront and I thought why the hell would they do that? It turned out they were in the middle of planning to dismantle said road and were asking residents what they wanted on the waterfront once the highway was gone.
I also went to Portland, Oregon, which as I understand it is the only sizeable American city that has succeeded in keeping car use stable and a high percentage of residents use public transport. Consistent land-use and transport planning over many decades made this possible.
I think you may have cause and effect inverted here. Yes, if Americans only walk 5k steps a day on average, walking to the grocery store every day or so would be a lot. But you can just as easily note this apparently USDA survey-based factoid, that
The average household traveled 3.79 miles to their primary grocery, even though the closest store was 2.14 miles way.
[shortened so I can include the conclusion]
So, why are we not getting our steps in? Because in a choice between 5k steps with shopping by cars and 25K steps without, guess which one wins?
I think you are right and wrong. I definitely see your point that most of America is not walkable, so we don't practice walking. On the other hand, Americans very rarely walk when it is pleasant also. I mean I live by the lakefront, and most the reason it became COVID-closed is because people were only using it for sunbathing or wading (in close quarters) and not walking*. The beach is much wider than the sidewalk, so if people did walk there, it would be safer. And hiking on park land is another example. Most people are in favor of protecting national parks but have never been there. Why are we not hiking on our national land? (Saying that as someone who has, loved it, and may miss her next hiking due to effing covid.)
*Racism is also a factor here in why it was closed, but that's off topic, I think. So I will acknowledge it here.
Boston was highly instructive, because they've documented a fair bit of the history of this. 1. These streets are too narrow for traffic! Build a highway! 2. Whoops, that highway completely isolated part of the city and made it not much good for anything besides being a giant car park.
As I understand it, parts of the Los Angeles Highway system were designed to isolate people. Black ones. Not to mention Route 66 communities which were killed or diminished by freeway.
Well, it makes sense that some things will need to be delivered. Even putting aside things like specialty foods, if you order a new bed or sofa, it will need to be delivered. You can't carry it home in your backpack.
Heh.
The first sofa I ever bought we walked home from the store with. It was about a mile and a half or so, I think. We certainly stopped for a rest a couple of times on the way - fortunately, we had a sofa to sit on.
As I understand it, parts of the Los Angeles Highway system were designed to isolate people. Black ones. Not to mention Route 66 communities which were killed or diminished by freeway.
Racism strongly affected the design of the LA freeway system, but in a different way. The 110 was laid out absolutely straight through South Central Los Angeles, slicing right through that black neighborhood, but the 710, originally intended to go from Long Beach to Pasadena, stops abruptly in Alhambra (dumping traffic onto Valley Blvd there) because South Pasadena is full of wealthy white people who have the power to keep from having their city cut in half. They've been litigating this for 50 years, making all sorts of arguments about how they need clean air, about how beautiful and historic their homes are, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, people who live along the southern portion of the 710 have the worst asthma in the area because of the pollution from the ports and their traffic - and those folks are predominantly brown.
Many Route 66 communities lost out when the development of the Interstate Highway System bypassed them because they just weren't on the main roads anymore. The layout of the interstates in and around cities throughout the country tends to be racist in the way it is in the LA area, but the communities that are now ghost towns because Route 66 was superseded by a freeway had plenty of white folks in them.
I didn't mean to imply that the route 66 and LA highway system operated on the same dynamic. They were different examples of how highway design screwed people over.
And then when I got to Seattle... there was a dirty great big multi-level road basically discouraging anyone from going to the waterfront and I thought why the hell would they do that? It turned out they were in the middle of planning to dismantle said road and were asking residents what they wanted on the waterfront once the highway was gone.
It's gone now and it's so much nicer along the waterfront without it!
I think I know what Gwai means about attitudes to walking. When I was in Canada, if I asked directions of how to walk somewhere, people would shake their heads and say it was too far to walk. It would be about a mile, which isn't far to me, but it did seem that people weren't used to walking in general, not in the city at least. And walking was more boring there - the roads were so long and straight. Here in the UK, even though I live in a city, there are so many little paths and green places, so walks are more interesting and enjoyable. And much more so in small towns - when I lived in a small town, I would frequently walk to other small towns, a couple of miles walk away, but along canals and footpaths and parks and such, so it was nice.
It wasn't that Canadians were less likely to exercise - there were always plenty of people at the gym, and doing all the exercise classes, and in the swimming pool. It was just people didn't tend to walk to shops and such. It was more common to drive or take a bus to a big shopping mall. So in people's minds, it was too far to walk to the shops, even though they might easily walk that far on a treadmill in the gym.
I think it probably depends on where you are in Canada. There is definitely a walking culture in the older parts of the big cities, but probably not so much in suburbia, which - as you say - is not very walking-friendly to begin with.
It wasn't that Canadians were less likely to exercise - there were always plenty of people at the gym, and doing all the exercise classes, and in the swimming pool. It was just people didn't tend to walk to shops and such.
I have noticed this, too (though not in a Canadian context). I once worked in a building with a small gym on the third (or fourth?) floor, and gym members often took the creaky lift up to the gym rather than climb the grand staircase. Friends of mine who enjoy sport and exercise and brag about their fitness regimes will whine like MoFos if I suggest walking to the restaurant.
I grew up walking everywhere, and we would walk to all sorts of places not just for services within a 15 minute walking distance, but anywhere we wanted to go. We didn't do it for fun, we did it because we didn't have a car, and public transport wasn't always available. (my family had a car when I was growing up, but as a teen and young adult - I didn't)
And then when I got to Seattle... there was a dirty great big multi-level road basically discouraging anyone from going to the waterfront and I thought why the hell would they do that? It turned out they were in the middle of planning to dismantle said road and were asking residents what they wanted on the waterfront once the highway was gone.
It's gone now and it's so much nicer along the waterfront without it!
Good to know. I actually made a mental note at the time that I really wanted to come back to Seattle at some point and find out how it had changed.
It wasn't that Canadians were less likely to exercise - there were always plenty of people at the gym, and doing all the exercise classes, and in the swimming pool. It was just people didn't tend to walk to shops and such.
I have noticed this, too (though not in a Canadian context). I once worked in a building with a small gym on the third (or fourth?) floor, and gym members often took the creaky lift up to the gym rather than climb the grand staircase. Friends of mine who enjoy sport and exercise and brag about their fitness regimes will whine like MoFos if I suggest walking to the restaurant.
I grew up walking everywhere, and we would walk to all sorts of places not just for services within a 15 minute walking distance, but anywhere we wanted to go. We didn't do it for fun, we did it because we didn't have a car, and public transport wasn't always available. (my family had a car when I was growing up, but as a teen and young adult - I didn't)
It's amazing just how much design can make a difference to these things. Give the stairs a great view and hide the lift, and everyone will take the stairs.
That was on a podcast episode... I thought it was 99% Invisible (which is often about design) but I can't find it now, so maybe it was some other show. There's a building where the stairs are on the outside, with nice wide platforms at each floor where you could have a conversation, and it gets the best views of the city (rather than corner offices getting the best view). The lifts, conversely, are not facing you directly when you enter the foyer but tucked off to the side.
But the general principle is about how you can nudge people towards healthier behaviours by doing relatively small things to encourage it. Make walking attractive and easy, and people will walk.
And, whether in the city or the suburbs, keep the pavements in good repair. Both @piglet and I have had headlong falls in the last week as a result of tripping on uneven paving-stones.
I think walking to work is terrific, or at least it can be. The 35-minute walk from Boston across and along the Charles River to work in Cambridge is one of things I miss the most about my old job. Far preferable to my current 40-minute drive into the suburbs, even in the worst weather.
15-minute walk to everywhere sounds great. Other things being equal, who wouldn't be for it ?
But other things seldom are.
What's interesting to me is what the trade-offs are. What has to be given up to have a 15-minute city ?
Is it density ? No-one can have a house with a large garden ?
Is it choice ? Are we talking about a city of 250,000 people divided into 25 more-or-less self-contained districts of 10,000 people, with identical facilities ? Including for example a bookshop that stocks only what appeals to the average person.
Is it organic development ? Can such a city only grow by the planned addition of a 26th district ?
Is it mass transit ? Is a high-frequency tram system only viable where there are concentrated land uses (a central business district, rather than 25 x 24 different travel demand vectors ?)
15-minute walk to everywhere sounds great. Other things being equal, who wouldn't be for it ?
But other things seldom are.
What's interesting to me is what the trade-offs are. What has to be given up to have a 15-minute city ?
Is it density ? No-one can have a house with a large garden ?
Is it choice ? Are we talking about a city of 250,000 people divided into 25 more-or-less self-contained districts of 10,000 people, with identical facilities ? Including for example a bookshop that stocks only what appeals to the average person.
Is it organic development ? Can such a city only grow by the planned addition of a 26th district ?
Is it mass transit ? Is a high-frequency tram system only viable where there are concentrated land uses (a central business district, rather than 25 x 24 different travel demand vectors ?)
If there such a thing as organic development of cities anywhere in the rich world these days?
What's interesting to me is what the trade-offs are. What has to be given up to have a 15-minute city ?
Is it density ? No-one can have a house with a large garden ?
Depends on how large 'large' is. Certainly mid-density housing is entirely compatible with a 15-min city; something similar to the typical 1930s semi-detached housing developments would be fine, as are the various new towns of the 1960s (Milton Keynes, East Kilbride etc). Lots of houses with gardens, and lots of public open space ... probably if the gardens were very much larger this would be at the expense of the public space (personally, I'd value public space above large personal gardens).
Are we talking about a city of 250,000 people divided into 25 more-or-less self-contained districts of 10,000 people, with identical facilities ? Including for example a bookshop that stocks only what appeals to the average person.
15min walking distance in medium density housing (see above) would be closer to districts of 20-30,000 people. If you roll that upto 15min cycling distance then you'd have towns of at least 100,000 all being in that distance. With a proportion of higher density blocks of comfortable sized flats then it wouldn't be impossible for a town of 250,000 to contain 8-10 districts of 25-30,000 people who are all within a short walk of facilities supplying everyday needs (schools, grocery stores, churches, hairdressers, GP and dentist, recreational space, library etc) with the facilities that do need a larger population (community theatre, places of worship for smaller religions, specialist stores and recreational activities etc) within reach either in a central area or as part of the facilities of other districts.
Is it mass transit ? Is a high-frequency tram system only viable where there are concentrated land uses (a central business district, rather than 25 x 24 different travel demand vectors ?)
You probably would need to think carefully about mass transit; de-emphasise a spoke-like pattern serving a central district to also include circular routes that directly connect the peripheral areas without (necessarily) also serving the centre. Many of our towns and cities are laid out with ring roads for cars, why not also have bus or light rail follow similar circular routes?
I remember walking to church as a child in the city, and smelling all the breakfast smells coming from the houses on Sunday morning. Many of those houses had their kitchens to the front by the sidewalks and their living rooms in the rear off of small enclosed gardens. It was in the day when we did not eat before communion. Maddening.
Many of our towns and cities are laid out with ring roads for cars, why not also have bus or light rail follow similar circular routes?
No reason in principle why not.
But rather than seeing buses and trams as intrinsically Good Things that every city should have, I see them as an appropriate economic solution to particular patterns and levels of transport demand.
If demand for any particular movement is too low for bus to be the right solution, you end up in a vicious circle of falling service levels and falling patronage.
In a city in which most journeys are undertaken on foot or by bike, and those that are not are to a dispersed set of destinations, it is conceivable, I suggest, that bus is the wrong solution. And that planners should perhaps be thinking in terms of a fleet of self-driving taxis rather than public transport as we know it.
Why self-drive rather than conventional taxis with drivers? The safety case for having a driver are self-evident; plus benefits such as someone able to help less mobile passengers in and out of the car, carry shopping etc. Self drive offsets the cost of the driver with a more expensive vehicle, and other problems (will a self-drive taxi pull over and throw out someone about to throw up after a night on the town ... leaving the mess unknown until the next passenger refuses to get in?)
Though, I agree that where appropriate walking and cycling are the best option, that isn't always appropriate. Many are physically incapable of cycling, or would be under less than ideal weather conditions (it's actually a harder person who gets their bike out during a winter rainy day, even those of us who cycle occasionally think twice then) or won't be comfortable venturing out after dark. So, there needs to be an alternative of bus/tram or train to take people to most places they're likely to go.
Taxis, self drive or otherwise, don't solve the congestion problem. Like any four wheeled vehicle designed to carry passengers, with a single occupant they're appallingly space inefficient.
There are other reasons for not cycling or walking - wearing evening dress for going out, for example, or coming home at the end of the evening. Now, it is possible to get changed from cycling gear on arrival and change again on leaving, because a long dress and high heels is really not great on a bike, but not everywhere is set up with showers and changing facilities. I used to upset work colleagues washing in the basins at work when they walked in and found me half naked because the only shower was cold (I tested it for them). Half naked as I used to strip and change first top then bottom half. And it means a sober evening too as cycling under the influence is not advisable.
In that respect, I think walking is easier than cycling. You have to be pretty tanked before you're not safe to walk, and even in evening dress the only thing you usually need to change to walk would be your shoes.
This raises other problems, however: you can cycle rather further in 15 minutes than you can walk. There are also issues to do with lighting and safety.
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The whole point is not to have absolutely everything centralised in one great big downtown surrounded by suburbs that have nothing in them besides houses. Of course we can't all live within walking distance if you have vast numbers of people all trying to live within walking distance of the same place.
The whole design concept is a fundamentally different one where there are a lot fewer things you want to go to the 'city centre' for.
Canberra has some reflection of this (though too spread out), in that we have half a dozen 'town centres', and then within the larger 'towns' there will be smaller centres each servicing a group of around 4-5 suburbs, and then most suburbs have their own little shopping centre as well (though my neighbourhood supermarket is sadly closed down... there's still a hairdresser).
At present I am really only doing basic shopping like groceries and the chemist, while working from home. But for that, I can go many days without using the car if I go to the closest group centre (ie the second-closest shops now that the nearest supermarket is gone). Where we don't do so well is with offices.
Same where I live, but street markets are in the city centre, five miles from me, not in the odd little district where I live. In non-lockdown times, I've got some good bargains from street markets, especially when they're selling stuff off cheap before closing at the end of the day. Though never such good bargains as I can get in supermarkets when they do their yellow sticker reductions for food that's reached its use-by date.
At the same time, it's also a thing that people think that thrift is virtuous. So suddenly saving money becomes a mark of pride even if you're at the income bracket where it'd be more sensible to spend more money on higher quality products, because "efficiency" is considered inherently virtuous.
So weird.
Yes, thrift is very popular these days. And upcycling. Though I'm in a few frugal groups on FB, and I find it's quite popular, among the people who are frugal by choice and could afford not to be, to point out that there is a big difference between frugal and cheap. These people like to emphasise that they are not cheap! This is a great mark of pride. Cheap is bad; frugal is good. They are frugal, but they never scimp on quality. People who are cheap (which I assume means compromising on quality of purchases) are often looked down upon!
That's funny, and true
I'm cheap; if you live near me, I've probably been through your bins. I need some of Gwai's minimalists around me, or where would I replenish my stash?
Since I am anonymous here and virtue signalling is therefore futile, I'll point out that for those of us who are older, for the time being financially stable, and who enjoy being cheap, giving the money saved away is also a satisfying thing to be able to do. And, frightened soul that I am, I remain secure in the knowledge that living in a skip is not beyond me next time the shit hits the fan. Like, errr, now.
I don't feel the need to try more and more breakfast cereal. I buy precisely one kind of cereal for my own use. Add in the rest of the family, and you get to either 3 or 4 depending on whether you count porridge oats as a breakfast cereal. I've eaten more or less the same breakfast most days since I was a small child. It doesn't make a difference to me whether the other 45 kinds of cereal are there or not, as long as mine is there.
But I don't want to eliminate the other cereals, because I imagine there could be people similar to me, but with a different preferred cereal. I don't see any of us as being burdened by excess choice.
Yes, you said. Whereas, for me, as I said, I simply don't see breakfast cereal as essential. There have been all sorts of processed foods over the years where my preferred one was discontinued, and though it was incredibly disappointing at the time (especially the tandoori flavoured Golden Wonder crisps when I was twelve!) it wasn't a big deal in the long run. Because I have had to adapt, I have adapted, and it was fine. And I have come to generally more appreciate food from scratch, like fruit and veg and rice and meat and fish and eggs, as my body better digests these, and such foods tend to be available everywhere.
However, as Ck says, for people whose health requires a restricted diet, things can be more problematic. I'd imagine in a small town environment, if there was a person know to have a restricted diet, a shop might order things in specially, as small shops often do for particular regular customers. Or the person might order online. I was thinking about such people when I was saying this is not going to be an absolute thing, and there will be reasons for ordering online. And equally, if you, having had the same breakfast cereal all your life, would find your health, mental or physical, adversely affected by the shock of having to change your breakfast food, you might order your breakfast cereal online, maybe even get it cheaper, in bulk. So I'm not seeing it as necessary for each fiften minute district to have fifty types of breakfast cereal in their grocery stores. Just like I'm not expecting them to have specialty tea leaves, and I would order those online. I imagine most of us might have a couple of unusual, specialty things that cheer us up, and that a fifteen minute district could still exist, with a simpler set of choices in general, while plenty of us have the occasional thing we order online. I don't see that as being a big deal.
I also order things in bulk because it's easier - things like loo roll (which everyone has been making fun of stocking up on because of the rush to stock up at the beginning of lockdown) I've always found easier to order in bulk online, because it's awkward to carry, takes up lots of space in your bag, so you can't buy much else - plus, it's easy to forget to buy more of it and not something you want to realise you've run out of in the middle of going to the loo!
Yes, and then you take the empty carton out to a nearby re-cycling centre (in our case about a quarter hour drive).
To go back to what La Vie en Rouge's post about stopping off at a whole range of shops as she gets home from work - I can understand that that works well in Paris where there are a lot of people living in flats, although it does depend on store staff remaining there late. Most people in suburbs around here, indeed most of any Oz city, live in houses. The numbers living in flats (which we generally call home units) is increasing but the preference for the substantial majority is to live in a house with its own grounds and garden. There just isn't the density of living that would make what she describes practical or economic. Much of the US and Canada would be the same.
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I think you may have cause and effect inverted here. Yes, if Americans only walk 5k steps a day on average, walking to the grocery store every day or so would be a lot. But you can just as easily note this apparently USDA survey-based factoid, that
To unpack that, it means that the average American has more than a four-mile round trip to go shopping, even if it's to the convenience store at a gas station--and over a seven-mile round trip to go to their preferred store, which is likely a full-service grocery store with fruit, veggies, meat rather than convenience foods only. Four miles is a long way to walk, even with food in a backpack or cart--through all sorts of weather and temps that range from 115 F to -20 F, depending on where and when you go. Seven miles--well, imagine that biweekly so you can get your healthy foods. And God help you if you have to trail a child or two along...
Now note that word 'average' again, and consider that it means HALF of Americans have further to go.
So, why are we not getting our steps in? Because in a choice between 5k steps with shopping by cars and 25K steps without, guess which one wins?
Post-WW2 Canadian suburbia is pretty much as you describe. Much of pre-WW2 Toronto was built along the concept of streetcar suburbs, where the expectation was that the man of the house would take the streetcar downtown to work on weekdays but life could otherwise generally be managed within walking distance (including shops, but importantly also church, because the streetcars didn't run on Sundays). The houses and lots are not as big as those that later became available in post-war suburbia, but the housing stock is heavily single-family dwellings of one kind of another on the side streets (heavily but not exclusively semi-detached) and apartments over stores and the like on the main streets. Perhaps surprisingly, this structure is still basically intact in many of these neighbourhoods.
I'm doubtful about the viability of any "pure" 15-minute city concept, but I think it's worth looking at how we have historically built neighbourhoods if we're trying at least to move a bit closer to the concept where not every trip involves a significant amount of distance. Mind you much of North America is built on the post-WW2 model and this infrastructure isn't likely going anywhere anytime soon.
No, I re-use it or put it in the recycling bin to be picked up.
Either your bin is bigger than ours (from memory around 350 litres) or you have a lot less other paper recycling than we do.
Obviously we squash boxes but the bin is a 240 litre, collected once a fortnight.
We break them flat rather than squash them. Not really sure where all the waste comes from. Paper waste, green waste (same size bins, and we have 2 of them) and glass/cans waste all collected fortnightly.
My lengthy trip to North America back in 2013 had several fascinating stops, because in most places I was relying on either public transport or my feet.
Boston was highly instructive, because they've documented a fair bit of the history of this. 1. These streets are too narrow for traffic! Build a highway! 2. Whoops, that highway completely isolated part of the city and made it not much good for anything besides being a giant car park. Bury the highway! 3. Hey, now there's a line of parks marking the old highway route, and the wharves are super trendy.
And then when I got to Seattle... there was a dirty great big multi-level road basically discouraging anyone from going to the waterfront and I thought why the hell would they do that? It turned out they were in the middle of planning to dismantle said road and were asking residents what they wanted on the waterfront once the highway was gone.
I also went to Portland, Oregon, which as I understand it is the only sizeable American city that has succeeded in keeping car use stable and a high percentage of residents use public transport. Consistent land-use and transport planning over many decades made this possible.
I think you are right and wrong. I definitely see your point that most of America is not walkable, so we don't practice walking. On the other hand, Americans very rarely walk when it is pleasant also. I mean I live by the lakefront, and most the reason it became COVID-closed is because people were only using it for sunbathing or wading (in close quarters) and not walking*. The beach is much wider than the sidewalk, so if people did walk there, it would be safer. And hiking on park land is another example. Most people are in favor of protecting national parks but have never been there. Why are we not hiking on our national land? (Saying that as someone who has, loved it, and may miss her next hiking due to effing covid.)
*Racism is also a factor here in why it was closed, but that's off topic, I think. So I will acknowledge it here.
Heh.
The first sofa I ever bought we walked home from the store with. It was about a mile and a half or so, I think. We certainly stopped for a rest a couple of times on the way - fortunately, we had a sofa to sit on.
Racism strongly affected the design of the LA freeway system, but in a different way. The 110 was laid out absolutely straight through South Central Los Angeles, slicing right through that black neighborhood, but the 710, originally intended to go from Long Beach to Pasadena, stops abruptly in Alhambra (dumping traffic onto Valley Blvd there) because South Pasadena is full of wealthy white people who have the power to keep from having their city cut in half. They've been litigating this for 50 years, making all sorts of arguments about how they need clean air, about how beautiful and historic their homes are, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, people who live along the southern portion of the 710 have the worst asthma in the area because of the pollution from the ports and their traffic - and those folks are predominantly brown.
Many Route 66 communities lost out when the development of the Interstate Highway System bypassed them because they just weren't on the main roads anymore. The layout of the interstates in and around cities throughout the country tends to be racist in the way it is in the LA area, but the communities that are now ghost towns because Route 66 was superseded by a freeway had plenty of white folks in them.
It's gone now and it's so much nicer along the waterfront without it!
It wasn't that Canadians were less likely to exercise - there were always plenty of people at the gym, and doing all the exercise classes, and in the swimming pool. It was just people didn't tend to walk to shops and such. It was more common to drive or take a bus to a big shopping mall. So in people's minds, it was too far to walk to the shops, even though they might easily walk that far on a treadmill in the gym.
I have noticed this, too (though not in a Canadian context). I once worked in a building with a small gym on the third (or fourth?) floor, and gym members often took the creaky lift up to the gym rather than climb the grand staircase. Friends of mine who enjoy sport and exercise and brag about their fitness regimes will whine like MoFos if I suggest walking to the restaurant.
I grew up walking everywhere, and we would walk to all sorts of places not just for services within a 15 minute walking distance, but anywhere we wanted to go. We didn't do it for fun, we did it because we didn't have a car, and public transport wasn't always available. (my family had a car when I was growing up, but as a teen and young adult - I didn't)
Good to know. I actually made a mental note at the time that I really wanted to come back to Seattle at some point and find out how it had changed.
It's amazing just how much design can make a difference to these things. Give the stairs a great view and hide the lift, and everyone will take the stairs.
That was on a podcast episode... I thought it was 99% Invisible (which is often about design) but I can't find it now, so maybe it was some other show. There's a building where the stairs are on the outside, with nice wide platforms at each floor where you could have a conversation, and it gets the best views of the city (rather than corner offices getting the best view). The lifts, conversely, are not facing you directly when you enter the foyer but tucked off to the side.
But the general principle is about how you can nudge people towards healthier behaviours by doing relatively small things to encourage it. Make walking attractive and easy, and people will walk.
But other things seldom are.
What's interesting to me is what the trade-offs are. What has to be given up to have a 15-minute city ?
Is it density ? No-one can have a house with a large garden ?
Is it choice ? Are we talking about a city of 250,000 people divided into 25 more-or-less self-contained districts of 10,000 people, with identical facilities ? Including for example a bookshop that stocks only what appeals to the average person.
Is it organic development ? Can such a city only grow by the planned addition of a 26th district ?
Is it mass transit ? Is a high-frequency tram system only viable where there are concentrated land uses (a central business district, rather than 25 x 24 different travel demand vectors ?)
If there such a thing as organic development of cities anywhere in the rich world these days?
15min walking distance in medium density housing (see above) would be closer to districts of 20-30,000 people. If you roll that upto 15min cycling distance then you'd have towns of at least 100,000 all being in that distance. With a proportion of higher density blocks of comfortable sized flats then it wouldn't be impossible for a town of 250,000 to contain 8-10 districts of 25-30,000 people who are all within a short walk of facilities supplying everyday needs (schools, grocery stores, churches, hairdressers, GP and dentist, recreational space, library etc) with the facilities that do need a larger population (community theatre, places of worship for smaller religions, specialist stores and recreational activities etc) within reach either in a central area or as part of the facilities of other districts.
You probably would need to think carefully about mass transit; de-emphasise a spoke-like pattern serving a central district to also include circular routes that directly connect the peripheral areas without (necessarily) also serving the centre. Many of our towns and cities are laid out with ring roads for cars, why not also have bus or light rail follow similar circular routes?
No reason in principle why not.
But rather than seeing buses and trams as intrinsically Good Things that every city should have, I see them as an appropriate economic solution to particular patterns and levels of transport demand.
If demand for any particular movement is too low for bus to be the right solution, you end up in a vicious circle of falling service levels and falling patronage.
In a city in which most journeys are undertaken on foot or by bike, and those that are not are to a dispersed set of destinations, it is conceivable, I suggest, that bus is the wrong solution. And that planners should perhaps be thinking in terms of a fleet of self-driving taxis rather than public transport as we know it.
Though, I agree that where appropriate walking and cycling are the best option, that isn't always appropriate. Many are physically incapable of cycling, or would be under less than ideal weather conditions (it's actually a harder person who gets their bike out during a winter rainy day, even those of us who cycle occasionally think twice then) or won't be comfortable venturing out after dark. So, there needs to be an alternative of bus/tram or train to take people to most places they're likely to go.
This raises other problems, however: you can cycle rather further in 15 minutes than you can walk. There are also issues to do with lighting and safety.