15-minute city

15-minute city, an urban planning concept in which all amenities—health care, grocery stores, schools, parks, and the like—can be reached within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. The conversion of existing neighborhoods and cities into 15-minute cities would transform areas that currently depend on car travel into self-contained living centers. Proponents of the concept see it as a way to reduce pollution and traffic while promoting sustainable living and public health. The idea has been touted by some politicians and urban planners as a solution to climate change. Although the 15-minute city has grown increasingly popular in urban planning circles, some conspiracy theorists have posited that retrofitting cities in this way is part of a widespread government attack on individual freedoms.

History

The blueprint for the 15-minute city has been around for centuries. Older neighborhoods in cities across the globe, made as they are for pedestrians, have long been structured so that basic urban necessities are a short distance from residents’ dwellings. However, with the rise of modernism and the automobile, cities began to expand outward and decentralize, making certain amenities much harder to reach without a car. Throughout the 20th century this urban sprawl led to the construction of new car-centric neighborhoods in and around many urban centers. This new urban structure caused an uptick in air pollution and congestion and contributed to a decline in social interaction and physical fitness. As the consequences of heavy car usage became increasingly clear in the 21st century, more and more urban planners began pushing for a return to pre-automotive city constructions.

The term 15-minute city was coined (in French as la ville du quart d’heure) in 2016 by Carlos Moreno, an urban planner, a professor at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a science adviser to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo (2014– ). He and his colleagues defined the concept as a new model for the modern city in which there are multiple nodes with all the amenities necessary for modern life rather than a single city center. They intended to capitalize on the city’s density, allowing locally accessible services to support a large number of people and encouraging community interaction. The 15-minute city provides a pathway to what Moreno calls “chrono-urbanism,” a planning philosophy that prioritizes the city dweller’s use of personal time. Certain aspects of the concept—more bicycle lanes, green spaces, and mixed-use zones—were implemented relatively quickly in Paris, where Mayor Hidalgo made vastly reducing the presence of cars on city streets one of her priorities in an effort to curb climate change.

Impact of COVID-19

The 15-minute city spiked in popularity at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as city officials and residents, confined to their immediate neighborhoods by quarantine measures, scrutinized their built environments and found them lacking. For example, the need for safe bicycle lanes skyrocketed as public safety measures prevented people without cars from using public transportation. As the pandemic wore on, city officials began to think about how to “build back better” for when the crisis abated. This became a catchphrase and call to action for the international C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), a network of the mayors of nearly a hundred of the world’s major cities who seek to address the climate crisis.

(Read Britannica’s essay “What was the impact of COVID-19?”)

The C40 “build back better” plan cited a number of cities that had successfully implemented aspects of the 15-minute city concept prior to the lockdowns of 2020. It highlighted Portland, Oregon’s 2015 pledge to provide its residents with a network of bicycle lanes and public transit, allowing easy access to nonwork necessities, and Barcelona’s “superblock” concept, which closed minor streets within a certain perimeter to through traffic. Cities that adopted aspects of the 15-minute city as part of their post-pandemic recovery plans include Madrid (which is also planning to use superblocks), Edinburgh, Seattle, and Milan. NEOM, a futuristic urban development project, includes the Line, a planned skyscraper that would contain an entire city in Saudi Arabia, using the principles of the 15-minute city in its current design.

The implementation of 15-minute city plans was met with resistance in some cities, as a small number of residents feared a so-called climate lockdown. This conspiracy theory suggested that 15-minute cities were part of a greater plan to control urban populations; indeed, it interpreted the goal of having all necessities located within each neighborhood to mean that residents would be forbidden from leaving their neighborhood. Such notions first spread on online platforms such as TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter) and drew on existing fears of government overreach in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This conspiracy theory led to in-person protests in a number of cities. For example, thousands gathered in Oxford, England, to decry proposed bus lanes, which protesters believed were part of a government plan to track and restrict residents’ movements. This rhetoric, alongside restrictive zoning laws, proved to be a major obstacle for city governments hoping to transition to more-sustainable urban environments.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe