15 min city
Ville du quart d'heure (or "city of fifteen minutes") is a project for the city of Paris, launched by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, designed to improve citizen’s quality of life by creating multiple neighborhoods where “you can find everything you need within 15 minutes from home”. The project is based on the visions of Carlos Moreno, a professor at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, and his ideas of a ‘’segmented city’’ that could turn the current traffic-blocked intersections into pedestrian zones. Other examples of similar initiatives are Barcelona’s car-free units called Superblocks and 20-minute neighborhoods in Portland, United States.
We live in fragmented cities, where we often work far from where we live, and many people do not know their neighbors and they feel lonely. Still, the younger generation prefers the dense social interaction of cities. The ‘’city of 15-minutes’’ could be a tool for the ecological transformation of the city, improving the daily life of the inhabitants and prevent the usual crowds that must absolutely be avoided in times of epidemics. As a matter of fact, some experts are already questioning what would happen with urbanism in the post-pandemic future.
Different urban designs could reduce the city’s carbon footprint and increase overall quality of life considering the fact that air pollution kills nearly 800,000 people in Europe a year, largely caused by car traffic. The innovative proposal from Paris is also an attempt to face the post-pandemic world by analyzing recent events. According to Michele Acuto, professor of global urban politics in the School of Design at the University of Melbourne, the cross between urbanism and public health represents a critical territory.
As Michele Acuto stated, “digital infrastructure might be the sanitation of our time”. The others believe that focusing on the social infrastructure (hospitals, schools, and universities, libraries, public parks, and transportation) could combat the isolation and create more human and resilient post-pandemic urban life. However, there is a logical assumption that there will be small shifts in urban design to separate the people and facilitate them easier protection. Also, the transformation in the city’s design highly depends on the impact of the coronavirus outbreak as a whole. For example, increased numbers in online, delivery-oriented retailers will have a profound impact on the way our cities function.
The ‘’city of 15-minutes’’ could be a fundamental change in the way we design and live in the cities, shifting from a car-centric to a human-focused mindset. This new hyper-proximity could be a great opportunity to include automated vehicle services to reduce traffic congestion. We need to better design for the crowded places where the viruses can easily spread (example: airports and security screening where all passengers need to wait together in the same line).
Many professionals including architects and historians have been examining how a city should be organized, and Lewis Mumford’s definition, ‘’the city is above all else a theater of social action”. Even though the famous architect Le Corbusier advocated for the cities to have separate regions for varying purposes and he prioritized efficiency and movement, he understood the social and cultural value of the city. People bumping into each other give energy to the city and support social relations.
