15-minute cities may increase societal segregation

While the world has been busy celebrating some of the holiest days in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim calendars, I tried to take a break from the information cycle and its relaying of news of war, destruction and intolerance, from the Middle East to Ukraine, in addition to the uncertainties associated with a warmer planet, alarming methane emission increases, melting ice sheets, water rationing, and the multiplication of diseases. Instead, I decided to leaf through the material I set aside for what would hopefully be some lighter reading over the Easter break.
I returned to an old article I had kept aside from the days of pandemic-related lockdowns, when people suddenly rediscovered the values of down-to-earth living within small and supportive urban or rural communities. In such communities, individuals became born-again family members, tasting the safety and certainty that comes with relying on one another in smaller, more limited areas of existence that some later called “15-minute cities.”
This concept was suggested as an answer to our polluting lifestyles and as a way to live a slower, more sustainable and more inclusive existence within the convenience of limited proximities, where work, leisure and entertainment are all available within a small area. I started to wonder if that was not how our ancestors used to live and whether or not what was being proposed by some policies and avant-garde city planners was not akin to a return to basics that we long ago abandoned in favor of seeking individual achievement and progress as societies and states.
Humanity has, for centuries, grappled with the testing of all measures and means to organize society and its people alongside various versions of capitalism, socialism and communism. Now there are attempts to marry our modern lifestyle with a slower, more ethical existence modeled on a format that resembles yesteryear, when we lived a less polluting, more basic life in limited environs.
It is Carlos Moreno, a Franco-Colombian urbanist, who has been credited with coining the term 15-minute city and making the concept popular. It focuses on efforts to think about ways to meet global warming targets by reinventing and redesigning cities and the way people live in them. Moreno began his research in 2010 and his concept was introduced in a French newspaper article in 2016 as part of a proposal to reduce cities’ “environmental impacts ... and to put livability and sustainability as the ultimate goals.”
Though his work and that of others before him had the main driver of finding the means to make cities more comfortable to live in and more adapted to sustainable living to meet climate change targets, the term was popularized during lockdown. However, it was used by misinformation and conspiracy theory protagonists, who wrongly claimed that lockdowns, the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes seen in cities to make them greener, more local and more inclusive were a means to imprison people and limit their freedoms.

They might create a disconnect and indirectly encourage what could be seen as an unequal form of existence.

Mohamed Chebaro

Experiments with different versions and aspects of the 15-minute city concept have been carried out across the globe, from Paris to Melbourne and Ottawa to Scotland. They are aimed at bringing everything that people need close to them, instead of them having to spend hours commuting and polluting, while also strengthening the sense of community that has long been missing from big cities. Moreno insisted this was never thought of as a prison, but a driver “for happy proximity.”
This was not a totally new concept, as the pedestrianization of city centers and other efforts to curb car usage and promote the use of public transport or nonpolluting modes of transport like bicycles have often stumbled in the light of economic realities and behavioral resistance.
Having lived and worked in London for several decades, one cannot fail to notice its recent gradual transformation to a city that moves more slowly and has more restrictions, such as the Ultra Low Emission Zone. You even have to pay to enter parts of the city, which often led me to question the longer-term impacts of such steps on London’s future and the livelihoods of its residents. Will they be able to interact while also providing vital returns for the Treasury and local authorities to sustain the city?
Yes, the 15-minute city model could represent a major departure from the past and how we respond to climate change, pandemics, globalization and the shift of large chunks of our trade activities to online platforms, further limiting our human-to-human interactions and experience. But I am hesitant about embracing the creation of 15-minute bubbles, as they might create a disconnect and indirectly encourage what could be seen as an unequal form of existence. Our neighborhoods have long struggled with multiple levels of segregation, such as affluence and class. In the future, if concepts like the 15-minute city are applied, those areas might become segregated into successful or unsuccessful urban projects, those with working bubbles and those without.
This idea, like many plans to reform human existence and adapt it to saving our planet, might need to dig deeper into behavioral changes rather than drawing lines on maps and coloring in some neighborhoods. We need to scratch the surface of the mindset change needed to preserve cities and countries’ longer-term viability by eradicating some forms of excess, such as greed and other individualistic ills, and promoting a sense of inclusivity. This needs to form the essence of human existence in rich and poor nations alike if we are to overcome all of the human-made adversities threatening our planet.

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist, media consultant and trainer with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.