Opinion – Claudio Bernardes: How to implement a city of 15 minutes?

The ’15-minute city’ can be defined as an ideal urban structure, in which the majority of people’s everyday needs are located geographically close to where they live and within a travel time distance of 15 minutes, on foot or by bicycle. .

In less than two years, this concept has gone from a relatively obscure urban planning framework to a widespread slogan among city lovers, academics and planners.

This concept, although overexposed, is still not fully understood, and should be used as a vision to create an environment that allows the residents of a city to restructure their daily lives, aiming at a better quality of life.

Today, cities are very unequal, fragmented and segregated. Due to distortions in urban planning itself, we expelled many people to the fringes of cities, places where land prices, and therefore real estate, are lower.

This model is linked to long journeys to perform daily activities and to low quality of life, actually raising the cost of real estate, due to the resulting public expenses. With the city of 15 minutes, we can reverse this situation.

The 15-minute city reduces inequalities and improves the quality of life in underserved neighborhoods, through the creation of spaces, for example, for coworking and green areas with parks and squares, generating attractiveness for the installation of companies, cultural activities, sports activities , and building quality bike paths and sidewalks. In a polycentric territory, we can regenerate urban cohesion with multiple services and eventually reduce segregation.

But, after all, how to implement a 15-minute city? There are at least four concepts that must be better understood and properly introduced into the urban fabric.

The first one is the creation of efficient centralities, especially in neighborhoods lacking infrastructure. This means making essential services and amenities available so residents can easily walk or cycle. That is, community-scale education and health, essential retail, recreation parks and workspaces, among others.

Equity and inclusion are central. Strategies for a 15-minute city should emphasize equal access to services, amenities and green spaces. This means designing approaches to actively reduce – not exacerbate – social divisions and inequalities.

Part of this solution rests on engagement strategies, involving a diverse mix of residents and policies to avoid displacement, that is, ensuring the availability of affordable housing in more developed locations in terms of urban infrastructure.

Another important aspect is to structure public roads and mobility, centering them on people. A 15-minute city must redesign its streets and public spaces to prioritize people who do not drive, building more vibrant neighborhoods where walking and cycling are the main ways to get around.

This means reclaiming space dominated by automobiles for more productive and social uses, as well as revitalizing or supplementing walking and cycling infrastructure to better serve the daily journeys of people of all ages and abilities.

Finally, it is essential to create connected places. A 15-minute city should offer convenience and quality of life, but not isolation. Physical and digital connectivity must be at the heart of any strategy to implement this model, and it is especially critical for large, car-dependent cities.

Thus, it is necessary to improve the quality and equity of public transport systems, digitize city services, and develop digital infrastructure to ensure that everyone has access to the internet.

Certainly, the implementation of a 15-minute city is not limited to the approaches proposed here and must also be linked to concepts such as transport-oriented development.

This model promotes denser, mixed-use urban growth around public transport services, allowing for a large-scale shift away from car dependence.

Even in successful 15-minute urban centers, fast, frequent and reliable public transport connections to other neighborhoods and work centers remain important in enabling car-free access to jobs, education, entertainment and more in other parts of the city. .