Explainer- The 15-Minute City
There is a lot of debate in the Planning community surrounding the concept of the 15-Minute city. This debate is now beggining to seep into other discourse surrounding what we want our Towns & cities to look like, and how we want our communities to feel.
This article cannot cover every little detail of the 15-Minute city, but it can give you a begining to look further afield to the wide range of articles and debate regarding the topic. It is often the case that the loudest voice is seen as the most correct voice, but it is always worth taking a step back to consider the wide bredth of information before taking a stance.
What is a 15-Minute city?
The 15-Minute City (or Neighbourhood) is a vision for what where you live could look like. People feel forced to travel long distances on a daily basis for basics such as; work, food and even excercise. The idea is to promote local businesses, communities and councils to work together to ensure that everyones basic needs are available without long journeys. The more choice locally- the less you need to spend hours of your life getting to places, giving you more free time to travel for things you actually want to do!
Why is this important?
To put it bluntly, we spend a lot of our lives driving around when we don’t want or need to. How come our nearest supermarket is 3 miles away, or the gym is 5 miles away and only accessible by car? Obviously this is a rhetorical question and some people have what they need nearby but for a lot of people, our neighbourhoods are places where we go home to sleep after work, or because of modern working patterns post covid, the place where we work from in isolation from the outside world.
Traffic congestion is growing, and it feels wasteful to sit in traffic queues for hours when that time could be spent in other productive ways. And, lets not forget the deep irony of driving 5km to do use a treadmill to run for the same distance.
Additionally there is climate change biting at our heels, if we don’t reavaluate our relationship to travel for the sake of travel we will be in a lot of trouble when trying to reach net zero emissions.
Why are Rodgers Leask interested in the 15-Minute city?
At Rodgers Leask, we are hired by the people who built your neighbourhoods to ensure that you are aware of the options available to you in terms of sustainable travel. This means Walking, Cycling and using Public Transport. But, this also means that we know why driving remains the most popular means of transport outside of London.
That is because there is often no other alternative, or that is the perception anyway.
We want to help you find alternatives to driving and a large part of that is making sure that we have a wide range of amenities and facilities on our doorsteps. Part of our role is to keep you informed of changes to your local area, this is through our website, newsletters and by updating your sustainable travel pack periodically.
Mysterious Conspiracy or Boring Urban Planning Idea?
This article was in part written because a lot of the information available regarding the 15-Minute city idea comes from people who seek to dismissing it outright. Partially because it is seen as a “Secret war against drivers” (Daily Mail), or even because it is a “New world order conspiracy” desinged to “keep us trapped in climate change lockdowns” (USA Today Fact Check). When obviously, the idea is about making sure you have access to facilities in your local area. You will always be free to travel anywhere you want.
Part of the problem is we have become acustomed to the way the world works currently. People think everything are OK because they never had the opportunity to experience things differently. But, it can be argued that we have been isolated and had our choice removed from us by the exact model we think gives us limitless convenience.
In terms of choice, think about the questions below;
Do your children walk to school? If not, why?
Is your work within Walking/ Cycling/ Public Transport distance? Or do you have to get in the car to go to the office?
Do you have to drive to visit key services such as your local GP, Dentist or local Library? Or is there some form of public transport?
Rather than letting our whole lives be ran by cars, we could have some more time to ourselves, with our families and not spend rushing around all the time. That is the goal of the 15-Minute city.
This blog post has been shared from our sister site tpc-rodgersleask. Check out more Blog Posts here: https://www.tpc-rodgersleask.co.uk/news
