Will 15-minute cities become a reality?

The bustling city has been full of human activity since people first settled there. With more people attracted to urban life, the population density of a city expanded as a sprawling metropolis packed with buildings, roads, and rail systems. But somewhere along the way, most likely over the last century, the city became decentralised. City dwellers felt compelled to move out of the urban centre and live in the suburbs, with the promise of having more space and access to nature.

As people continued to work and shop in the city centre, they required the use of a car or public transport to get around. This was the intention – urban enthusiast Charles Montgomery’s book Happy City suggests. Urban growth wasn’t necessarily accommodating people as it was to make room for cars.

It’s unsustainable to rely on travelling long distances for work, social interaction and more, via cars and public transport, but this wasn’t obvious until 2020. Now, people of all ages “are demanding something different. They want lively, sophisticated places where they can walk, and where they can still have freedom beyond the age of eighty”. Enter the concept of the 15-minute city.

“The rhythm of the city should follow humans, not cars. Each square metre should serve a different purpose. And neighbourhoods should be designed so we can live, work, and thrive, so we don’t need to commute” - Carlos Moreno.

15-minute cities

Reusing every square metre of land in a residential area, the polycentric city or 15-minute city is described by its pioneer, Carlos Moreno, as “the essence of what constitutes the urban experience – access to work, food, health, education, culture and leisure” within a radius of a 15-minute walk or bike ride. His vision is a place “lined with trees where people can meet and work, walk to [the] bakery, [where] children walk to school.” 15-minute cities have multiple benefits, from providing a better work-life balance and improving well-being and overall health conditions, to build wealth in a local area.

“15-minute cities answer the question of saving time by suggesting a different pace of life. A 15-minute pace” - Carlos Moreno.

Living in a polycentric city means that instead of trekking across the city each day to commute to work, buy food, and access key services, you can simply walk or cycle there. Replacing driving with cycling or walking contributes towards a healthy population who use “active travel” to get around. It also makes neighbourhoods more pleasant to live in. The local region becomes more “walkable,” but it doesn’t mean you can’t leave the 15-minute city.

Moreno explains that it’s “not angling for cities to be rural hamlets. Your life should be dynamic”. He means that you don’t have to be stuck in one place all the time but within a 15-minute city, everything you need to live day to day is available. But you can still maintain freedom of movement, and the decisions about where to go and what to do in the city are totally up to each individual.

Dror Poleg, the author of After Office: A survival guide for cities, companies, and humans, lives close to New York City. He embraces a 15-minute city to access all his daily needs within his neighbourhood. But when he’s attending an event, seeing a show, or visiting a world-famous museum, he’ll hop on a train into the city. Having the best of both worlds is possible, and the bottom line is – people contribute to city life by simply being there.

“Cities are built by people” - Alain Bertaud.

People can work from anywhere

By empowering people to rethink how and where they live and we work, 15-minute cities can revolutionise societies. The concept has been evolving for a while now, but it accelerated during the pandemic after the workforce was largely plunged into a remote working lifestyle made possible with laptops and smart devices, as well as digital tools to connect distributed teams.

Working from home or the “zero-minute commute” – simply rolling out of bed to start work at the computer in a matter of seconds – became a wildly popular place of work. In part, it’s because “two-fifths of professionals consider the commute the worst part of their day,” reports Bloomberg about the slog of getting the train or bus to the office. After all, who enjoys spending hours packed on a train or stuck in a traffic jam? Given the choice of whether or not to go back into the office, many chose not to.

The problem is even communicating online with your coworkers doesn’t replace human connection. Poleg reckons: “[Existing] ways of communicating and sharing knowledge doesn’t translate well online.” Three years after we were told to stay inside, remote working 5 days a week is actually becoming more unfavourable.

“If you want people to be in your building, you’ve got to attract them every day” - Dror Poleg.

The rise of flex

The freedom of choice nowadays empowers people, not towards working in the office five days a week or 100% remotely from home, but to work hybrid between multiple spaces – the office, home, and a third space – which constitutes a hotel, coffee shop, gym, or anywhere with a decent WIFI connection. This shift in hybrid working marks the “office crisis”, Dror reckons. This is how the 15-minute city comes into play.

Corporations are listening to their workers’ needs, decentralising their real estate strategy to take up leases in smaller flexible workspaces or coworking offices much closer to home. Most recently in the UK, HSBC announced a move out of its famous 45-storey office tower in Canary Wharf to downsize in the City. The boom of local coworking across multiple neighbourhoods means that the 15-minute city might already be a reality.

Often described as a collection of villages complete the high streets lined with commercial units, London can quite feasible be a mass of multiple polycentric cities. In October 2021, the London borough of Newham was awarded nearly £40 million to “reactivate vacant council-owned buildings on high streets (places for community and enterprise), boost green space (shared spaces), and improve cycling and walking infrastructure in and between neighbourhoods (our connected neighbourhoods).”

Staying local

Local coworking spaces facilitate the active commute within 15-minute cities. Replacing empty high street units or bust retail units with workspaces increasing footfall in a local area, and benefit businesses located around the workspace too. Food and beverage providers benefit from an increase in workers around the area, as workers buy coffee or lunch, and local shops, entertainment spaces like cinemas, and leisure spaces including gyms and yoga studios, also benefit from more people in the area. This all creates an ecosystem of prosperity.

Workspaces have even been integrated into the development of residential areas themselves. The 15-minute city of Loksdadt in the historical industrial city of Winterthur in Switzerland aims to “serve around 2,500 people as a place to live and work and will have a decisive influence of Winterthur’s city life as a lively, open and future-oriented city.” The city is designed for residents of multiple ages, and plans for commercial, coworking, hotel, manufacturing, food an beverage providers in a diverse residential neighbourhood.

“People are the focus of development [at Loksdadt]” - Marc Pointet, CEO at Ina Invest.

Community is the key

Workspaces also don’t just operate as places for work, but often blur the lines between living and working. It’s a place for community events and knowledge exchange across a diverse range of people. Working in the 15-minute city benefits us, Dror says, because putting people together in a place causes innovation, as “people bounce ideas off one another”.

“Cities exist for people to get together”, says urban planner Alain Bertaud who explains that “when people with different skills get together, they are more productive”. In order to work effectively, the urban plan of 15-minute cities must bring people together by providing a number of necessary services.

Not everyone is on board with 15-minute cities

Whilst the 15-minute city concept seems really exciting to many, with hope that new developments will bring additional revenue into local areas, the issue of gentrification could be viewed negatively. It often contributes to increasing house prices and the risk of community displacement. Protests in Oxford against a new traffic system at the start of the year shows how concerned some people are, especially when they view the 15-minute concept as a restriction to their freedom of movement.

An article on Cities Today reports that the disgruntlement of 15-minute cities might appear too high-level, limiting people from relevant conversations. But even Bertaud is uncertain whether 15-minute cities work, telling Poleg how it’s “absurd…If we are talking about daily food, it won’t work”. He’s worried that it might restrict people from embracing the rich cultural experiences of city life, for instance, Parisian residents might not experience the wonders of the Louvre or Palais du Garnier if they’re trapped in their neighbourhood that’s only a train ride away from the city. But again, this isn’t about restricting anyone. More like having the best of both worlds depending on needs.

Perhaps the concept of 15-minute cities and remote work will change the urban landscape of cities for the long-term, like how industrialisation changed rural areas back in the nineteenth-century? The process of which will forge stronger communities, supportive businesses and greater ecosystems that work together rather than seek external support, thus becoming more sustainable. People will feel empowered having more choice, the choice of where and how they work, live, and play.

What do you think will happen to cities in future, now we don`t solely depend on them for work?

"The machine turned Nature into an art form. For the first time, men began to regard Nature as a source of aesthetic & spiritual values." - McLuhan

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