The 15 Minute City
Yakel Grocery, an early 1900s grocery store in a walkable neighborhood of Lincoln, now converted to housing
The latest trend in city planning is the 15 minute city—the idea that everyone should have access to everyday services within a 15 minute walk or bike ride. The 15 minute city is really just cities before cars were invented. Without easy transportation that allowed us to travel long distances quickly we built our cities to accommodate the transportation we did have which was powered by ourselves. Trolley’s helped to push our cities out further, but that just enabled smaller neighborhoods to grow around the stops providing daily services, allowing residents to take the trolley into downtown for the rest of their needs. Remnants of this are scattered all over cities with two-story brick commercial buildings embedded in neighborhoods. In Lincoln there are many of these sitting vacant now, made illegal by zoning changes decades ago.
The 15 minute city concept appears to have originated in Paris as a reaction to the Pandemic. The idea states neighborhoods should be able to fill six roles—living, working, supplying, caring, learning, and enjoying. Not only does it react to the social issues of the Pandemic, it also addresses concerns for climate change impact. More dense communities that support more walking and biking reduce emissions. It gets people out onto the streets, interacting with their neighbors. The result is better health both socially and environmentally.
The average person walks about 3.5 miles per hour and bikes at 12 miles per hour. The 15 minute city concept translates into a radius of between about 1 to 3 miles, but it really depends on how those streets are designed. One mile of active storefronts and low volumes of traffic is an easy trip compared to walking along four lanes of traffic traveling at speeds of 35 to 40 miles per hour. It makes the trip seem much longer and not worth the effort if you have a car at your disposal.
Walkable area in San Francisco with interesting architecture and plenty of shops making for an easy and pleasant walk.
A stretch of Dodge Street in Omaha with a narrow sidewalk, no buildings, and traffic traveling at an average of 45 miles per hour making it incredibly inhospitable.
Technically I live in a neighborhood that meets the 15 minute city model. I can get to restaurants, my doctor, dentist, two pharmacies, and a grocery store all in one mile of travel. But not all of these establishments fit my needs so I often leave the zone of my “15 minute city” to get what I need. While a great concept, what I struggle with is how you get all the right businesses into these clusters to support the needs of those residents. The categories might be checked, but it doesn’t mean they are the right businesses for the residents to walk or bike to instead of drive elsewhere for their needs. If the goal of the 15 minute city is to reduce the amount you need to drive without eliminating the need altogether, it would seem a reasonable approach. I walk and bike to several of these destinations, but do need to drive to see family, visit other favorite restaurants or breweries, and to get household items like gardening or chicken supplies only available at a big box store several miles away on a busy highway.
With the automobile firmly planted in our everyday life and only gaining stability with electric vehicles on the rise, a return to a pedestrian oriented 15 minute city seems less realistic outside major metropolitan areas like New York City or Boston. I would personally love a return to the streetcar days Lincoln once enjoyed, able to get anywhere in town quickly, but without a robust transit system planned in the near term, I’ll settle for a version of the 15 minute city where I can get to many destinations walking or biking, relying on a vehicle to fill in the gaps.
