Headline Roundup • February 24th, 2023
Would '15-Minute Cities' Improve Urban Life?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
How would "15-minute cities" alter urban life?
The Concept: Professor Carlos Moreno is credited with birthing the 15-minute city idea, which says that daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, healthcare, and education, should be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in a city.
A Good Idea: A writer for The Guardian said COVID-19 lockdowns "and the climate emergency have made many realise" that the 15-minute city trend "needs to accelerate," and that "cars should be managed to make their use less dominant. If that sacrifices the convenience of some, so be it." Some media outlets, including USA TODAY (Lean Left bias) and International Business Times (Center bias), moved to debunk theories that the concept represents a government effort to restrict personal freedoms.
A Bad Idea: Writers for Reason and National Review (Right bias) both said that while the idea is good in theory, it requires too much oversight from purportedly incompetent governments. Reason's writer said the U.S. would likely have more walkable cities if there were "fewer zoning restrictions that cap densities and separate residential and commercial uses."
Unfeasible: One writer for The Financial Times highlighted logical limitations of the 15-minute city concept, and said it's "a mistake to think the 15-minute city could fix" urban quality of life issues, "as much as it’s an appeal to unreason to suggest it could take away our freedom."
Featured Coverage of this Story
Romitas/Dreamstime.com
The promise of cities is that they have a lot more stuff to do, things to buy and sell, places to work, and people to meet than towns and villages. It's why large metros manage to be richer, more attractive places than smaller, isolated communities, despite all the traffic, noise, crime, pollution, and general urban dysfunction that inevitably comes with them.
It's strange then that all across the world, city planners and the politicians under their sway keep trying to replace the interconnected, agglomerated city with sealed-off, self-contained urban villages...
Martin Pope/Getty Images
When people drop the inverted commas from an awkward idea, something has changed. Witness the 15-minute city, which for years was known as “the 15-minute city”, because no one really understood what it meant. Suddenly, everyone from rule-making guru Jordan Peterson to Conservative MP Nick Fletcher seems affronted by their varying understandings of what low-traffic, liveable city neighbourhoods are designed to achieve.
Over 2,000 people marched through Oxford in protest at the idea earlier this month, and consternation has spread as far as Edmonton, Canada, where city planners are facing...
Hollandse Hoogte/Rex/Shutterstock
As a long-term advocate of low-impact urban living, I have campaigned for more than 40 years for better walking, cycling and green space provision, both for local food growing and leisure. Gradually, we have seen shifts in the reallocation of urban space to pedestrians and cyclists. Lockdown and the climate emergency have made many realise that this trend needs to accelerate.
Now it seems I am part of a global conspiracy to deny people their perceived rights. I am, however, proud to be a contributor to the UK’s 20-minute neighbourhood...
