A Plan for York

Some urban theorists have advocated that planners embrace the idea of 15-minute cities. Ratti and Florida have written for the World Economic Forum saying:

“Developed by French urbanist Carlos Moreno, 15-minute city refers to a place where all the necessities of daily life – shops, schools, workplaces, doctor’s offices, parks, libraries, restaurants and other amenities – are located in a short 15-minute walk or bike ride from home.”

This gives all residents access to their needs a convenient walk away. However, the concept of a 15 minute city can too easily lead to layouts where larger areas are made up from separate residential bubbles – like Patrick Abercrombie’s 1944 plan for London. This was made up of separate residential neighbourhoods that did not interact with each other. In mathematical language this structure is a tree structure, where the leaves do not interact with each other.

Christopher Alexander’s, A city is not a tree opposed this type of thinking, emphasising how neighbouring elements share facilities in a graph-like structure. This work profoundly changed urban planning. Published in 1965, it served as a major theoretical catalyst shifting planning away from rigid, top-down modernism toward more organic, interconnected, and human-centric design.

Alexander’s analysis is echoed in the reservations that Ratti and Florida made about 15 minute cities :

“Instead of a complete 15-minute city, we propose to think of something akin to a “15-minute baseline”. That more circumscribed term can serve to remind us of the important fact that the truly vibrant parts of the city often begin when the first 15 minutes end. With easy access to the essentials, we can save our longer trips for where we need them: to encounter and participate in that diversity and specialization that are only possible at the scale of a real city and metro area.”

The key ideas in 15 minute are to make life more pleasant by providing local services and minimise the pollution and anti-social effects of traffic. Who would argue with that?

However, Ratti and Florida point out that 15 minute cities do little for the less advantaged. They characterise residents of 15 minute cities as “urban gentry”:

“15-minute communities do little to alter the harsh realities of economic and geographic inequality. They promise close-by amenities and luxurious walkability for the well-to-do urban gentry. They are mainly a fit for affluent urban neighbourhoods and far less a fit in the disadvantaged parts of our cities. As Harvard University’s Ed Glaeser points out, less advantaged groups are hardly able to live their life in their own disadvantaged neighbourhoods, which lack jobs, grocery stores and amenities found in more upscale communities.”

See also A guide to 15-minute cities: why are they so controversial?