Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Carol Masser. In urban planning circles, the idea
Speaker 1: of a fifteen minutes city is becoming the new utopia,
Speaker 1: as Bloomberg Business Week reports and its special New Economy issue.
Speaker 1: The concept was developed primarily to reduce urban carbon emissions,
Speaker 1: reimagining our towns not as divided into discrete zones, but
Speaker 1: as mosaics of neighborhoods in which almost all residents needs
Speaker 1: can be met within fifteen minutes of their homes on foot,
Speaker 1: by bike, or on public transit. Walkable neighborhoods and villages
Speaker 1: were the norm long before automobiles and zoning codes spread
Speaker 1: out and divided up cities in the twentieth century. Yet
Speaker 1: the fifteen minutes city represents a major departure from the
Speaker 1: recent past. Leaders from Paris to Portland are all working
Speaker 1: towards similar visions, and they've been further emboldened by the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Their hope is to refashion cities as places for a
Speaker 1: more local and somewhat slower way of life, where commuting
Speaker 1: time is instead invested in richer relationships with what's nearby.
Speaker 1: Skeptics they'll worry that in an era of deep social distress,
Speaker 1: that concept may exacerbate existing inequities. At Facebook, we've tripled
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Speaker 1: in fifteen Paris and other metros want to be fifteen
Speaker 1: minute cities where residents needs can all be met nearby?
Speaker 1: Can the approach work in car centric places without leaving
Speaker 1: anyone out? By Virgos O'Sullivan and Laura Bliss, The Minim
Speaker 1: Barracks in Paris don't look like the future of cities.
Speaker 1: A staid brick and limestone complex established in along the
Speaker 1: backstreet in the Moray district, It's the sort of structure
Speaker 1: you pass without a second glance into place as photogenic
Speaker 1: as Paris. A closer look at its courtyard, however, reveals
Speaker 1: a striking transfer formation. The barracks former parking lot has
Speaker 1: become a public garden planted with saplings. The surrounding buildings
Speaker 1: have been converted to seventy unusually attractive public housing apartments
Speaker 1: at a cost of twelve point three million euros about
Speaker 1: fourteen point five million dollars. Elsewhere in the revamped complex
Speaker 1: our offices, a day care facility, artisan workshops, a clinic
Speaker 1: and a cafe staffed by people with autism. The green,
Speaker 1: mixed use, community friendly approach extends to the streets beyond
Speaker 1: five minutes down the road. The vast Place de la
Speaker 1: Bastie has been renovated as part of a city funded
Speaker 1: thirty million euro revamp of seven major squares. No longer
Speaker 1: a roaring island of traffic, it's now dedicated mainly to pedestrians,
Speaker 1: with rows of trees where asphalt once lay. A stream
Speaker 1: of bikes runs through the square along a freshly repaved
Speaker 1: protected Corona Piste, one of the bike freeways introduced to
Speaker 1: make cycling across Greater Paris easier during the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaker 1: Make City Hall has since announced that the lanes will
Speaker 1: be permanent, backed by three hundred million euros in ongoing
Speaker 1: funding from the region and top ups from municipalities in
Speaker 1: the French government. Taken together, the new trees and cycleways,
Speaker 1: community facilities and social housing, homes and workplaces all reflect
Speaker 1: a potentially transformative vision for urban planners. The fifteen minute city.
Speaker 1: The fifteen minute city represents the possibility of a decentralized city,
Speaker 1: says Carlos Moreno, a scientific director and professor specializing in
Speaker 1: complex systems and innovation at University of Paris. One at
Speaker 1: its heart is the concept of mixing urban social functions
Speaker 1: to create a vibrant vicinity replicated like fractals across an
Speaker 1: entire urban expanse. Named Paris Mayor and Hidalgo's special envoy
Speaker 1: for Smart Cities, Moreno has become a kind of deputy
Speaker 1: philosopher at city Hall as it endeavors to turn the
Speaker 1: French capital into what he calls a city of proximities.
Speaker 1: His fifteen minute concept was developed primarily to reduce urban
Speaker 1: carbon emissions, reimagining our towns not as divided into discrete
Speaker 1: zones for living, working, and entertainment, but as mosaics of
Speaker 1: neighborhoods in which almost all residents needs can be met
Speaker 1: within fifteen minutes of their homes, on foot, by bike,
Speaker 1: or on public transit. As workplaces, stores, and homes are
Speaker 1: brought into closer proximity. Street space previously dedicated to cars
Speaker 1: is freed up, eliminating pollution and making way for gardens,
Speaker 1: bike lanes, and sports and leisure facilities. All of this
Speaker 1: allows residents to bring their daily activities out of their homes,
Speaker 1: which in Paris tend to be small, and into welcoming,
Speaker 1: safe streets and squares. Similar ideas have been around for
Speaker 1: a long time, including in Paris itself. Walkable neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: villages were the norm long before automobiles and zoning codes
Speaker 1: spread out and divided up cities in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Yet the fifteen minute city represents a major departure from
Speaker 1: the recent past, and in a growing number of other cities,
Speaker 1: it's become a powerful brand for planners and politicians desperate
Speaker 1: to sell residents on a carbon light existence. Leaders in Barcelona, Detroit, London, Melbourne, Milan,
Speaker 1: and Portland, Oregon are all working towards similar visions. They've
Speaker 1: been further emboldened by the pandemic, with global Mayor's touting
Speaker 1: the model in a July report from the Sea Forty
Speaker 1: Cities Climate Leadership Group as central to their recovery road maps.
Speaker 1: With climate change, COVID nineteen and political upheaval all challenging
Speaker 1: the ideals of globalism, the hope is to refashion cities
Speaker 1: as places primarily for people to walk, bike, and linger
Speaker 1: in rather than commute to. The fifteen minute city calls
Speaker 1: for return to a more local and somewhat slower way
Speaker 1: of life, where commuting time is instead invested in richer
Speaker 1: relationships with what's nearby. These crises show us the possibility
Speaker 1: for rediscovering proximity moreno, says Big, as we now have
Speaker 1: the possibility to stay closer to home, people have rediscovered
Speaker 1: useful time, another pace for living. It's a utopian vision
Speaker 1: in an era of deep social distress, but one that might,
Speaker 1: if carried out piecemeal without an eye to equality, exacerbate
Speaker 1: existing inequities. Skeptics also wonder whether a city that's no
Speaker 1: longer organized around getting to work is really a city
Speaker 1: at all. Dreams of breaking down the segmented urban planning
Speaker 1: that dominated the twentieth century, with industry on the outskirts,
Speaker 1: residential areas ringing the city, commerce in the core, and
Speaker 1: auto networks connecting long distances, of course, aren't new. Urban
Speaker 1: thinkers have been advocating for the preservation or return of walkable,
Speaker 1: socially mixed neighborhoods at least since the publication of Jane
Speaker 1: Jacobs p m to Manhattan's Kinwich Village in the Death
Speaker 1: and Life of Great American Cities. This advocacy has slowly
Speaker 1: filtered into mainstream planning orthodoxy. Copenhagen pedestrianized its main shopping
Speaker 1: street in nineteen sixty two, the first of many densely
Speaker 1: built European cities to take this approach in their downtown cores.
Speaker 1: In the US, the so called new urbanism of the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and nineties created a planning template first fully
Speaker 1: realized in Seaside, Florida, that saw a preference for row
Speaker 1: houses and departments over detached houses, as well as for walkable,
Speaker 1: tree lined streets and a careful dispersal of schools, stores,
Speaker 1: and parks to reduce the need to drive. Since the
Speaker 1: turn of the millennium, rising concerns over air pollution and
Speaker 1: climate change have led to further innovations, such as the
Speaker 1: congestion charge London introduced in two thousand three for cars
Speaker 1: driving into the center, and massive expansions of public transit
Speaker 1: networks in cities from Moscow to Medain. The fifteen minute
Speaker 1: city concept draws all these trends into an intuitive rubric
Speaker 1: that ordinary residents can test against their own experiences. It's
Speaker 1: also served as a response to pressures wrought by property
Speaker 1: speculation and rising tourism, which have pushed up rents and
Speaker 1: driven residents and businesses out of some long standing communities.
Speaker 1: The fifteen minute City seeks to protect the vitality that
Speaker 1: made diverse, locally oriented neighborhoods attractive in the first place.
Speaker 1: Paris has been moving in this direction for some time,
Speaker 1: under the mayorship of the Socialist Parties Hidalgo, who was
Speaker 1: first elected in March, the city introduced bands on the
Speaker 1: most polluting motor vehicles, transformed busy roads flanking the Seine
Speaker 1: into a linear park, and, in a bid to maintain
Speaker 1: socially mixed communities, expanded the city's network of public housing
Speaker 1: into wealthier areas. It wasn't until twenty twenty, however, that
Speaker 1: Hidalgo grouped these efforts together under the umbrella of the
Speaker 1: fifteen Minute City, plucking the term from the academic realm
Speaker 1: and giving it new political urgency. During her re election campaign,
Speaker 1: she teamed with the concept's originator Moreno, a former robotics
Speaker 1: specialist who had realized that his primary interest was the
Speaker 1: environment in which robots functioned. Hidalgo had already laid much
Speaker 1: of the political groundwork for Moreno's blueprint in her first term.
Speaker 1: Now she could link all those bike paths and car
Speaker 1: lane closures with a vision that matched the vibrancy and
Speaker 1: convenience of a metropolis with the ease and greenery of
Speaker 1: a village. Since winning re election in June, she's doubled down,
Speaker 1: appointing a commissioner for the fifteen minute city, Karine Roland,
Speaker 1: a Socialist Party counselor who had previously served in a
Speaker 1: culture oriented role in the eighteenth Arndissements. Roland also became
Speaker 1: Paris's culture commissioner. It's true that Paris is already a
Speaker 1: fifteen minute city to an extent, she says, but not
Speaker 1: at the same level in all neighborhoods and not to
Speaker 1: all sections of the public. There's much to be done
Speaker 1: in the working class districts on Paris's eastern edge and
Speaker 1: in many quarters close to the Boulevard Periferic Beltway, for example.
Speaker 1: In areas like these, social housing towers frequently predominate, and
Speaker 1: grocery stores and community facilities such as sport centers and
Speaker 1: clinics are sparse. This is particularly acute consequences for older
Speaker 1: people and those with limited mobility. Roulan points out closer
Speaker 1: to Paris's heart, she says, are areas characterized by what
Speaker 1: we call mono activity, a single commercial activity occupying a
Speaker 1: whole street. These are notably around the eastern section of
Speaker 1: the city's inner ring of boulevards, which are dominated by
Speaker 1: offices and small shops, leaving streets that are lively on
Speaker 1: workdays to become quiet and uninviting on evenings and weekends.
Speaker 1: Roland's job as fifteen minute City Commissioner entails coordinating related
Speaker 1: efforts by different departments. In September, for example, ten Parisian
Speaker 1: school grounds reopened as green Oasis yards, bringing the total
Speaker 1: to forty one since the initiative began in Each has
Speaker 1: been planted with trees and remodeled with soft rain absorbent
Speaker 1: surfaces that will help battle the summer heat. The yards
Speaker 1: are left available after school for use as public gardens
Speaker 1: or sports ounds, and they open onto revamped school streets
Speaker 1: where cars are banned or severely limited, and where trees
Speaker 1: and benches have been added. Transformations like these, Rouland explains,
Speaker 1: involved bringing together departments responsible for education, sports, roads and parks,
Speaker 1: as well as local business and community organizations. Paris is
Speaker 1: far from alone in attempting this sort of transformation. London's
Speaker 1: new Mini Hollands import Dutch planning ideas that seek to
Speaker 1: reduce or block car access to neighborhood shopping hubs. Barcelona
Speaker 1: has been turning four hundred by four hundred meter chunks
Speaker 1: of road in areas dominated by apartment towers into mostly
Speaker 1: car free superblocks. Madrid has declared plans to copy that approach,
Speaker 1: in keeping with its goal to be a city of
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes as it recovers from the pandemic. Milan has
Speaker 1: said the same, with hopes to turn COVID bike lanes
Speaker 1: and sidewalks permanent as its economy restabilizes. But turning the
Speaker 1: fifteen minute city into a truly global movement will require
Speaker 1: a big battle over a core urban tension, the primacy
Speaker 1: of the car. It's one thing to turn a Paris
Speaker 1: or a Barcelona, cities that were almost completely shaped before
Speaker 1: the automobile was invented into a neighborhood centric utopia. Transforming
Speaker 1: them is rather like giving a supermodel a makeover. Challenge
Speaker 1: is far greater in the kinds of younger sprawling cities
Speaker 1: found in North America or Australia, where cars remain the
Speaker 1: dominant form of transit. Some are trying since Melbourne has
Speaker 1: been working on a long term planning blueprint centered on
Speaker 1: the twenty minute neighborhood. But while the city's aspirations are
Speaker 1: similar to paris Is, the issues involved in implementing them
Speaker 1: could scarcely be more different, especially in areas beyond the
Speaker 1: already densifying core and inner suburbs. Some middle suburbs are
Speaker 1: well served by public transport and are starting to experience densification,
Speaker 1: but others aren't on the bandwag and, explains ros Hanson,
Speaker 1: an urbanist who oversaw the preparation of Melbourne's blueprint. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the outer suburbs are still at very low densities, partly
Speaker 1: because of poor public transport connections. The city has tried
Speaker 1: to improve transportation and job options in the outer suburbs,
Speaker 1: which are marked by single family homes. Some of the
Speaker 1: middle suburbs have hosted pilot projects where new mixed commercial
Speaker 1: residential developments are being encouraged and streets are being remodeled
Speaker 1: to increase cycling space and improve walkability, but to create
Speaker 1: and connect true twenty minute neighborhoods, Investment in public transit
Speaker 1: will be key. De bureaucrats kept thinking, oh, this is
Speaker 1: also about getting in your car for a twenty minute trip.
Speaker 1: But it's got nothing to do with the car, Hanson says.
Speaker 1: The twenty minute neighborhood is about active modes of transport
Speaker 1: and increasing in area's catchment of accessibility. If you're walking,
Speaker 1: one to two kilometers is your catchment. If you're cycling,
Speaker 1: it could be up to five to seven kilometers. With
Speaker 1: public transport, it can be tend to fifteen kilometers. U
Speaker 1: S cities holding similarly optimistic blueprints are also struggling to
Speaker 1: strike a balance between vision and reality. In sixteen, Detroit
Speaker 1: Mayor Mike Duggan laid out a plan to turn high
Speaker 1: density corridors outside the central business district in his sprawling
Speaker 1: on forty square mile city into twenty minute neighborhoods. Its
Speaker 1: leading edge thus far is a seventeen million dollar pedestrian
Speaker 1: upgrade in the Livernoi McNichols area, nine miles northeast of downtown.
Speaker 1: The project concluded in early with an emphasis on narrower
Speaker 1: streets wider sidewalks for cafe seating, and new lighting. Residents
Speaker 1: and business owners have been largely pleased with the improvements.
Speaker 1: A walk to the supermarket is now a much more
Speaker 1: pleasant ambition, but that basic urban function is out of
Speaker 1: reach for the vast majority of the city. An estimated
Speaker 1: thirty thousand citizens lack access to a full service grocery store,
Speaker 1: according to a seventeen report by the Detroit Food Policy Council.
Speaker 1: Katie Trudeau, the city's deputy director of Planning and Development,
Speaker 1: says it wasn't long ago that many people had to
Speaker 1: travel to the suburbs for shopping and other errands. That's
Speaker 1: improved overall, and nine other districts have been targeted for
Speaker 1: upgrades along the lines of the one in Libernois McNichols. Yet,
Speaker 1: chronic fiscal problems and large swaths of blighted structures left
Speaker 1: vacant as the city's population declined have made rapid transformation implausible.
Speaker 1: So far, most of Detroit's achievements under the twenty minute
Speaker 1: rubric have been modest, including moves toward a comprehensive transportation
Speaker 1: plan and ongoing investments in lighting and resurfacing. Trudeau also
Speaker 1: points to a new fifty million dollar public private Affordable
Speaker 1: Housing Fund, which seeks to help low income residents stay
Speaker 1: in place as property values rise in redeveloping neighborhoods. These
Speaker 1: things might seem really basic in Paris, but here we've
Speaker 1: suffered so much in the form of population laws and
Speaker 1: financial uncertainty in the form of bankruptcy. She says. We
Speaker 1: have to balance these concentrated strategies with citywide strategies that
Speaker 1: help everyone with their quality of life. The twenty minute
Speaker 1: label has served mainly as useful shorthand to communicate the
Speaker 1: city's goals with residents and investors. Trudeau hopes initiatives such
Speaker 1: as the Housing Fund will ensure that it includes a
Speaker 1: diverse cross section of the population. Detroit's plans were partly
Speaker 1: inspired by Portland, Oregon, which is celebrated in urbanist circles
Speaker 1: as a model of US city planning. Portland has the
Speaker 1: highest rate of bike commuting of any major American metro,
Speaker 1: a tight boundary that defines how much it can sprawl,
Speaker 1: and forward thinking policies aimed at spurring dense, lower cost
Speaker 1: housing production. We're often mixed up with Paris, jokes Chris Warner,
Speaker 1: director of the Portland Bureau of transportation PBOT. Yet even there,
Speaker 1: it will take years to achieve the level of compactness
Speaker 1: that makes for a complete neighborhood, as the city's plan
Speaker 1: phrased its goal. About three quarters of Portland's residential land
Speaker 1: is occupied primarily by single family homes, and more than
Speaker 1: half of its population commutes by car. A recent Brookings
Speaker 1: Institution report that studied local travel behaviors found that among
Speaker 1: six US metropolitan areas, Portland had the shortest average trip
Speaker 1: distance for people traveling to work, shopping, and errands, but
Speaker 1: that distance was still six point two miles, hardly a
Speaker 1: fifteen minute walk or bike ride to the dentist or laundromat.
Speaker 1: To combat this, p VOT is spending most of its
Speaker 1: one fifty million dollar capital improvement budget on bike and
Speaker 1: walking infrastructure inside complete neighborhoods and on transit to connect them.
Speaker 1: Eight Thomer, a fellow at Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and
Speaker 1: co author of the report, says the fifteen minute concept
Speaker 1: falls flat in America because people in the US already
Speaker 1: live in a fifteen minute city. It's just that they're
Speaker 1: covering vast distances in a car. Planners concerned with urban
Speaker 1: livability and rising carbon emissions might do well to focus
Speaker 1: on distance rather than time, he says. He suggests that
Speaker 1: the three mile city might resonate better. However, the concept
Speaker 1: is cast art. Pierce P. Bot S, manager of Policy,
Speaker 1: Planning and Projects, sees signs that Portlanders are keeping their
Speaker 1: travel closer to home as the pandemic changes the way
Speaker 1: they relate to their surroundings. We're seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: people adjusting their behaviors to focus more on their communities.
Speaker 1: He says. That produces an opportunity to strengthen those ties
Speaker 1: as people return to a more normal life. One thing
Speaker 1: would be fifteen minutes cities. Everywhere we'll have to reckon
Speaker 1: with is social equity and affordable housing. In particular, as
Speaker 1: Detroit's Trudeau points out, many neighborhood services rely on lower
Speaker 1: income workers who often make long commutes, and a fifteen
Speaker 1: minute city isn't really one if only the well off
Speaker 1: can stay put. To that end, Paris aspires to have
Speaker 1: thirty percent of its housing stock in the public domain
Speaker 1: by and it's been increasing the share even in richer districts,
Speaker 1: despite resistance from well healed neighbors. It is completely part
Speaker 1: of an Hidalgo's program to resist real estate pressure, to
Speaker 1: maintain public housing and to diversify the housing offered for
Speaker 1: the middle class. Says Roland, the Fifteen Minute City commissioner.
Speaker 1: Such measures can, to a degree counterbalance Paris's trends towards
Speaker 1: high rents and social polarization, but in a city where
Speaker 1: property prices rose even during the pandemic, they're unlikely to
Speaker 1: prevail completely, and other goals of the fifteen Minute City,
Speaker 1: such as greening and pedestrianizing the heart of Paris, risk
Speaker 1: alienating lower income suburban commuters. This accusation was leveled against
Speaker 1: Hidalgo's administration in sixteen after it introduced changes to the
Speaker 1: Sens Lower Quayside that eliminated a key route for car commuters.
Speaker 1: Valerie Pecres, president of the Regional Council for El de France,
Speaker 1: which encompasses Paris's suburbs, accused Hidalgo of acting in an
Speaker 1: egotistical manner by pushing through road closures, noting that some
Speaker 1: people don't have any solution other than driving into Paris
Speaker 1: for work because they don't have the means to live there.
Speaker 1: Others have pointed out a related concern that by prioritizing
Speaker 1: local infrastructure, governments will overlook badly needed regional investments, such
Speaker 1: as in transit systems serving long distance commuters. Moreno recognizes
Speaker 1: that large segments of the population might never enjoy the
Speaker 1: slower paced localized life he envisions. Of course, we need
Speaker 1: to adapt this concept for different realities. He says not
Speaker 1: all people have the possibility of having jobs within fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: but he emphasizes that many people's circumstances could be profoundly changed,
Speaker 1: something he believes we're already seeing because of the pandemics
Speaker 1: canceled commutes. In his view, centralized corporate offices are a
Speaker 1: thing of the past, telework and constellations of coworking hubs
Speaker 1: or the future. The fifteen minutes city could also be
Speaker 1: seen as what writer den Ill identified as a form
Speaker 1: of post traumatic urbanism, a way to recover from the
Speaker 1: onslaughts of such things as property speculation, over tourism, and
Speaker 1: now the pandemic. Already it's become clear. In Paris, Roulan
Speaker 1: says that the city needs a more localized medical network
Speaker 1: so people don't feel they have to go straight to
Speaker 1: the emergency room following the unending traumas of there's an
Speaker 1: appealing nostalgia to a renewed emphasis on neighborhoods, even if
Speaker 1: it addresses only some of the city's modern challenges. This, too,
Speaker 1: Merino acknowledges, pointing yet again to his ideas recuperative possibilities.
Speaker 1: Above all, the fifteen Minute City is a journey, a guideline,
Speaker 1: a possibility for transforming the paradigm for how we live
Speaker 1: over the next many decades. He says, before people were
Speaker 1: losing useful time with the fifteen minute City, we want
Speaker 1: them to regain it. And that's Plumberg Business Week reporting
Speaker 1: in its special New Economy issue. You can check out
Speaker 1: more just go online at Bloomberg dot com and of
Speaker 1: course always on the Bloomberg terminal. I'm Carol Masser. The
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