The Real Problem With 15-Minute Cities 

Many commenters are saying that the video takes the concept too literally and saying "actually, the 15-minute city just means ...". But the video was a direct response to the book on the concept written by the person who created the concept. He really doesn't cover the distinction between generic and specialized amenities or the role of public transit in adequate detail. I would caution people against assuming what the concept "actually" means based on what they think makes more sense.

Your basic needs within 15 minutes, your specialized needs within 30 minutes to an hour...I mean, that just sounds like what cities used to be.

That's way more literal than I'd imagined. Figured 15 minutes meant to the generalized needs like groceries, a job, mandatory schools, public transit stations, and a park / greenspace of some kind. Not 15 minutes to literally everything.

I kind of always assumed that 15-minute cities only really include the essentials. If you need to go to a specific place in a city for work or school, you should be able to live nearby and have that 15 minute city in that area. So you can get a home near, say, the hospital if you work as a nurse, and then have close access to schools, groceries, restaurants, gyms etc. The basics should be accessible within 15 minutes from anywhere, not big specialized features

I honestly didn't realize that it was so literal. I assumed that 15 min cities was just an illustrative rule of thumb to encourage density and mixed use

The fact that walking and cycling get lumped together bothers me. Cycling is on average around 3 times faster than walking (varies alot obvs), and because the area of a circle increases by radius squared. The area of a neighborhood that's within a 15 minute cycle is about 9 times larger than a neighborhood that's a 15 minute walk. That a huge, qualitative difference in the goal we're taking about, and it's not a fair discussion to lump them together.

Saying "legalize grocery stores" makes you sound like a crazy person and gives you a real sence of the insanity of american urban planning

Call me dumb, or maybe not a conspiracy theorist, but when I first heard of the 15-minute concept, I assumed that it meant most things should be available within a close proximity of your home, not absolutely everything. Here in London, England, I consider most of the city to qualify. I have shopping, bars and cinemas nearby. But my workplace (when I have to go there) is a bit further. And I frequently travel further for some cultural events. Decreasing the need to travel unnecessarily is the thing. This is what I assumed. It puzzles me that people invent these crazy ideas about “ghettoes”. What’s happening here is that some local councils are improving infrastructure for cyclists, discouraging unnecessary driving, making the streets more attractive in which to be a pedestrian. Too many car drivers have a mindset very similar to American gun owners though.

The name 15 minute city is a misnomer. 15 minute neighborhood is more apt. What can you do in a 15 minute walk from your front door?

This is a great video, I really think urban planning too often falls into orienting itself around trends or too simple "rules". A bit part of the benefit of a big city is literally at the margin when the number of something available goes from zero to one! For example, it's great that a big city can support many cafes so people can find a cafe in their local neighborhood (15 mins), or many hospitals so there is one in their local borough (30 mins), but I think people probably appreciate the super niche even more - like say a cool urbanism social group that there is only one of in a whole metro area - even if you need to travel very far to access it! Cities being able to support increasingly niche amenities because of raw numbers is super underrated!

if you need to go to university, you should be living near the university, that doesn't mean we build a university on every block, it means we build housing around the university so people can move where they need to be the most.

I think the spirit of the 15 minute city is what’s most important. That you can have access to most of your needs within a 15 min walk or bike. Like for myself, if I were to walk or bike from my home in Singapore, in 15 minutes I can access supermarkets, hair salon, a couple shopping malls, a nice waterfront park, swimming pool, a few restaurants, my local GP, local library, a couple of nice bars, local poly clinic (not quite a hospital but a health centre), community centre, two mcDonald’s, a cinema, and so on and so on. But if I want to catch a specific band playing in town, go to my client’s office in the business park across town, eat Lebanese food in the Arab quarter… I’d have to travel further out with public transit (or Drive) - and Singapore is currently (slowly) transitioning into a ‘Car Lite City’ - so far the improvements and things they’ve done so far have been underwhelming, but cautiously optimistic for the future.

It was always clear to me that a "15 minutes by walk/bicycle" rule does not cover Commute to work, Hospitals, Universities, Sports Stadiums, etc. The 15 minutes area should include: Grocery shopping, pharmacy, elementary school, high school, clinic/doctors offices, park, cafes/restaurants, playground and very basic sports facilities (basketball/futsal/whatever)

I think the problem with "15min cities" is people try to take the definitions as rigid and absolute. Great places to live (for me) have always been the ones where you can walk over to a small market to pick up a couple of things for dinner, or where places for casual dining are a short walk. Other things like a small hardware store or similar are nice too. No place will be able to supply the employment of everyone and considering how expensive some of these areas are to live in, they certainly wont provide everyone with the high paying job within 15 mins they need to live there.

TL:DR for my comment below, a “15 minute neighborhood” is a better idea than a “15 minute city,” but there should be layers to the classification system to reflect how cities function. There definitely is an optics problem, so changing it from “15 minute cities” to “15 minute neighborhoods” where one can access most to all (it’s a sliding scale for some) of those generalized amenities, would probably be of benefit to the movement, and it is important we shift zoning, land use regulation, and urban planning to reflect this shift. It also would probably be harder for conspiracy nuts to say a pleasant, 15 minute neighborhood is a totalitarian nightmare designed to trap you forever in squalor. However, I would content that it should be a layered system. While it’s good to have a bunch of 15 minute neighborhoods, it is important to create larger overarching “30- or 45 minute regions/territories” to reflect the integration of transit and connecting those neighborhoods with larger, more specialized built up regions in a city. It’s good to have those 15 minute neighborhoods clustered and built up with a core around larger transit stops, and it’s probably good to zone most of the commercial and office space around those larger higher order transit stops (metro, LRT, regional rail). Alternatively, for smaller cities and larger towns, the idea of a “30 minute city” which incorporates transit into the time mix and mixing the generalized and specialized amenities would probably be good too, as they are organically and technically distinct from larger cities and built up areas.

I think a lot of people are missing the point. The idea is that everything you *need to have on a daily basis* is in a 15-minute radius. Like access to some kind of food, the post office, the pharmacy. If every place has that, then everyone is free to relocate close to their job and get that within 15 minutes as well if they can. Once that's happened, a person's daily needs generate zero vehicle trips, with their wants or their less frequent needs generating some trips sometimes. And of course some people living in a given neighborhood are going to have longer commutes, but the people actually providing the services within that neighborhood can live there and not. The point is that under the current system, people's daily needs generate multiple vehicle trips per day, and even if you're solving that with transit, that's a lot of waste if you can eliminate those trips. It's more achievable to meet everyone's wants if you can reduce the cost of meeting their needs.

This video is too short. It isn't 15 minutes long. That's my only complaint.

I work at the airport. That's not something you can plunk in a neighborhood. However it should have more transit options. Right now all it has is two bus routes. It should have multiple bus routes, at least one light rail (connection for two is planned. The first is soon, but the second is in limbo) It should have a connection to regional rail so smaller towns and cities have access to it for people who don't drive, or don't want to pay expensive parking fees

Anyone who thinks this is some kind of big conspiracy has never travelled - never seen, let alone considered, other ways of living, and urban planning that facilitates quality living. I didn't like the way the cities and towns in my area were developed, then I went to live in Spain. Now that I've returned, it's utterly depressing. Urbanised zones that are dead. Zero life, zero culture, zero community, zero interest, nothing unique. In any given area, there's zero reason to be there other than to either 1) consume, 2) work, 3) sleep, but not any combination of the 3. Go somewhere where people can live, work, shop, gather, all in the same neighbourhood - it's revelatory. Then add on high quality public transit that quickly takes you anywhere in the city - amazing.

Please consider doing a video on what levels of density is required to support small business like coffee shops, burger places, doctors offices and so on!

The biggest flaw with the concept is around housing costs. You could live within 15 minutes of your work, but if your work is in a downtown/central office job, then you could be looking at rents/mortgage rates that are far too high for your own wages. This is something that's notorious in some cities like London or Dublin, where housing is so very expensive, that many people who work in the city are forced to commute 1-2 hours to even get to housing they can afford. No doubt the same is likely true for the likes of D.C. or New York, with commuters even living just out of state/territory. Desirable places to live are going to drive up demand, and prices along with it. Sure, rent controls of various flavours do exist, but even then, living centrally to everything, and living remotely to everything is going to have significant differences in cost. Transit Oriented Development is certainly the best solution to this kind of issue. I'd argue that you could live in a suburban town that has regular train service to the city centre can be just as great to live in, but of course, that still depends on factors like how late the trains run to, or their reliability.

But I really saw the value of living in a neighbourhood with a rich variety of amenities within a 15-minute walk, when my dad had to give up driving in his late 80s. He turned on a dime from someone who drove most places - despite living in a streetcar suburb - to someone who strapped on his backpack every morning to walk up to the shopping street to pick up a newspaper, prescriptions, beer, daily groceries, etc, and it meant that for many of my parents' immediate day-to-day needs they could be quite self-sufficient. For other things they could get deliveries, or we might help with larger shops or getting to medical appointments. That kind of daily self-sufficiency without a car would be unimaginable in most parts of North America.

To your point about specialised locations, thats fine. It misses the point that if individuals want to go and find these places, then they can. And because the majority of general needs are facilitated, it indirectly creates the ease of travel to those other specific places, either by public transit or personal transport. Also making it easier those that cannot cycle etc.

0:06 Being unable to write the capital of my country right, despite it has a simplified English name.

I generally enjoy your videos, but I think this video is a little bit “captain obvious.” I agree with the general premise: there are lots of reasons why in a city you may need or want to travel beyond the 15-minute radii that Moreno advocates for. But I think this idea just needs to be a small qualifying statement, not a 10 minute video…it’s seems a little bit drawn out. Moreno’s work is centred around building neighbourhoods in a way that lets people meet *most* of their life needs without needing to walk more than 15 minutes; it’s pretty widely understood that this land-use planning concept should go hand in hand with stronger city & regional transit for the more specialized trips you reference. His ideas are intended as a building block for better land-use planning, not as the be-all-end-all. I think it's critical to not to let perfect be the enemy of great, especially given how far away we are in most parts of North America from enabling people to make even the most basic of daily trips outside of a car.

There seems to be this weird idea among some urban planners that high-speed, regional transit systems are some kind of capitalist perversion of more humble, local transit systems. I'm not even sure where it comes from. It's so profoundly stupid. One of the worst things about car dependency is its failed promises. Cars and highways were supposed to free people to zip all around town to whatever destination they wanted, whenever they wanted, with minimal consequences. Transit systems that manage to fulfill that promise should be celebrated, not opposed!

The destinations that a 15 minute city should have within it are things that you need (almost) every day, which means things like grocery stores, schools, churches, parks and so on, but things you only need occasionally are okay to not have one in every single 15 minute city, things like sports stadium, paint store, airport and so on. And on top of that you can't have every single amenity shrunk down to be able to have one within every 15 minute city, tings like Hospitals and University simply don't work as well when shrunk down to be able to fit fit within every 15 minute city. It's okay for there to be certain amenities that you need to go to a specific city for, just as long as it's not one of the basic "daily" amenities.

"The conspiracy theories about people being locked inside their homes and unable to travel are just so far out of left field that it’s hard to engage with them like any normal disagreement" technically, they were so far out of right field ...

There seems to be this idea, unfortunately, that if a proposed change doesn't solve every problem, we shouldn't do it. The fact that I might still have to drive to work doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate being able to walk or cycle more places. 🤷‍♂️

also imo they should start prioritizing the quality of the commute over the length. shorter commutes obviously are nicer, but what's also nice is having a commute you can enjoy. i know a lot of people who would prefer to bike through a nice neighbourhood or park or bike trail or something for 30 minutes to get to work over biking down a road next to cars going at 60 mph for 15 minutes. obviously an enjoyable short commute would be ideal but it's not going to be possible for most people, so the FOCUS should be on making the commute more pleasant.

My city, Toronto has always been a collection of neighbourhoods. I live in Greek Town, and everything that I need is within a 15 minute walk.

All I care about is having viable public transit, walking and cycling options. No more car-centric design!

instead of being a 15 minute walk from homes, it should be a 15 minute walk from an efficient public transport station

I realized I had been taking the concept pretty literally. Thanks for the nuance and reality check.

Some of these criticisms are based on the false premise of a single-solution. It's unfortunate that this needs to be said, but just because something doesn't work for everyone doesn't mean that it doesn't benefit society on the whole. Imagine how silly it would be to suggest that, just because a capital works project such as a bridge is more beneficial to some than others, that it is a bad proposal. The 15-minute city was never meant to be a single, magic solution for all citizens. Rather it's a model that forces us to question whether we could operate more efficiently with our time and tax revenue/spending models. So, if our current car-based model provides society *as a whole* with X collective hours of free time, and Y amount of taxpayer-funded public services per dollar, while a more time, space, and revenue-efficient model would net X+n and Y+n of those same outcomes, it's worth further exploration to determine the "sweet spot" that maximizes the benefit from a cost-benefit perspective.

Thank you for covering the complexity of a couple with 2 jobs (which change and maybe in oposite directions in the city) and 2 kids with differing daycare or elementary schooling needs. It can be a very complex mesh of travel requirements. Great video.

Thank you both for making this video, it really put 15 minute cities into context for me. I'm a civil engineering student in Texas and am very interested in urbanism and urban planning, and I think this video has changed my perspective on the essence of a city. When yall mention how urban planners should not be viewed as painters but rather as gardeners, nurturing and growing the city, it made me think about my role in shaping cities and what kind of influence I have, and should have, as a civil engineer. Thank you again, this video is really well crafted.

I would love it if you did a video about how something gets built in a city, like an apartment tower, the whole process. People are always complaining about the city building things they don’t want and have no idea how things work.

Public transit connecting 15 minute “places” 🗣️

I think, we in fact need to read Carlos Moreno in the context of Paris. Paris has a very high and evenly spread density - at probably any given spot of the city, you have more than a million people living within "bike distance" from your location. So yes, having _basic_ infrastructure within this radius is normal for vast parts of Europe and probably even for the city centers in the US and Canada. But in Paris you need to get *VERY* specialized, if you need to travel further.

If you are under 15 years old, you shouldn’t have to bike for more than 15 min. Pediatrician, K-8 schools, dentist, basic needs, etc. Otherwise take the bus, train, etc.

The biggest problem with 15 minute cities is I can't afford to live in one.

I live in Zermatt. 15 min walk. No cars. Everyone is on an eBike. Works a million times better than life in a car.

Make Cities Great Again! Out of the last 35 years, I’ve worked close to home for nearly 20 years, and likewise, I had all my needs met in my neighbourhood…

This also extends to things like doctors. I moved to Queens, but that doesn’t mean I want to see the doctor closest to me now.

I never assumed that anyone promoting 15min citites would insist on everyone living near everything - only that everyone will near _something_. My neighbourhood where I am now has the best tacos in the city, but if I want a curry I would need to travel. But the point is that there are restaurants - in general - near me. I think only the biggest ding dongs assumed otherwise. Japan, with almost no zoning laws other (relative to Canada/US) are already almost exactly like a 15min city.

Very good points! If a city is a network of fifteen-minute neighbourhoods, people can choose to live in one near the specialized location that suits them (ie. their place of work or study) - the way I see it, the true power of a fifteen minute city is that it distributes living locations, allowing people to cut down on the physical (and temporal) length of their commute.

Are 15 minute cities and 15 minute suburbs the same? I do not think so in my opinion.

what I love about living in a small compact city (VIctoria) is that there's nowhere in the city I can't reach within a 10-20 min bike ride. I don't even need to think about transit because the distances are never long enough and transit is usually always slower than bike. I can be in the heart of downtown in under 10 min by bike or about 20min walking.

Some other things to consider with specialized jobs & businesses is that there’s usually a good reason why they aren’t in every neighbourhood and why your commute to that place will likely be longer than 15minutes. For example let’s say there’s a family that lives in Metro Vancouver. The mom is a heart surgeon & works at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster and the dad is a pilot for Air Canada. For starters would you really want to live with in a 15minute walk or bike ride of an airport? I’m going guess that most people will say no. The other option in a 15minute city context is to live near the hospital. With this family raising multiple kids perhaps most of the homes near the hospital are too small & the homes that are big enough are too expensive for the family. Perhaps there are grandparents who live in a different part of Metro Vancouver. Perhaps in that other part of Metro Vancouver(close to the grandparents) you can live in a larger home at a more reasonable price. Perhaps that location is close to a Skytrain station(mother can use the Skytrain to the hospital) and close to the freeway(father can drive to the airport). There are numerous factors that determine where we live & work. Yes every neighbourhood should have the essentials for life, but for specialized businesses & larger businesses you will have to travel more than 15minutes to get to that destination.

For me it’s not having the amenities nearby that’s important, it’s that I could get anywhere in the city comfortably without a car

I've alway thought it weird those arguments against 15 minute cities calling them prisons, when the car is effectively a prison you waste 10-20% of your waking hours in, and even paying 30%+ of your wage for the privlage of being your own warden. You can't even get out of your car whenever you like if you suddenly need to use the washroom, nor stop using a car without overhauling your entire life. And most people don't have the energy, will, or desire to use the car for anything but work. Not to mention that suburbia is a more complete prison for those that can't drive. How many kids are stuck at home with nothing they can do outside beyond their yards without bugging a parent to drive them an hour some place? 15 minute cities are vastly misunderstood even by their advocates, but the alternative is already a prison.

I imagine if it would mean that a specific workplace or university would have places within 15 minutes where you can live and access all basic amenities, not that you never have to move throughout your whole life and still have access to everything.

Who was it who said (something like) "Mid-twentieth century urban planners all seem to be people who, as children, didn't like their peas to touch their carrots"?

Where I'm from going to university usually means that you leave your parent's house as well. Learning to live by yourself is part of that growing up experience.

I've always thought 15 minutes for non-motorized modes--walking, rolling--and 30 minutes-1 hour for everything else, excepting very unique amenities. This scales fairly well even to very large cities; see very-rapid regional rail systems like Seoul's GTX, Delhi's RRTS. Beyond an hour, most people aren't going to be making a trip regularly unless they have no choice, or as you say, a really good reason to make the trip. Significantly better job markets are particularly compelling; my dad would often sit in traffic up to 2 hours driving from southern New Hampshire to Boston, but really, he (and many others!) ought to have had the choice of a speedy train ride into the city, and providing equitable--i.e., non-car!--access to competitive job markets is essential.

I feel so sorry for the poor Bio-medical research giga-chad for 95% of other mortals its amazing

15 minutes is not ambitious enough.

1:24 it's not Moreno flipping the zoning concept on its head, it's the zoning concept being insane. I as a European still find it hard to comprehend how that madness was approved.

Thank you so much for this video. You raised a lot of issues with the concept that I personally grappled with. It is important to recognize the challenges with an idea to temper expectations and strengthen the practicality of better urban planning.

The great thing about 15 minute cities is that making "normal" stuff accessible without a car also makes *everything* more accessible by transit. If it's not safe/convenient for neighbours to walk to that specific amenity, then it's not going to be safe for me to bus across town to the nearest stop and then walk from there.

I really appreciate the more grounded criticisms presented here, however, I do have this to say : while I can support a level of ''conspiracy theories are unwelcome in serious discussions'', the real problem with ''15 minutes cities'' is that half of its serious proponents talk like actual conspirators and actual tyrants and none of its more down to Earth proponents are even willing to call those people out or acknowledge their existence. They simply brush it off as ''conspiracy theory'' and this feels to any reasonable person like gaslighting. The reason that people actually call out ''15 minutes cities'' for being some conspiracy is that... real actual politicians talk about implementing them like control schemes and it's easy to understand why. The fact is that, out of the context of urban planning spheres where everyone is assumed to just want to improve their city with good intentions, people with ulterior political motives can actually abuse the concept very easily. There have literally been articles written in regular old established medias trying to convince people of the merits of ''climate lockdowns'' and such and praising the 15 minutes cities as a way to achieve this and other forms of control. Actual tyrants love the limitations on freedom of movement that can be imposed on people who live within a city where everything they need can be obtained within 15 minutes of walking... and no other form of transport. 15 minutes cities are the wet dreams of people like Kim Jong-Un, Mao, Xi Jinping, Pol Pot or Stalin. A city where you can control everyone easily and where no one can leave and hide easily outside of your sphere of influence? Count all of them in, that's litterally what some of them did and they even wrote about why it's one of the best control tools. The real problem is that we don't live in a utopia devoid of political tyrants and freedom of movement is important because of the checks and balances it provides against tyranical ideologies, entities and groups. Outside of the closed utopian world of urbanism, there is a whole political dimension to why people chose to design living spaces the way they do and brushing this dimension off as ''conspiracy'' strikes as unserious. The last gripe I have is also that 15 minute cities proponents conveniently like ignoring that people like to have their own small plot of land. Suburban areas are the perfect way to achieve this goal. Ignoring this is ignoring 80% of why people go to suburban areas to begin with. Having a nice green space that is yours to do what you want with is not something you can easily fit within the narrative of densification and 15 minutes cities. To most people, what they hear with ''15 minutes cities'' is you trying to sell them convenience in poverty, not a prosperous life that feels to them like they are more than just a poor city dweller living in a small box.

I feel another thing is that commuting at the moment in North America is a much bigger time waste than in other countries. The most one can do at the moment (legally) when commuting in North America is listening to a podcast, music, or being on a phone call since you're driving everywhere. This makes an hour long commute a slog of staying sat down and doing very little without risking a car crash. These same limitation don't apply for trains and other modes of transport for equally long commute times.

I guess you hear the concept and based on that you start to make your own assumptions. I thought it was transit in the 15min range, and your last stop should be within 15min of the destination, not a 15 minute travel from your house to wherever you need to go, that doesn't make sense, but I guess that its a literal take.

I think there's a huge misunderstanding here. 15-minute cities are about you *can* live your daily life within 15 minutes of your home, not that you *must*. You can always travel how far you like for something you love to do or that you find special.

There's no way 15-minute cities can work without massive tradeoffs.

I live in a semi-urban area (outside a major city) in Australia. I can walk to a huge pharmacy, restaurants and cafes, local grocery stores, thrift stores, etc. I couldn't do this when I lived in a major city. Australian cities have lost the plot. In a major Australian city, if you want to do any shopping at all, you need to drive through congested traffic to a monstrous concrete shopping mall, then spend 5-15 minutes finding a parking spot, then you need to walk for about 15 minutes from the car park to the shop you want to access within the shopping mall.

I'm Murillo, a civil engineer based in Brazil. My typical walking pace is around 12 minutes per kilometer, and I can run at about 4 minutes per kilometer, while my bike commute usually takes 3-4 minutes per kilometer. However, even with these modes of transport, the 15-minute radius restricts accessibility to a limited area. My city spans 22 kilometers from one side to the other, and with a population of only 400,000, it's challenging to achieve the density and diversity required for a fully functional 15-minute city. While the concept encourages improved housing and mixed-use developments, it's unrealistic to expect all necessary amenities and services to be reachable within a 15-minute timeframe for all residents, considering the diverse needs and activities people engage in.

I think the 15min should include the basics: grocery store, pharmacy, restaurants, higher order transit station.

I work in the space industry and my partner works in the art industry. Our highly specialized professions means that it's unlikely a high tech manufacturing facility and a large art museum exists in the same 30min block...

In order to reduce the time wasted on the way from one way to another it is a good idea to limit the daily work commute and grocery shopping to 15 minutes. At least it should be possible to choose a home close enough to your workplace. Primary schools should be within 15 minutes walking distance (1 km) for children, secondary schools within 15 minutes cycling (5 km). For universities it's a good idea to have student living facilities close to the campus (though some universities are so spread out it's difficult to get from one place to another within the same university within 15 minutes). I'm self-employed and my next home is 10 minutes walking from a long distance railway station, groceries, hairdresser, pharmacy, doctors ... advantage of a small town. The disadvantage? Some more specialized shops don't exist and you have to travel to another city to find them.

I've dealt with too many people who take the metaphor literally. It was an exercise in branding that requires a certain degree of nuance and intelligence to appreciate. When a certain demographic can't immediately understand what's being presented to them, they will often associate it with something harmful. Most people who regularly walk or cycle can immediately see the benefits, and appreciate clever branding.

After 4 years of consuming urbanism thought and content, I’ve honestly come to the conclusion that if we just implement a Land Value Tax and dramatically reduce (or, if possible, completely eliminate) all other taxes, the North American issues of car-dependency will sort themselves out. The problems brought up whenever we talk about urbanism goals are so intractable and they often seem to contradict each other. The first one that comes to mind is densifying a suburb, which I love the idea of, but that also necessarily means that rent and other costs of living go up because densification necessarily means higher land values. An LVT (taxing land values, not land improvements like buildings etc.) would allow you to have both. An LVT will necessarily cause cities to densify, and I really believe that the ensuing and serious reduction in income inequality to the point where virtually no one worries about money anymore will make people more open-minded to new ideas and see the obvious benefits of those new ideas, such as imagining a world where they can easily live their everyday life without a car

Public transport absolutely should have speed as its number 1 priority.

I don't think anyone is saying to have every single thing within 15 minutes, just the basics. Like, in the evening when you want to go out and see friends but don't want to make a huge trip, you should have something just in general to do, or if you want to get something quick for dinner. But a museum or a water park or the fancy grocery store can be weekend trips, which take longer

Love your channel! Been sending lots of letters to my mayor about your ideas!

I'm really confused. Basically all large world cities' centers are around 30 minutes across, which means that you can get from their geographic center close to anywhere in 15 minutes already. By that logic, basically no city is not a 15 minute city.

The problem with 15 minute cities for most critics is that it doesn't accommodate cars like they'd want.

I work at the dump. I work at the iron smelter. I work at a chemical factory. I work at an oil refinery. I work at a solar panel recycling plant. I work at... 3:00 You said you didn't want to address the conspiracy theory, but you're actually getting to the heart of it. You're essentially saying that the concept of the 15-minute city is 1) not really possible if the goal of life is to provide as much access to opportunity as possible, and, therefore, 2) implicitly acknowledging that imposing a 15-minute city-style of living (by, for example, restricting car use to a "home zone", like has happened in UK) *would necessarily* limit access to opportunity. Of course, the fringe theorists worry about being absolutely confined to their 15-minute bubble, but the more reasonable ones worry about governments *making it incrementally more difficult (and expensive) over time to venture beyond that 15-minute bubble.* Concepts like the 15-minute city give the megalomaniacs in governments "bright ideas" about how they can control the populace to achieve some lofty, often arbitrary goal they have. That's why there are those of us who eschew such concepts.

Certified banger of a video. Good job

The extremity limited space necessitates low variety and will result in government deciding which businesses get to be built. It's extremity anti-capitalist and gives the government control over every aspect of your life by restricting what options you have access to. Think of the number of small businesses that will go bankrupt because they couldn't lobby hard enough to get chosen for that 15 minute radius. If you think monopolies are bad now just imagine how much worse they'd be in a 15 minute city.

Idk why but you guys have really nice voices.

I’ve always found the phrase “15 minute walk or bike ride” a bit vague, because cyclists travel about three times faster than pedestrians, so a 15 minute bike ride can be a 45 minute walk, which seems to defeat the whole purpose.

The number one thing we need to do to move towards most everybody WANTING to live in 15 minute cities is to charge drivers the true cost they impose on taxpayers. The provincial government in BC has just announced the start of an 8km widening of Hwy 1 in suburban Vancouver from 4 lanes to 10 (including a specialized Bus-shoulder lane). It will cost $2.65 Billion. I was curious about the claim by motorists that they pay for roads and then some in fuel taxes... so I did the math. If those new lanes were at full peak time capacity from day one, the fuel taxes raised from that additional traffic would be about $20,000 per day. It would take about 360 years to pay off IF there was no interest on the debt. In reality, fuel taxes don't even cover the interest on the debt, let alone the capital cost, inevitable cost over runs, maintenance and policing. But that's just for highways! In the city, motorists pay $ZERO for roads as they are entirely funded with property taxes. No wonder taxes are so high. No wonder there is so much congestion. In one fell swoop we could dramatically lower taxes, annihilate congestion and let the urban form evolve toward 15 minute cities organically.

A fifteen-minute city is analogous to a two-minute meal. Such meals are available, but there's no requirement to eat only those meals. The key is the distinction between buying a loaf of bread or a quart of milk and buying a drill press or computer parts. Everyone buys bread and milk, so bread and milk should be available everywhere.

15 mins city is a goal to apprpach, although can't be accomplished 100%. For the US & Canada cities now, allow mixed-use development is the most important thing. The purpose is to increase the destinations that can be reached by bike or walk as much as we can. That requires high density mixed use development, and for the out-of-15mins destinations, transit is necessary. Allow grocery stores, cafe, barber shop and banks to operate on the first floor of apartment buildings is a simple way, as well as build infill apartments in the unused parking lots in a strip mall. Even for the suburb big box stores, open a pathway from the neighbourhood behind to the plaza can reduce a lot of unnecessary car trips caused by long distance pedestrian detours. Canada did much better than US on this aspect.

Does this feel intentionally dense to anyone else? The other comments in here seem to have understood the spirit and meaning of the 15 minute city much better

Cities since time immemorial have been 15 minute cities. People walked everywhere

Heh, your criticisms/caveats of the strong idea are pretty much exactly mine. I actually first encountered the idea in the "15 minute walk to generic amenities" version, which is perfectly reasonable (except that I would push for 10 minute walk). Only later did I see the "and to work!" version. Granted, adding biking expands the area a lot... but it's still not enough to ensure everyone in a big city has a short work commute, as you say. (And "walk or bike" really is different from "walk". Even if you're a fast walker and slow biker (me), you can bike at least 2x your walking speed, for 4x the area, unless it's hilly. Most people can probably do 3x their walk speed, for 9x the walking area.) And I'd also note that a 15 minute door to door trip including transit is not stunningly useful, especially if competing with a bike... though also depends how fast and frequent the transit (metro) is, and if non-home destinations tend to be very close to a station. Meanwhile, a 15 minute transit ride leaves the endpoints vague. One point I make that you missed: the constraint of "15 minutes" on _households_. Even if I'm a research prof, I should probably able to live near my job... but that doesn't mean my wife can live near _her_ specialized job, or our kid go to some art-centered high school, or that we live near our parents, all at the same time.

At least in the American context, the concept doesnt take social class and racial dynamics into account. The concept only works if you are middle-class or upper-class (regardless of race). The low-income workers (disproportionately black or Latino in the USA) who will power the labor that makes this concept feasible won't even be able to afford the housing. For those individuals, it will be a 1-hour to 2-hours city.....

My town is already pretty much a 30 minute city. Not because my local government really cares that much, but because we're constricted by a very limited amount of land.

Even in heaven, GODs walk more than 15 minutes 😒

I've mainly lived in Rural Ontario and I love it here but did spend a year in an Ottawa Suburb without a car and that was not nearly as good as living downtown Montreal where I could easily walk out my door and get to everything very quickly.

15 minute cities makes me roll my eyes. The concept has gone off the rails as something quite unreal so I just think of the basics of New Urbanism instead and places that do urbanism right.

It isn't forbidden to travel far in 5 and 15 min cities 😂 just that you don't need to for small mundane daily activities

Yeah, about those conspiracies regarding 15-minute cities it is not the idea in its self that people do not like, it's the small fringe wealthy minority pushing this idea that people do not like. I like the 15-minute city idea personally, but I dislike the individuals and groups who are pushing this idea, there is a difference. Of course, the wealthy minority are welcome to begin leading by example and stop expecting others who have less to be the only one making sacrifices. Tell me why I should make sacrifices for those who have far more?

I live in the other English speaking neighbourhood next to NDG, you know which one, there is only one pleasant and relatively safe street to use. Maisonneuve. It is the only street with a proper bike lane in the whole city. I'm pretty sure if we got just another single street, all the home/car owners would rise up in arms. Is it possible to take your whole video script and read it as a speech on the next nimby meeting you go to? btw: it's also funny looking at the demographics of the meeting. Most people look 50+ years. I guess they have the most free time to go to this type of meetings XD

One more comment to add to the fact this video takes the 15 minute title too literally, and is as if written by AI. The idea is all daily necessities are within 15 minutes, completely doable in many cities in Europe I've been to, along with a few others, and specialized things can be further but still connected by transit, so no car is needed unless desired. Most importantly though is not wasting tons of life time and money on travel to do the most tedious, basic tasks.

I’ve been floating this idea in my head for a while and would love to get some feedback on it. I think suburbia and 15 minute transit can coexist if we stop designing cities as standalone objects and more as cogs in a regional system. All metro areas have a center. (Take Boston for the sake of example) What we should start doing is building up the downtown areas of the surrounding cities (Quincy, Cambridge, etc) to be of comparable size to the main central city Each city will have a dense urban core with all 15 minute city aspects and surrounding that core will be suburbs. Instead of sprawling endless suburbs you end up with clusters of suburbs broken up by pockets of urban centers. This makes it easier to connect these downtowns via transit like trains or grade separated buses which in turn makes it easier to create connecting lines into suburbs. I think that the best thing a major city can do for itself is to build up its neighbors. By creating a strong region you can create a system where population can be shifted back and forth throughout the regions which can ease the strain of housing and other resources in one particular city. Like it doesn’t make sense to have 1 city with 1 million people surrounded by 4 cities of like 100,000. When you could cut the population of the central city down to 500,000 and add them to the 4 surrounding cities making their population 225,000. Cities should be seen less as a way to hold a bunch of people and more as a way to evenly disperse the population Now obviously you can’t move people out of their cities but you can build up the surrounding cities urban centers so all the urban cores can be connected via car and non car transit that way people have an easy way of moving back and forth between them and if each city has a decent urban core then there is incentive for people to move there. The problem with how we build cities is that we’ll have one really nice city and everything around that city is just negligible and unimportant. To conclude in the same way that Barcelona builds super blocks we should be building connected super cities.

I don’t think anybody is seriously claiming anything you could ever need has to be within a 15min radius. That’s just not feasible. It’s more about quality of life and options. The main thing that’s quite specialized and people regular need to go too is usually work. I have moved to be closer to my work in the past. But this only worked because by company was on the border of a nice, reasonably priced neighborhood and not in some far flung wasteland or unaffordable city center. Because of this decent location, I’d say around 50% of our staff lived within a 15min walk/ bike ride. At my current job this wouldn’t really be possible at all, because there is very little housing around the company, so even if somebody is able and willing to move closer, it’s not really feasible. And of course, if two (or more) people in the household work, chances are not all of them will be able to work within the same neighborhood, but some is much better then none. Most of the other things are stuff that should be accessible in every single neighborhood, to allow people to chose where to live. Having a grocery store, a bakery, a hair dresser, some green space, a playground, a cafe, a primary school, a preschool, a transit stop, a few doctors offices and a few places to eat in your neighborhood shouldn’t be special. That’s what living in a city is about, people living close enough together to warrant having all of these things you regularly need in close proximity. And you might choose to go to a hair dresser on the other side of town, because you like them better and that’s fine. But you probably won’t want to drive 30mins just to get a bit of bread in the morning. Depending on the density of neighborhood you want to live in, there might be variations in the number of amenities realistically possible. In a city neighborhood I’d say most things should be within a 15min walk (~1km max), in a suburb the goal probably would be closer to a 15min bike ride (~4km max). My most important point: this isn’t anything new. This is how cities and towns always worked before the obsession with cars a few decades ago. Having a car to go hiking on the weekend or haul 2 cases of beer is great, needing one to get some eggs or go to the doctor isn‘t.