I think your comment re: it being voluntary is key, and is the component that will mean that a) 15-minute cities will probably not lead to dramatic shifts, but also b) that it will never be anything like the dystopians seem to imagine it will be. I completely agree that it is old wine in a new bottle, but it is useful in terms of pushing forward greater diversity of uses (through zoning changes, primarily, though perhaps also by some devolution of city services away from efficient-but-inaccessible super-facility models back towards smaller, more locally-serving facilities) in suburban developments that only do one thing. Because urban development is such a piecemeal, distributed activity, decisions made decades ago usually take several decades more to shift in a new direction.
So yeah, nothing that new to see here, but if it helps to distill down complex, technocratic planning concepts into something that is more easily grasped by the general public, I think there's some value to it.
So what do you believe is the solution? Modernism was a period and approach that respectively is easy to see as not the way to go. Surely in a western society tax payers money where it is most beneficial for the public good should co-locate higher density with public transport and this generates the 5 minute walk catchment. Positive again to get people moving on mass transit where they may have just sat in car commuting. Love more comments. Jennifer
Generally, I would agree with you. Co-locating density, services, social infrastructure and public transport is the logical way to go. But how that is achieved in any place depends on context, culture and the existing spatial pattern. 15-min cities should be treated as an ideal, not a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approach that ignores local contexts. In other words, don't do what the modernists did!
I think your comment re: it being voluntary is key, and is the component that will mean that a) 15-minute cities will probably not lead to dramatic shifts, but also b) that it will never be anything like the dystopians seem to imagine it will be. I completely agree that it is old wine in a new bottle, but it is useful in terms of pushing forward greater diversity of uses (through zoning changes, primarily, though perhaps also by some devolution of city services away from efficient-but-inaccessible super-facility models back towards smaller, more locally-serving facilities) in suburban developments that only do one thing. Because urban development is such a piecemeal, distributed activity, decisions made decades ago usually take several decades more to shift in a new direction.
So yeah, nothing that new to see here, but if it helps to distill down complex, technocratic planning concepts into something that is more easily grasped by the general public, I think there's some value to it.
So what do you believe is the solution? Modernism was a period and approach that respectively is easy to see as not the way to go. Surely in a western society tax payers money where it is most beneficial for the public good should co-locate higher density with public transport and this generates the 5 minute walk catchment. Positive again to get people moving on mass transit where they may have just sat in car commuting. Love more comments. Jennifer
Generally, I would agree with you. Co-locating density, services, social infrastructure and public transport is the logical way to go. But how that is achieved in any place depends on context, culture and the existing spatial pattern. 15-min cities should be treated as an ideal, not a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approach that ignores local contexts. In other words, don't do what the modernists did!