A New Time Based Urban Agenda. Exploring the 15 minute city in concepts and practices

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A New Time-based Urban Agenda Exploring the 15-minute city in concepts and practices

December 2021 Msc. in Urban Planning and Policy Design Scuola di Architettura, Urbanistica, Ingegneria delle Costruzioni Politecnico di Milano

Ahsaas Tarwani

913281

Prof. Maria Antonella Bruzzese

Thesis supervisor

A New Time-based urban agenda Exploring the 15-minute city in concepts and practices Master degree thesis Politecnico di Milano Scuola di Architettura Urbanistica Ingegneria delle Costruzioni M.Sc. Urban Planning & Policy Design Author: Ahsaas Tarwani (913281) Thesis supervisor: Prof. Maria Antonella Bruzzese

Abstract

As the COVID-19 Pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, so did the utopian idea of ‘15-minute city’ as a possible solution to the negative externalities of urbanity that are exacerbated by the pandemic.

The idea has sparked dichotomous debates and discussions within the urban planning field and general media alike. While its proponents claim it to be an alternative model to enrich ‘liveability in cities’ by highlighting its impact on reducing ‘commute’ and the socioeconomic and environmental benefits that would follow, its detractors, however, warn that a careful examination of the concept and its application is required.

These debates and discussions reflect that a cultural gap exists in the rhetoric’s interpretation and a multiplicity of varied and all-encompassing interpretations of 15minute ‘city’ lead to question the genesis of the rhetoric, If ‘15-minute city’ is everything, then maybe it’s nothing!

This idea, therefore, which runs through many discourses on the ‘city’, deserves a thorough critical investigation to fully understand its potential and effective role on one hand, and not consider it only in reductive terms on the other.

Furthermore, in the backdrop of extremely limited scientific literature, it becomes overbearing that the rhetoric of ’15-minute city’ should be defined and situated within the wider scientific scholarship on urban planning and its utility as an ‘utopian’ idea or a ‘new urban planning model’ or a mere ‘political campaign’ should be discussed.

Through this study, I, therefore, have tried to clarify the significance of the rhetoric of ’15minute city’ from an urban planning perspective. To this end, the thesis investigates the idea of ‘15-minute city’ and its components and analyses it, first, from the point of view of planning theory. The themes in favour and critical issues thus uncovered are then further contrasted with the empirical application of the concept by undertaking case studies of cities that have embraced the rhetoric, namely, the cities of Portland, Melbourne, and Paris.

From the synthesis of this study, the ’15-minute City’ appears mainly as a reiteration of the ‘neighbourhood units’ and does not bring anything new from spatial planning perspective.

Rather it is synonymous to creating ‘compact’ and ‘accessible’ cities by focussing on ‘Neighbourhoods’ and ‘people’.

Nevertheless, this rhetoric finds its value, above all, in being able to align various territorial actors by providing them a common vision and thus reduce artificial ‘temporal inequalities’.

This opens further research directions to enquire strategies of ‘creating proximity for people’ and role of ‘rhetorics’ in ‘city-making’.

KEYWORDS: 15-minute city, sustainable accessibility, spatial proximity, urban form, liveability.

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Sommario

Mentre la pandemia di COVID-19 si è diffusa in tutto il mondo all'inizio del 2020, anche l'idea utopica della "città dei 15 minuti" è stata presentata come una possibile soluzione alle esternalità ̀ negative della condizione urbana esacerbate dalla pandemia.

Tale idea ha avviato dibattiti e discussioni dicotomiche nel campo della pianificazione urbana e dei media. I suoi sostenitori affermano che si tratta di un modello alternativo per arricchire la "vivibilità nelle città" evidenziando il suo impatto sulla riduzione del "pendolarismo" e i benefici socio-economici e ambientali che ne deriverebbero. I suoi detrattori, tuttavia, sottolineano che un esame attento del concetto e delle sue applicazioni permette di riconoscere un divario culturale nell'interpretazione della retorica della città dei 15 minuti e una molteplicità di interpretazioni variegate e onnicomprensive che la mettono in discussione perché “Se la città dei 15 minuti è tutto, allora forse non è niente!”

Questa idea, dunque, che attraversa molti discorsi sulla città merita un'indagine critica approfondita per comprenderne appieno il ruolo potenziale ed effettivo da un lato e non considerarla solo in termini riduttivi dall’altro.

Inoltre, sullo sfondo di una letteratura scientifica estremamente limitata, diventa urgente collocare la retorica della "città dei 15 minuti" all'interno della più ampia ricerca scientifica sulla pianificazione urbana. Al fine di comprendere se tale concetto ha una sua utilità e forza trainante come idea "utopica", come un 'nuovo modello di pianificazione urbana' o come una mera espressione all’interno di 'campagne politiche'.

Attraverso questo studio, quindi ho cercato di chiarire il significato della retorica della "città dei 15 minuti " dal punto di vista urbanistico. A questo fine la tesi indaga l'idea di "città dei 15 minuti" e le sue componenti e in primo luogo lo analizza dal punto di vista della planning theory. I temi a favore e i nodi critici individuati vengono poi ulteriormente analizzati, osservando l'applicazione empirica del concetto studiando casi di città che hanno abbracciato la retorica dei 15 minuti, ovvero le città di Portland, Melbourne e Parigi.

Dalla sintesi di questo studio, la "Città dei 15 minuti" appare prevalentemente una reiterazione del concetto di "unità di quartiere" e non apporta nulla di nuovo dal punto di vista della pianificazione territoriale. Piuttosto appare come una sinonimo della volontà di creare città "compatte" e "accessibili", concentrandosi su "quartieri" e "persone".

Ciononostante, tale retorica trova il suo valore soprattutto nel riuscire ad allineare i vari attori territoriali fornendo loro una visione comune, nel tentativo di ridurre le “disuguaglianze temporali” . Ciò apre ulteriori direzioni di ricerca per indagare strategie di ‘creazione di prossimità per le persone’ e sul ruolo della "retorica" nel "fare città".

PAROLE CHIAVE: Città dei quindici minuti, accessibilità sostenibile, prossimità

spaziale, forma urbana, vivibilità.

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Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................... i Sommario ................................................................................................................... ii List of Figures ............................................................................................................ vi List of Tables ........................................................................................................... viii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................. ix Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Pathway ................................................................................................................................... 3

SECTION 1: THE ‘NEW’ URBAN PLANNING CONCEPT & ITS INTERNATIONAL DEBATE

Chapter 1. The x-minute city ...................................................................................... 6 1.1. The 15-minute city ........................................................................................... 9 1.1.1 Definition and its components: ................................................................................... 9 1.2. The 15-minute city framework ....................................................................... 12 1.3. Interpretative Remarks .................................................................................. 17

Chapter 2. Arguments in favour and Critical Voices ................................................. 19 2.1 Arguments in Favour....................................................................................... 20 2.1.1. FMC and provisions for post covid ‘Work from home’ .........................................20 2.1.2. FMC and Planning for resilience ..............................................................................21 2.1.3. FMC and Reconnecting residents to proximity services .......................................23 2.2. Critical Voices ................................................................................................ 25 2.2.1. FMC and the two-fold argument regarding vitality of cities ................................. 26 2.2.2. FMC and Challenge to ‘walkable’ Neighbourhood space metric ....................... 28 2.2.3. FMC and Challenge of existing demographic and socio-economic differential in cities .......................................................................................................................................33 2.3. Interpretative remarks, problem statement & way forward to case studies. . 37 2.4. Analysing the FMC: Questions and Criteria ................................................... 39 2.4.1. General research questions......................................................................................39 2.4.2. Case study selection criteria .....................................................................................41 iii

2.4.3. Case study methodology, unit of analysis, materials, and methods ................... 42 2.4.4. Scope and Limitations of case studies ....................................................................43

SECTION 2: CONTRASTING THE CONCEPT WITH EMPIRICAL APPLICATION

Chapter 3. Exploring the Empirical Application of FMC ........................................... 46 3.1. Portland: Towards an equitable city .............................................................. 47 3.1.1. General Overview of the city ....................................................................................47 3.1.2. The FMC: Complete neighbourhoods (formerly 20-minute city) ........................ 50 3.1.3. Strategies for Spatial proximity ................................................................................54 3.2. Melbourne: A Healthy city ............................................................................. 61 3.2.1. General Overview of the city ....................................................................................61 3.2.2. The FMC: 20-minute neighbourhoods ...................................................................64 3.2.3. Strategies for spatial proximity.................................................................................68 3.3. Paris: The social networks and common good ............................................... 75 3.3.1. General Overview of the city ....................................................................................75 3.3.2. The FMC: The Quarter Hour City .............................................................................78 3.3.3. Strategies for spatial proximity.................................................................................81 3.4. Interpretative remarks on the Case study descriptions .................................. 86

Chapter 4. Findings and Synthesis: The Spatial form of FMC ................................... 88 4.1 Empirical findings regarding FMC as a ‘New Spatial Planning Concept’ ........ 89 4.1.1. Comparing Moreno’s ‘new spatial planning’ concept to the case studies ......... 89 4.1.2. ‘Fifteen-minute city’; its negotiation and mobilization. .........................................94 4.2. Synthesizing the urban form of FMC cities..................................................... 96 4.2.1. Principle 1: Compact City .........................................................................................96 4.2.2. Principle 2: Multi-modal sustainable transport ......................................................99 4.2.3. Principle 3: Distributed and networked urban system ....................................... 102

SECTION 3: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Chapter 5. A discussion regarding ‘proximity city’ and ‘Fifteen-minute City’ ........ 107 5.1. Creating ‘proximity city’ starting from Neighbourhoods and people .......... 108 5.1.1. Strategy of ‘Enabling Service Localization in Neighbourhoods’ ....................... 110 5.1.2. Strategy of ‘Defining and Providing services to people’ .................................... 112 iv

5.2. From the ‘Ideal’ to the ‘rhetoric’ of Fifteen Minute City: A communicative asset to ease out governance ....................................................................................... 117

Chapter 6. Conclusion: A Reflection on the Narrative of FMC ................................ 120 6.1. The Narrative of FMC and its Significance ................................................... 120 6.2. Relevance of Study and future scope of work: ............................................. 122

List of References ................................................................................................... 125 Appendix ............................................................................................................... 136 Appendix A: List of Seminars ........................................................................................... 136

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List of Figures Figure 1- The One minute city and the 30 minute city variants ................................................ 7 Figure 2 - The 15-minute city illustration...................................................................................10 Figure 3 - The Social functions to be availed in 15- minute city .............................................11 Figure 4 - Prescriptive Elements of Moreno's 15-minute city framework ............................. 13 Figure 5 - Overlap between components of EPA clusters and 15-minute city modules..... 22 Figure 6 - Current system of urban centres & Interpretation of FMCs proposal for decentralization............................................................................................................................26 Figure 7 - Comparison of 15-minute shed to 5-minute shed of New Urbanists Neighbourhoods .........................................................................................................................29 Figure 8 – Fifteen-minutes and distance covered through various transport modes and its actual overlay on Paris’ urban footprint.....................................................................................30 Figure 9 - An illustrative supposition of 15-minute city model ...............................................33 Figure 10 - FMC's synonymity to Garden city concept ...........................................................35 Figure 11 - Panoramic view of Portland city .............................................................................47 Figure 12 - Territorial Governance of Portland city .................................................................48 Figure 13 - The built environment of Central city, Inner neighbourhoods, and Eastern neighbourhoods of Portland ......................................................................................................49 Figure 14 - Strategic Framework of Portland Plan ...................................................................51 Figure 15 - Components of Complete Neighbourhoods and the city scale connected network of complete neighbourhoods .....................................................................................53 Figure 16 - Portland's 20-minute city analysis ..........................................................................54 Figure 17 - Portland's Investment Strategy to prioritize strategic neighbourhoods............ 55 Figure 18 - Portland's Urban Design Framework.....................................................................57 Figure 19 - Melbourne's skyline .................................................................................................61 Figure 20 - Melbourne’s Urban footprint compared to inner city..........................................62 Figure 21 - The built environment of Central city, middle ring neighbourhoods, and outer neighbourhoods of Melbourne Metropolitan Area.................................................................63 vi

Figure 22 - Strategic Framework of Melbourne Metropolitan Area ......................................64 Figure 23 - Hallmarks and spatial organization of Melbourne's 20-minute neighbourhoods ........................................................................................................................................................66 Figure 24 - Accessibility analysis and its related proposal for new urban clusters in suburban areas.............................................................................................................................70 Figure 25 - Final Outcomes of Melbourne’s pilot project (Croydon precinct) ..................... 72 Figure 26 - Final Outcomes of Melbourne's pilot project (Strathmore precinct) ................. 73 Figure 27 - Final Outcomes of Melbourne's pilot project (Sunshine precinct) .................... 74 Figure 28 - Paris' Urban-scape ...................................................................................................75 Figure 29 - Paris socio-economic cartography.........................................................................76 Figure 30 - Urban environments of inner Paris, middle ring and Outer suburbs in Grand Paris region ...................................................................................................................................77 Figure 31 – Framework of Paris En Commun strategy.............................................................79 Figure 32 - Various Strategic projects scheduled till 2030 in Greater Paris region ............ 82 Figure 33 - Comparison of Case studies' model 15/20-minute cluster to the iterative supposition put forward in chapter 2 ........................................................................................93 Figure 34 - Spatial organization of 15/20 minute neighbourhoods ......................................94 Figure 35 - Compact city principle and its features .................................................................97 Figure 36 - Principle of Sustainable mobility and its features.............................................. 101 Figure 37 - Principle of Networked urban system and its features ..................................... 103

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List of Tables Table 1 - Selection criteria for empirical investigation of FMC...............................................41 Table 2 - Twenty Minute Neighbourhood Liveability matrix ..................................................67 Table 3 - Objectives of various accreditation systems.............................................................81 Table 4 - Comparison of Empirical models of spatial planning to Moreno’s FMC proposition ...................................................................................................................................91 Table 5 - Creating and Governing ‘Proximity’ in compact cities ......................................... 116

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List of Abbreviations AKA: Also known as CBD: Central Business District C40: C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group CNU: Congress for New Urbanism DELWP: Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, State of Victoria (Australia) EPA: Epidemic Prevention Area FMC: Fifteen- or twenty-minute city NAC: Neighbourhood Activity Centre NED: Neighbourhood Economic Development Strategy, City of Portland OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PPTN: Principal Public Transport Network Ped-shed: pedestrian shed (distance covered through walking generally calculated as a radius from a given point.

TOD: Transit Oriented Development UNSDG: United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals WHO: World Health Organization

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Introduction

Since last two decades, sustainable urban development has been a main theme in urban planning domain to tackle climate change and manage the predicted exponential urbanization across the globe. Tremendous efforts are taken by global organizations to set targets and agendas for coming decades like, UN Habitat New Urban Agenda 2030 in Global context and European Green Deal 2050 in the European context, to name a few.

Nation states are trying to cope up with the existing socio-economic issues vis-à-vis achieving these sustainable goals with cities in focus. Urban planning domain has seen a radical shift in its practice in these two decades thanks to globalised networks creating new opportunities of sharing as well as competition. A common feature and concern of recent practice has been the policy transfers among ‘desperate’ cities which are entangled in its various complexities and often fail to meet the goals set by above mentioned urban agendas. 1 In early 2020, the world was unexpectedly struck by COVID-Pandemic, halting the cities to a standstill for months. The Pandemic paved way for yet another such global transfer of rhetoric of ‘Fifteen Minute city’. Balducci 2 identifies 15-minute city and temporary adaption of urban space as two major paths which cities have taken and that shall have long lasting impacts beyond the lifestyle changes instilled by the pandemic.

The global mobilization of the idea of 15-minute city (hereby referred as FMC) can be credited to C40 cities, an international consortium of Mayors of global cities. It promotes FMC as an ‘alternative model of urban development’ (Global mayors COVID-19 recovery task force, 2020) and claim address to the negative externalities of Pandemic while also considering the long-term actions required for sustainable development. The C40 emphasises that FMC shall reduce carbon emissions in cities, primarily by reducing the dependence on private vehicle commute. The promoters of the concept also claim that following this model of development, cities can address the equity for vulnerable groups which have been specifically challenged by the Pandemic.

The idea has been welcomed by the media and gained support of Mayors across the world.

Milan, Paris, New York, Singapore, and various other cities have announced adaptation of the idea as a major strategy for their post pandemic recovery. The ‘new planning concept’ (Global mayors COVID-19 recovery task force, 2020; Moreno et al., 2021) has seen its 1

Timms, P. (2011). Urban transport policy transfer:“bottom-up” and “top-down” perspectives. Transport policy, 18(3), 513-521.

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Balducci, A. (2020, June 22). Learning from the COVID-19 emergency to transform cities - Cities Today Connecting the world's urban leaders. Cities Today - Connecting the World’s Urban Leaders. https://citiestoday.com/industry/learning-from-the-covid-19-emergency-to-transform-cities/

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spread quickly across the continents, popularised by C40 cities and its proponents Carlos Moreno and Ann Hidalgo. The idea has been also well received by media and rose international discussions among practitioners and theoreticians alike. While the idea seems to be strongly supported by many, its critics call for it to be a political advocacy and a proponent of inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. 3 On another cautious side, it has been observed that there exists a cultural gap among discussants across the organizations and geographies in the way they perceive the idea of 15-minute city.

The white paper of C40 on 15-minute cities 4 which seems to be a hinge of reference for most of the discussions, rather adds to the already exaggerated contingencies in interpretation by promoting its 97 city members and their projects and policies as best practices of 15-minute city which can be replicated and applied to cities that embrace the concept. These examples cover a variety of suggestive policies ranging from Barcelona’s superblocks to San Fracisco’s open street program, from Johannesburg inclusionary zoning policy to New York’s participatory budgeting. Prima facie, it looks like rather than being a concept, its an umbrella term with these set of policies.

From Urban theorist Wildavsky’s (2018) point of view, who through his monograph entitled, If planning is everything, Maybe it’s nothing’, raised a criticism against planning prophesies and dictated that planning should be an exercise to resolve a specific problem and not everything, it can be well commented that, If ‘15-minute city’ is everything, then maybe it’s nothing!

Under these circumstances, it becomes more than important to undertake an investigation to address various contingencies around the topic and to avoid making the idea ‘reductive’. Thus, the rhetoric of ‘15-minute city’ needs to be defined and situated in the larger arena scientific scholarship of urban planning.

The thesis identifies this gap and attempts to fill it. It is expected that this explorative study will bring forth a better understanding of this ‘new concept of spatial planning and urban development’ and stimulate a discussion regarding its utility as an ‘utopian’ idea or a ‘political campaign’ or a ‘new planning model’.

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Peverini, M., & Chiaro, G. (2020, November 26). ArcipelagoMilano | QUESTIONI DI SCALA: L’ILLUSIONE DELLA CITTÀ DEI 15 MINUTI. Archipelago Milano. https://www.arcipelagomilano.org/archives/57231 4 C40 Cities Knowledge Hub. (2020, July). How to build back better with 15-minute city. The C40 Knowledge Hub. https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/How-to-build-back-better-with-a-15-minutecity?language=en_US

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Pathway The study is divided into three sections. Section 1. The ‘New’ Urban Planning Concept & Its International Debate presents the ’15-minute city’ as a ‘new spatial planning concept’ as proposed by Carlos Moreno and C40 cities as well as the debate and discussion around the propositions. The section is synthesised by undertaking an exhaustive methodological documentation and analysis by actively participating in various online conferences and seminars that were published over the period of seven months (starting from the November 2020 to May 2021), as well as by putting various media articles and reports on ’15-minute city’ under an analytical scrutiny. These discussions are primarily conceptualised based on the current normative understanding of ‘city making’ and the various socio-economic processes related to it. Through these discussions, I have attempted to provide pragmatism to the concept and reflect on the spatial features of the FMC. Section 2. Contrasting the Concept with Empirical Application is dedicated to testing the application of the FMC concept in real-time context. I do so by undertaking empirical investigation of cities of Portland, Melbourne and Paris that have embraced the concept.

The potentialities and conflicts discovered in the first section are put to test. The case studies are based on rigorous content analysis of various official documents of the three cities and preliminary interviews of city officials (Melbourne) that were undertaken during participation in various seminars/webinars. A discussion regarding the findings and synthesis ensues in the subsequent part of the section.

Section 3. Discussion and Conclusion presents and discusses the insights gained from the empirical findings. It binds together the initial assumption of FMC being a ‘new spatial planning concept’ to the findings of the study of FMC being a ‘communicative tool’. It delivers the goal of the study, i.e. situating the significance of the Rhetoric from the urban planning perspective.

These three sections are expanded into 6 chapters. While the first two chapter concern the section 1, Chapter 3 and 4 relate to section 2 and Section 3 is composed of Chapter 5 and 6.

Chapter 1. The x-minute city starts by briefly introducing a few prominent ‘time based’ narratives floating in ‘post-pandemic- urban planning space’ namely, 1-minute city, 15minute city and 30-minute city. The chapter is dedicated to discussing the ’15-minute city’ as a new ‘spatial planning model’ and its components put forward by Moreno .et. al., the main proponents of the concept.

Chapter 2. A critical appraisal: Arguments in favour and Critical Voices presents the various point of views offered by prominent experts in urban planning and theory like Saskia Sassen, Richard Florida, Jan Gehl, Edward Glaeser, Andres Duany and Ezio Manzini, and their take on the ’15-minute city’ as a spatial planning concept. These various opinions can be divided into themes of common agreement, or consensus, that underline the commonly agreed upon characteristics of FMC and thus provide a positive thrust to its implementation, and themes of conflict, or tensions derived from some ‘critical voices’ that should be addressed for successful implementation of the concept.

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Chapter 3. Exploring the Empirical Application of FMC, as the name suggests, is related to the description of the three case study cities i.e., Portland, Melbourne, and Paris. In order to address the research question developed after the theoretical exercise undertaken in the previous chapter, Each case study description is divided into three parts, First, a general overview of the socio-economic and spatial status of these cities are described, which is followed by describing the definition and expected role of FMC in this context. The third part details out the strategic framework related to FMC in each city.

Chapter 4. Findings and Synthesis: The Spatial form of FMC provides a direct comparison of Moreno’s proposition of FMC as a new planning concept to the empirical findings of case studies. The findings suggest that FMC is an iteration of ‘Neighbourhood Unit’ put forward first by Clarence Perry and further developed by New Urbanists.

Moreover, the common spatial strategies observed in the three cities lead to the synthesis that FMC relates to creating ‘Compact city’ and ‘Networked Urban system’ in order to increase ‘proximity’ at city level, by focussing on ‘neighbourhoods’ and ‘people’ Chapter 5. A discussion regarding ‘proximity city’ and ‘Fifteen-minute City’ is dedicated to the discussion of the FMC rhetoric, its proposal, its framework, and its relevance from urban planning perspective. In this regard, the first section of the chapter puts forward the discussion regarding the strategic framework of creating ‘compact’ and ‘accessible’ cities. In the second section of the chapter, I hypothecate the advantages that FMC rhetoric provides in the larger ambit of city-making processes to reduce spatially distributed temporal inequalities in cities.

Chapter 6. Conclusion: A Reflection on the Narrative of FMC reviews the course of this study which started by treating ‘FMC’ as a spatial concept, the normative pragmatism offered in order to put it to practice, the empirical findings and the utility of FMC narrative as a ‘communicative tool’. The chapter addresses the main concern of the thesis, i.e., to define and situate FMC in scientific scholarship of urban planning.

Additionally, I have also penned down some possible future research directions that I am interested in, to further my knowledge and understanding that I have developed during the course of this thesis related to the topic of FMC.

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SECTION 1: THE ‘NEW’ URBAN PLANNING CONCEPT & ITS INTERNATIONAL DEBATE

SECTION 1

THE ‘NEW’ URBAN PLANNING CONCEPT & ITS INTERNATIONAL DEBATE 5

Chapter 1. The x-minute city

In year 2020, amidst lockdown situations across the globe, many new concepts have been proposed and published related to time and the city. While the study focuses on the ‘Fifteen-minute city’, proposed by Carlos Moreno (Moreno et al., 2021) also referred as 20-minute city (Da Silva et al., 2020; Global mayors COVID-19 recovery task force, 2020; Whittle, 2020) it is imperative to briefly mention similar other floating concepts and their related agendas of 1,15/20 and 30 minute city.

These time-based rhetorics emphasises different scales of city, thus can be seen to activate different set of policies from hyper local street scale at one end, to the metropolitan scale on the other. From a standpoint, these time-based rhetorics represent distinct areas of focus of these respective cities and give a clue of what cities value or aspire to be.

However, a common element binding these ‘X’ minute urban geographies is the dimension of ‘proximity’, measured in temporal units rather than conventionally used spatial metrics. Perhaps, its an intended rhetoric to align to the urban citizen’s perception of proximity, who use time as a unit to schedule everyday life taking constraints of time and space in consideration.

Few concepts that are gaining prominence in recent times, especially with the onset of pandemic revival are describe below.

1 minute city by Vinnova Innovation Agency, Sweden The concept is adopted by Stockholm city in 2020, proposed by Swedish federal agency called Vinnova (Hill, 2021 as cited in O’Sullivan Feargus, 2021) . Rather than a concept of urban development, it focuses on the parklets and streets in the residential areas, to retrofit them as active public spaces. ‘Through the 1-minute city program’ the city is installing modular furniture in streets, by involving the residents living across the streets. The program was piloted across four different central areas in Stockholm, and the modules were designed with local communities including students of local schools.

The proponents claim that residents spent 4 times more than the average time spent on streets. (O’Sullivan Feargus, 2021)

30-minute city by David M. Levinson The 30-minute city by Levinson (2019) is contextualised to Sydney metropolitan region, in which the author has focused solely on public transit, its competitiveness, service delivery, intermodal connections, co-ordination of schedules and the public transit furniture. The author dedicated the title 30-minute city based on the well-established and internationally 6

Figure 1- The One minute city and the 30 minute city variants (Source: As specified in the images)

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accepted notion of time budget (Newman, 2015) described by Marchetti’s constant 5 which transport planners use for accessibility planning at metropolitan and regional levels.

(Levinson, 2019)

The concept was adopted in Sydney Regional development plan as an overarching agenda in ‘the Pulse of the greater Sydney 2020’ annual report in the wake of 15 minute city (Beekmans Jeroen, 2021), However, instead of focusing on ‘hyperlocal planning’ as suggested by Moreno, the Greater Sydney commission is focussing on enhancing the connectivity between its regional centres Eastern harbour city ; Central river city and Western parkland city. Aligning with the recommendation by Levinson, the utility of this concept lies in making metropolitan citizens reach these regional job clusters within 30 minutes by combination of public transport and walk. Thus, the city is investing added funds to increase the frequency of public transport, connections in the metropolitan region. (GSC, 2019)

At this point, its important to clarify and acknowledge a common pattern. All these concepts define the cities in a ‘time metric’ with a common concern to increase sustainable forms of mobility. A literal linguistic translation of which implies the question of, how all these differently sized cities, with different respective forms and street networks be commuted across their diameters/ diagonals by walk/bike in the given amount of time. However, its only after reading the description, the concepts’ urban citizen’ based perspective of time and their individualised definition of a city comes to foreground. Rather than claiming that a city is walkable withing 1 minutes, 15 or 30 minutes, the titles try to instil a dialogue about what an urban citizen get in allocated time of 1/15/20/ 30 minutes.

The 1-minute city puts forward a clear agenda of adapting neighbourhood street as urban space through community participation, while the 30 minute city is focused on accessibility through public transit. These two differ from the 15/20-minute cities which focus on accessibility through proximity which entails putting functions close to residents instead of providing means of transport to access the functions. (Solá & Vilhelmson, 2018)

Marchetti’s constant is the average time spent by an individual spent per day in commuting. The Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti posits that although forms of urban planning and transport may change, people eventually adjust their lives (including their work-home commute) in a way that the average daily time spent in commuting remains 1 hour i.e. 30 minutes one way trip to work. Source: Marchetti, C. (1994). Anthropological invariants in travel behavior, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 47 (1) 88. DOI: 10.1016/0040-1625(94)90041-8) 5

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1.1. The 15-minute city Carlos Moreno6F 6 has been considered the key theorist behind the concept. He had developed the concept in 2016 (Moreno, 2020) but it gained popularity during the political campaign of the present mayor flagship of Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s re-election campaign in 2019 pivoted on addressing the challenges of climate change and increasing liveability of the Parisians. As mentioned earlier, the concept has been promoted by C40 Cities as a model for healthy sustainable post-pandemic recovery (Global mayors COVID-19 recovery task force, 2020) Moreno claims that the present urban planning practice has turned people’s life short of time and based on clocks (Moreno, 2020, p. 3)pointing out at the zoning regulations that such practices divide the city into different zones and residents are torn commuting around these residential, shopping and business districts.(Moreno et al., 2021)

It is suggested that cities focus on mobility and infrastructure thus leading to excess carbon emissions and decreasing liveability in the cities. On the contrary, in order to reach climate goals as stipulated in Paris Climate agreement, city managers should focus on accessibility and proximity.(CHAIRE ETI, 2021) The proponents also criticise the inability of smart city concept to contribute to social inclusion and equality. Moreno further advocates for a planning concept that shall re-orient territorial development into more equitable and sustainable paths, and project their belief that their proposal of 15-minute city is among the befitting models. (CHAIRE ETI, 2021; Moreno, 2020; Moreno et al., 2021, p. 105)

1.1.1 Definition and its components: Moreno introduces the concept on the foundations of ‘chrono-urbanism’ a term coined by himself that outlines that ‘quality of urban life is inversely proportional to

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Readers note: The initial data collection phase of the study which started in November 2020, primarily relied on the book which Moreno published in the mid 2020 entitled ‘Urban Life and Proximity at the time of COVID-19 and then?’ (Moreno, 2020) and his presentations at various online events and seminars (refer appendix 1). In the beginning of 2021, Moreno and his team published a scientific paper in MDPI Journal, Smart cities volume (Moreno, et,al. 2021) , where he elaborates on the 15 minute framework in a synthetic manner, presuming since the content of the paper speaks to the scientific fraternity, probably therefore does not cover in detail a few founding philosophy of his ’15 minute city’ concept which otherwise were prominently explained in his presentations (Moreno & Murphy, 2021) ie. Chrono-urbanism, chronotopia and topophilia (in that order). Since a part intention of this thesis is to document the scattered material with respect to this concept, a brief introductory text regarding these sub-concepts is also translated and added for reader’s clarity.

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Figure 2 - The 15-minute city illustration (Source: Moreno, et. al., 2021)

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Figure 3 - The Social functions to be availed in 15- minute city (Source: Moreno, 2020)

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the amount of term invested in transportation, more so through the use of automobiles’ (Moreno et al., 2021, p. 101) He advocates for an urbanity where locals are should be able to access all their ‘basic essentials’ within 15 minutes by walk or bike.

He credits this concept to have evolved from his earlier version of ‘living city’, which outlines the importance of ‘repairing’ urban and social fragments fuelled by modernist approached.

(Moreno et al., 2021, p. 100) He asserts that residents should be able to enjoy a high quality of life if they are able to fulfil six essential urban social functions identified by him which an urbanite requires from a city to sustain a decent urban life.

The six urban social functions: 7 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Living Working Supplying / commerce Caring / healthcare Learning / education Enjoying/ entertainment

Moreno’s FMC is based on four principles to design and redesign the cities to become 15minute cities. (IC Moreno Ted talk): Ecology: Designing a green and sustainable city.

Proximity: Minimising the distance to other activities.

Solidarity: Establishing links between people.

Participation: Engaging citizen in planning.

1.2. The 15-minute city framework The author proposes the ‘The fifteen-minute city framework’ consisting of 4 interrelated dimensions in the order of: a. b. c. d.

Building Density, Proximity, Diversity, Digitalization

A difference of vocabulary was observed between the presentations and the peer reviewed paper.

Both the words are presented with a slash in respective functions wherever applicable.

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Figure 4 - Prescriptive Elements of Moreno's 15-minute city framework (Source: Moreno et. al., 2021)

a. Building Density: Moreno observed the challenges that city managers had to face during the height of COVID-19 pandemic spread of cases and the subsequent health measures adopted to mitigate those measures.(Moreno et al., 2021, p. 101) This corner stones of the Fifteen-minute city offer a ‘realistic alternative’ for urban areas, a they prepare to embrace the ‘new normal’.

As per Moreno, Density is a crucial dimension on which cities should be built and have a direct link to travel and diversity. The proponent opines that in conventional planning density is viewed in terms of ‘ultra-high-density buildings’ but in his concept, density is viewed in terms of people per sq.km. (Moreno, et al. p.102) Further explanation clears that the author is hinting at providing optimal density where the population in each area can sustain comfortably in terms of urban service delivery and resource consumption. He further asserts that in the previous planning models which emphasised on creating ultra-high-rise buildings and offices has given rise to increased over-consumption of resources including fossil fuel energy.

It’s highlighted that with optimal density, it is possible to provide all the essentials

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that can be accessible to residents nearby thus saving time and energy (used in automobiles).

The author (Moreno, et al. pp.102-103) further identified the advantages of Density as follows, -Optimal density shall pave way for locally based solutions for energy generation, food supply and plural use of spaces.

-Density dimension shall allow creation of public infrastructures such as bicycle lanes and walkable pathway shall promote the achievement of ‘6 social functions’ put forward by the author.

-Density shall also allow for social and spatial equites of different areas, different communities with different background and economic status. It shall particularly favour the disadvantaged, through an equitable distribution of services.

-Density shall also help provide services at a reduced cost for cities, thus creating a high value for governments and investors.

Therefore, density is a key driver for social sustainability and when integrated with proximity, diversity and digitalization.

b. Proximity: The author views dimension of proximity in temporal and spatial values.

Within the 15-minute radial nodes (as represented in the figure 2) residents shall be able to meet their social basic functions. Proximity is important for reducing commute, and thus environmental and economic impacts of such activities. Moreno again highlights the promotion of social interactions as advocated by Urbanists Jane Jacobs, Andres Duany, and Nikos Salingaros. (Moreno et al., 2021, p. 103) Proximity shall allow transition from residential zones, commercial zones, education centers, health facilities in a reduced time, which in turn shall allow citizens to enjoy better service provision both in commercial and public establishments. The planning model thus enables multimodal uses of infrastructure.

An example of its manifestation is Paris where the municipality of Paris has started converted school playgrounds into open parks in off-school hours which has benefitted Parisians to maximise their public spaces, green spaces and public infrastructure.

It is further suggested that the concept of proximity here is advanced from the philosophy of chrono-urbanism, chronotropy and topophilia, which couples the spatial and temporal dimension.

These philosophical tenets of chrono-urbanism, chronotropy and topophilia are described as follows, elaborated in the book entitled ‘A collection dedicated to the 15-Minute City’ published by ETI Chair, Paris (2020). The key features of these concepts are extracted, translated and interpretated below:

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Chrono Urbanism: The term emerges from response to phenomenon of desynchronization of social practices, lifestyles and its implication on urban space. It proposes to integrate the rhythms of the citizens, its flows and schedules (workdays and weekends, seasonal vacations etc) into a temporal regulation at territorial scale. (CHAIRE ETI, 2021) The concept can be paralleled to the time geography studies. Its implication is related to creation of social policy frameworks, first originated in Italian policy planning as ‘times of the city’ approach(Charbgoo & Mareggi, 2018)

Chronotopia: It brings together the space and time, in which the space has a different meaning and function at different times. In spatial planning terms, it entails designing urban spaces and buildings not for a function but for plurality where each place can transform its identity, by multiple uses at the same time, at different times, seasonal uses, real time change use which shall promote bottom-up innovation due to interaction of these functions . Thus, it can be interpretated as Form based codes rather than zoning-based codes.

Topophilia: A collective tool which can act as an instrument to channelise affection towards a place. When interpreted into planning jargon, it translates to creating sense of belonging within communities, forged by social links among people and place (CHAIRE ETI, 2021; Moreno, 2020) A component which formed the basis of neighbourhood concept.

These three concepts converge around FMC and shall create basis for future socio-economic models (Moreno, 2020)

Moreno emphasises that the premise of proximity is critical as it allows to envision the city through a perspective of human scale and adaptable to use for the residents (Moreno, et al. pp. 103).

c. Diversity: The 15-minute city advances the principle into two categories, 1. Mixed use neighbourhoods to provide a mix of residential, commercial and entertainment services 2. Cultural diversity and different socio-economic groups Mixed use neighbourhoods shall ensure an optimal density and proximity of essential amenities and support walkable and bikeable streets, thus reducing the need to travel access the amenities.

According to Moreno, a diversity of people shall also benefit the local governments to maintain property values and concentrate on improving service delivery in the area, promoting social cohesion, and helping to create more social capital.

It shall increase the offerings of diverse cultures and thus promote tourism and catering related businesses, thereby adding to economic vibrancy and local employment opportunities.

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Moreno warns that the dimension of Diversity needs to be deployed at varying scales in the 15-minute radius, but at the hyper local building scale.

d. Digitalization: Inspired from Smart city concept and shall enable the actualization of the first three dimensions. it shall assist inclusivity, community participation, measure real time delivery of service. He proposes effective deployment of technology shall ensure better experience.

Following examples are narrated for a highlighted to suffice a better understanding.

Enabling walkability in cities: promoting bike sharing services and mobility activity tracking sensors at nodes and junctions.

Proximity to services: online shopping and delivery tracking, cashless transactions, promoting work from home. (Moreno, 2020)

In conclusion, the proposed FMC model shall unlock positive economic outcomes such as employment, innovation, and help cost cuts from fuel savings, road maintenance, pollution and other costs.

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1.3. Interpretative Remarks To sum up, Moreno has proposed that all identified functions of working, living, caring, enjoying, learning, and supplying should be availed to the urban residents within 15 minutes. The time saved in commute can be then utilised for other creative production or leisure, while also helping cities reduce transport emissions from reduced commute.

In spatial planning terms, the emphasis in FMC should be on accessibility and proximity rather than mobility and shall be availed by strong community engagements practices.

The cities should be planned based on the principles of density, proximity, diversity, and digitalization. The FMC concept suggests a decentralised city where the zoning segregations of cities into residential and work centres are dissolved and rather a network of the optimally dense, mixed use ‘15-minute neighbourhoods with priority to slow mobility modes i.e. walking/ biking appear. He proposes these principles shall re-establish the missing solidarity and social links among urban dwellers.

To advance it further, cities should also be planned according to not just space but also time, Moreno puts forward the temporal measure to urban planning and suggests that every square meter area in the cities should be put to multi-functional use as per the requirements of the residents which shall increase the social connections among the residents. Thus, urging planners to rethink changing social policies of using buildings and public spaces especially in areas where resources are limited, while promoting Design of buildings and urban spaces through form based codes rather than land uses. (Moreno, 2021 as cited in Petzer Brett, 2021) He also promotes sharing economy and digitalization of services and planning procedures to reduce the unnecessary commutes.

The proponent hypotheses that the spatial manifestation of the concept shall override the commute time and long-distance trips, thus eventually reduce automobile-based transport and therefore cities shall be able to achieve the goals of reducing carbon emissions.

Although the research articles and published books do not specify the application of the concept is suitable for new cities or existing cities, however, in the online webinars (See for example, Ferri et al., 2020; Florida et al., 2020; Sassen et al., 2021) the proponents imply that existing cities can use the 15 minute city framework to transform existing cities, by redefining the public commons.

However, it should be highlighted that the concepts of Density, diversity, proximity and digitalization are not new, rather are defined as normative design concepts (Ewing & Cervero, 2010). Yet, the proponents claim that the ‘key is to redefine the common goods’ should imply to re-planning and redefining all of the planning since urban planning is, by definition, planning of common goods (and not private goods) (Lefebvre, 1967) Moreover, Moreno has also compared his concept with 20-minute city article of Capasso Da Silva, et al. (2019) and emphasis that the latter only focuses on accessibility to opportunities (jobs) and does not emphasise on social interactions and participation of urban communities. Moreno suggests his concept overrides the later by its strong advocacy for proximity.

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Commenting on the 5-minute difference between his 15 minute city and Capasso Da Silva’s 20 minute city, he points out that the difference means that ‘’amenities shall be placed Further away from each other and thus consume more land. More resources shall be required to implement that planning model.’’ (Moreno et, al. p.98).

These statements about the difference in 15–20-minute city and it resultant urban form of the city stands in contrast to his statement in the same research paper, ‘’It is noteworthy that while the concept of “chrono-urbanism” may seem arbitrary for some—e.g., why 15 min and not 17 min?—this concept is not rigid in nature and is proposed with the intent to be tailored to individual cities based on both their morphology and specific needs and characteristics.’’ (Moreno et al., 2021, p. 106) Thus inconsistencies are observed in the proponents communication, which may lead to individual interpretations of the concept due to the very subjective nature of time component. The proponent’s promotion of access in time (read, subjective time) clashes with the practice of urban planning which concerns with the planning of ‘social’ time turning the planning upside down (Charbgoo & Mareggi, 2018; Ewing & Cervero, 2010).

The following chapter shall highlight different perspectives and opinions shared by various experts in planning regarding the various components of the 15-minute city.

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Chapter 2. Arguments in favour and Critical Voices

The previous chapter briefly introduced the new trend of adopting time-based agenda among cities. Of which this study focused on the concept of 15-minute city, which was described in its entirety and the associated shortcoming of its inconsistent communication is briefly discussed at the end of the chapter. The resultant impact of this miscommunication is that the concept opens itself to individual interpretations due to cultural differences in perception of time as a subjective element.

This chapter focuses on documenting the international debate around the concept from urban planning perspective. Since urban planning is concerned with ‘social time’ and not ‘individual time’(Charbgoo & Mareggi, 2018), the concept has generated strong opinions in the planning fraternity. The chapter is an attempt to document these opinions in the form of positive appraisal and critics.

The literature documented here relied mostly on grey literature in the form of online webinars and media articles. The flourishing of online webinars were an added advantage to participate and discuss the nuances of the concept across the cities with various professionals from theoretical as well as practical background, For example prominent experts like Richard Florida, Ezio Mazzini, Edward Glaeser, Ricky Burdett, Saskia Sassen and city managers from New York, Singapore, Portland, Melbourne, Paris, Milan and Copenhagen.

To render a structured methodology to its documentation, only the seminars scheduled between November 2020 to May 2021 and in English, French or Italian language were attended. The seminars were selected by creating Boolean searches on google search portal, facebook and LinkedIn for the keywords of ’15-minute city’, 20-minute city, ‘15 minute neighbourhood’, ‘20 minute neighbourhood’, proximity city’. The seminars were filtered by ‘place of origin’ i.e. should be from ‘OECD countries’, and ‘types of organizers’ such as public and social institutions. Seminars hosted by private organizers like reals estate firms and soft mobility companies as well as the webinars which required cover charges were excluded. In all 39 webinars were attended totalling to 102 hours, of which data from 16 seminars is mobilised for this study. (See Appendix A: List of Seminars)

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2.1 Arguments in Favour The concept of 15 minute city is inherently related to the COVID-19 Pandemic which transformed the city, its management and the urban lifestyle (OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, 2020). With the sudden emergence and spread of COVID-19 in early 2020, cities were challenged with health sectors crisis, coupled with economic crisis (Pisano, 2020). Cities demonstrated similar trends of response to fight against the spread of Pandemic. The safety measures enacted by the cities such as strict lock down and limitation on movement in the city gave rise to different patterns of urban lifestyle. Urban residents were restricted to their local areas and new patterns of economic production and consumption were observed with over-reliance of urban population on digital services. On the other hand, the Pandemic also highlighted the inequalities that exist in local access to basic services. Across the cities, lower strata of society experienced delirious disadvantages due to lack of quality infrastructure in the locality (OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, 2020).

The following themes should be seen in the backdrop of these changes. The section is divided into three parts: 1. The first section addresses the ‘zoom shock’ of the knowledge economy and the speculation of the phenomenon becoming a permanent place or at least a weekly phenomenon in the post pandemic cities in which people will work from home around 2-3 working days a week and the corporate headquarters in the city centre shall get shrinked (Boutin, 2020; Florida et al., 2021).

2. The second theme promotes the resilience buildings elements of the FMC, viz, decentralization of services and increasing redundancy of public spaces at local level for epidemic prevention.

3. The theme of accessibility is elaborated in which difference between objective accessibility and perceived accessibility is highlighted. The argument suggests making cities with focus on communities and with communities. The commentators align with Jane Jacobs narrative of ‘removing border vacuums’ like arterial highways which create divides in the neighbourhood walkability and thus social cohesion.

2.1.1. FMC and provisions for post covid ‘Work from home’ Pandemic ushered a new phenomenon generally referred now as ‘zoom shock’ (OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, 2020) referring to the exponential increase in the use of ‘zoom’ and ‘teams’ online meeting applications. The restrictions on movement during the pandemic, the knowledge economy shifted to ‘work from home’ patterns using various online platforms as mentioned above. The phenomenon on the peripheries of economic development, gained a core part of Pandemic living and initiated a discussion among the academic experts and planning professionals about the changing geography of work and 20

related planning policy frameworks in the global cities. (Ferri et al., 2020; Florida et al., 2020; Sassen et al., 2021) Richard Florida (Florida, 2020) while observing the change in the North American context states that the newly embraced work from home dynamic shall extend beyond the pandemic as reflected in the decision making of big companies like Amazon and Facebook which have adopted permanent work from home policies allowing the work to disconnect from its space (understood here as CBDs). Thus, it shall create a competition among cities to attract these knowledge workers and thus revenues. (Florida,2021 as interviewed in Johnston, 2021) He also suggests that cities should be prepared for adopting to this change, citing his contribution to ‘creative classes theories’ that these knowledge workers when working from their homes, need bigger houses (and thus need to rethink architecture) and shall spend more time in the locality. Their needs for high quality amenities should be channelised to mobilise local retail which in turn shall help create local jobs. A view confirmed by the consumer city theory put forward by (E. L. Glaeser et al., 2001) Florida also states that this changing geography of work is an opportunity for cities administrations should utilise for making the city centres, that are often observed to house corporate headquarters of knowledge economy-based companies and the ‘elites’ (sic) of the city and serve the global consumers like tourists, more affordable for people and thus their increase access to high quality amenities and services. (Florida et al., 2021) Urbanist Jan Gehl (2020) has put forward similar thoughts on making (European) city centres much about production and not just consumption which aligns with the founding pillar of ‘Diversity’ put forward in FMC. In Europe, similar thoughts are captured by researchers working on European Cost Action CA18214 research program working on research entitled ‘New working spaces’ (Pacchi et al., personal communication,19 March 2021) Italian social innovation experts Enzo Mazzini extends a similar line of thought of taking advantage of this changing work patterns, and emphasis the cities socio-economic policies should emphasis at the local scale of neighbourhoods. He recalls the role of (physical) proximity for which create formal and informal networks among firms which flourishes the innovation and circulation of ideas. He insists that after establishing large networks (interpreted here as global networks among cities, institutions, and firms), in the post globalization era, cities need to focus on extending those networks to hyper-local scale. He has synthesised this phenomenon as ‘cosmopolitan localization’. (Ferri et al., 2020; Manzini, 2020)

2.1.2. FMC and Planning for resilience The Pandemic enforced a new urban life which revolved around the scale of neighbourhoods across the cities. (Batty, 2020; Sharifi & Khavarian-Garmsir, 2020) A ‘shared fundamental approach’ of the cities has been to control the pandemic by limiting the population movement in public places. The extent of this limitation in 21

Figure 5 - Overlap between components of EPA clusters and 15-minute city modules (Source: Extracted and modified by author from Pisano, 2020)

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various cities scaled from home, condominiums areas, neighbourhoods, and district scale (Pisano, 2020, p. 5) In the light of Pandemic and resiliency of communities, following the guidelines of WHO (World Health Organization, 2020) the School of Architecture, Southeast University, China, and the UNESCO Chair in Cultural resource management proposed the model of ‘The Epidemic Prevention Area Concept’. Theses EPA clusters (functional at the district scale) provide a guideline for emergency response mechanism. Pisano, (2020) analysed these concepts based on three following principles of resilience planning i.e..

1. Decentralization of facilities, opposed to concertation and centralization facilities, populations, governance system 2. Hierarchization of transport and public services, hierarchy of street patterns, services provisions, modes of transport prioritizing sustainable modes like walking and biking.

3. Redundancy of public spaces, i.e. Duplication of critical components of a system to increase the reliability and continuity in case of collapse of main functioning space.

The author compared the EPA cluster concept to post covid recovery strategies of Milan and Paris and he concluded that the FMC’s prescriptive concepts8F8F 8 align and its urban planning manifestation overlap with the concept of EPA, particularly, th intention of FMC to reduce urban movements limiting traffic congestion and providing fairer distribution of services. The bikeable cities networks thus created due to FMC shall lead to secondary connection between district centres and the redundant public spaces.9F9F 9

2.1.3. FMC and Reconnecting residents to proximity services The concept of FMC puts forward the paradigm change from providing accessibility through mobility towards access through proximity. The paradigm shift that is already supported by the academia (Bertolini et al., 2005; Solá & Vilhelmson, 2018; The International Transport forum, 2019), is a central piece of international discussions in the light of Pandemic urbanity and the unequal access observed among the residents across cities.

Tan (2021) while writing about local accessibility in FMC in Anglo-Sexon countries highlights about the difference between ‘objective accessibility’ and ‘perceived’ accessibility and adds that measuring (objective) access (to destinations) through traditional objective means of gravity and aggression models differ from the reality. Most of the accessibly studies focus on metropolitan scale, and while the local access studies underestimate the mirages or accessibility shadows. Theses mirages are created The author has highlighted his subjective interpretation of the FMC concept and its strategies due to limited availability of details and data (Pisano, 2020) 9 Moreno’s FMC aspires to create multi-programmable urban spaces with emphasise on optimization and efficiency of space. This goes against the definition of redundancy which entails duplication of critical components (Masnavi et al., 2018). The author implicitly assumes replicated creation of such spaces will align with creation of redundant spaces.

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sometimes due to factors of quality of the service which forces residents to travel outside their local radius, or physical barriers like bridges which make it difficult to access on foot or bike while still reflecting that the area to be accessible in studies. The focus on 15-minute access is an opportunity to equally prioritise local access, and thus through actual community engagement, the planners can understand the real barriers, specially of historically excluded communities in planning. A similar view is shared by Steuteville (2021) and Smith (2020) about physical bottlenecks and need to humanise these barriers Another reflection on accessibility mirages comes from the European context in the backdrop of over-toursitification of city centres, calling out for localization of global spaces (Bertaud et al., 2021). The European city centres draw touristic visitors which clash with resident’s perception of places and draws them out of their local areas for amenities, leading to detached of residents to place and increased trips. To support the discussion, Philippe Chiambaretta, the principle architect of the redesign of Champs‑Élysées boulevard describes that although the site is in the centre of the city and highly accessible, yet his predesign survey showed that the only 1 out of 10 strollers in the boulevard were Parisians while others were tourists. (Philippe Chiambaretta as cited in Bertaud et al., 2021) These descriptions of urbanity across the cities align with the recommendations made by OECD report on Post Pandemic report (2020) which suggests cities to shift from focus on economic growth to residents’ liveability.

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2.2. Critical Voices

Though FMC’s individual components such as decentralization of services, pro-active land use management, promotion of soft mobility, which if interpretated in project policy terms leads to actions such as pop-up bicycle lanes, expanding terraces and converting parklets into public spaces, traffic calming measures and creating robust complexity and vitality in neighbourhoods, etc are well appreciated (Florida et al., 2020; Keesmaat et al., 2021; Ortega et al., 2020; Thrift et al., 2020), yet there are strong critical perspectives offered from experts in urban development especially the new urbanists, geographers, economist and transport planners in genera. The crux of these arguments originates from the accessibility perspective of the 15-minute city, which contrast the concept’s endorsement of socially inclusive urban development.

The section is divided into three parts,

1. the first section is informed by the comments of economists and sociologists on the job localization proposed by the proponents of FMC, they argue that proximity of firms to each other is important for economic growth and localization of jobs will lead to lower socio-economic mobility of lower classes and dilute the main function of city as places of opportunities.

2. The second section highlights the ambiguities in defining the spatial dimension of FMC modules and its features. The main arguments come from New Urbanists and proponents of compact city like Andres Duany, Randall Ghent, who emphasise the inconsistent and incomplete prescriptive elements of the concept and highlight the 15-minute access changes as per people’s personal ability, perception, modes of transport adopted. With a common understanding of scale of economies, its important to create a hierarchy of services which should be availed within the 15minute circle. Similar thoughts are provided by Gehl Architects, Copenhagen which propose to deconstruct the 15 minutes into 1,3,10, 15 minutes as per the respective functions.

3. From the urban geography perspective, some parts of the cities already experience the 15-minute city with rich quality services within reach of bike or walk. It’s a common understanding that there is a linear co-relation of centre-periphery cross section of city and 15-minute cities, with the suburban areas more impoverished, an observation confirmed by various studies undertaken across the cities like Milan, Chicago, Bagota, Lanchester. These disparities are created due to socio-economic complexity in a free-market setup where the vulnerable get displaced to the peripheries of cities and thus societies. A common concern raised is that an even application of the FMC concept shall create buoyancies in the real estate market thus risking creation of further inequalities due to land-price action.

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2.2.1. FMC and the two-fold argument regarding vitality of cities The Fifteen-minute city concept’s aspiration to localise the 6 social functions which Moreno proposes were identified from his research on what makes urban residents happy (refer figure 2 and 3). The proponents haven’t categorised these 6 functions into specific services or amenities, which makes the concept an open-ended model free to subjective interpretations.(Duany & Steuteville, 2021; Descant, 2021) A general criticism against the concept comes from its resident accessibility perspective to cities and it undermines the different functions and complexities of the cities. Following inter-related arguments challenge the theoretical assumptions made in the formulation of the concept and its proposal of decentralized city and thus localization of jobs.

Decentralized city vs. Agglomeration benefits: The localization of jobs into neighbourhoods from the urban centres creates a tension between proximity of people to services on one hand, and proximity of firms at another.

This proximity of firms leads to benefits of agglomeration and scale of economies by knowledge exchanges, labour pooling, sharing of resources, specialization, discovery of new markets, etc which in turn contribute to increase productivity and economic growth.

Reduced agglomeration by decentralization would explain reduced productivity and thus prosperity of cities. Agglomeration Economics in urban centres is the fundamental reason of why cities exist in first place (Giuliano et al., 2019).

Chen (2021) gives the example that London’s success as an economic and cultural success as a global city is not attributed to independent boroughs, rather its this compound benefits

Work centers

Residential areas

15-minute clusters

Daily commute

Figure 6 - Current system of urban centres & Interpretation of FMCs proposal for decentralization (Source: Re-illustrated from downtoearth.org.in)

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of agglomeration, specialization and socio-economic diversification that is achieved when inhabitants interact with each other.

Similarly, (Magrini 2021, as cited in Yeung, 2021, para. 12) has warned that the trend of ‘the end of big cities’ promoted by FMC shall also reduce creativity which big cities allow people to mix, interact and share ideas, “Often that happens in the city centre. Can we recreate the creation and innovation if they no longer exist?”

Furthermore, these urban centres in the form of office clusters, universities and specialised schools, special industrial zones, waste treatment plants, etc require a critical mass to achieve economies of scale and agglomeration benefits, below which they fail economically thus making them unaffordable (Giuliano et al., 2019, p.1). These work centres primarily function on principles of being located strategically, considering buoyancy of land markets and economies of scale (Lutt, 2020) This spatial organization necessitates the movement of people to work centres on daily basis.

Localization of Jobs versus cities as places of opportunities for socio-economic upward mobility: Localising the jobs from urban centres to neighbourhoods also undermines the role of cities as places of opportunities especially for people from lower strata of the society.

Glaeser (2021) strongly recommends that cities should be the machines for connecting people (of all races and financial backgrounds) otherwise they shall fail to be the places of opportunities. The economist further narrates that a lower income adult’s socio-economic mobility depends on these urban centres where he/she finds opportunities with people who are better educated and wealthier. The author contrasts his rhetoric of adults’ socioeconomic mobility and the localised jobs in ‘pedestrian oriented 15-minute city radii’s’ with an example of a child, ‘’The child...lives in a 15-minute city. Perhaps, he wakes in a low-income housing project and then goes to a highly segregated school. That child live (sic) in a 15minute city that is no more integrated than a poor rural village. In that world, the rich have isolated themselves from the poor, and the poor are cut off…ultimately, we should bury the idea of a city that is chopped up into 15-minute bits’’ (E. Glaeser et al., 2021) Peverini & Chiaro (2020) and Whittle (2020) highlight that not all urban residents (read workers live or can live due to issues of affordability created due to land markets where the selection of neighbourhoods for residence occurs by the ability to afford rather than need (Dunning et al., 2021) or due to personal preferences (Bertaud et al., 2021). Thus, creating a mismatch between jobs and housing (Boussauw et al., 2010).

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2.2.2. FMC and Challenge to ‘walkable’ Neighbourhood space metric In spatial planning terms, the 15-minute city ideally would fixate around a core of residential buildings around which other amenities would be placed, radiating outwards as per the walking distance from resident’s home, furthermore, the role of public transit is seen as a peripheral connector of this FMC modules.

This spatial metric challenges the neighbourhood concept which has gained iconic role in urban planning. Following two issues can be identified when comparing the spatial metric of 15-minute city and the neighbourhood concept,

1. In the neighbourhood concept, initially proposed by Clarence Perry and later advanced by the Congress of New Urbanism (Steuteville, 2021). the temporal dimension is prescribed to be 5-minute 10, assumed to be based on the anthropometry and comfort of the human body to walk for 8-10 minutes and confirmed by various studies across behavioural studies .The 15/20-minute temporal dimension contradicts this temporal scale of neighbourhoods (Guan et al., 2019) which is debated by New Urbanists (Duany & Steuteville, 2021; Steuteville, 2021) 2. Furthermore, the organizational principle of the 15-minute module goes against the logic of scale of economies and contextualization of services as captured in Neighbourhood concept, in which, the core instead is a commercial hub with a key public transit infrastructure (transport-oriented development) and the residential building stock provided around its 500m radius (5 minutes walking distance) (R. Rogers, 2008)

Transportation modes, speeds, sheds There is a common consensus across all the planning fraternity that design of cities should no longer be defined by the car as basic mode of travel, although it cannot be fully eliminated from the cities. While cars may be accommodated in the 15-minute city, but they should not define the scale of its urban form. (Duany & Steuteville, 2021; Global mayors COVID-19 recovery task force, 2020; Moreno, 2020) The CNU founder Andres Duany hypothecates that based on automobile as a transport mode, most of the metropolitan areas may already be 15-minute cities. (Duany & Steuteville, 2021) The 15-minute cities proposal puts soft mobility as the primary mode of transport. Although the modes of walking and biking are most agreed upon to be environmentally sustainable and social equity driven, the concept presents inconsistencies in prioritising these slow mobility modes of travel, given the temporal limitation of 15 minutes.

While trying to decipher the concept from a transport planning perspective, Duany and Steuteville (2021) highlight that there is much ‘slack’ in the concept depending on the

10

Euclidian (crow fly) distance measured from the centre of the neighbourhood. (IC walk)

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Drawn at Scale: 4X

15

15

m in ut e

m in ut e

w al k: 3/ 4

bi ke :3

m ile s

m ile s

Drawn at Scale: 1X

5 minute walk: 1/4 mile

5 minute bike: 1 mile

Drawn at Scale: 13X

15

15

m in ut e

m in ut e

EV :5

ca r: 10

m ile s

m ile s

Drawn at Scale: 7X

5 minute EV: 2/3 miles

1 MILE

3/4

1/2

1/4

00

5 minute Car: 3.3 miles

1/4

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selected mode of transport, even some conventional sub-urban sprawl development might be an eligible urban form in some cities. They highlight the

difference between the distance covered ‘sheds’ of each transport mode of soft mobility and conclude that concept needs to make clear these contingencies to better accommodate the planning processes.

Walking, cycling, electric vehicles have different 15-minute sheds The new urbanists considered a 5-minute walk as a spatial-temporal limit for setting up the radius of neighbourhood where most of the daily amenities would be provided to the residents, backed by the research of ¼ mile as a distance a person is willing to walk. A 15minute walk means, a spatial dimension 3 times bigger than the New urbanist neighbourhoods, covering a distance of ¾ mile, thus challenging the current standards and scale of neighbourhoods. (Claris et al., 2016) Similarly, the biking as a transport mode represents a different pace. A 5-minute bike ride is able to cover a distance a quarter more than the distance covered by the 15-minute walk i.e. 1 mile.

While a 15-minute bike, assuming the average speed of 12mph is able to cover a good distance of 3 miles, almost covering half the distance in a medium sized city like Paris.

(Duany & Steuteville, 2021) Thus, its important crate a priority of transports and sheds to define the spatial boundaries of the 15-minute city. This might as well impact the density, which is discussed in the next section.

Argument for including Electric bikes, scooters and neighbourhood centred vehicles (a.k.a. golf carts) In recent years there has been a rise of electric bikes and scooters which enable physically disabled people and motivate other individuals to change preferences for soft mobility/ micro mobility over choosing cars for small commutes. These types of transport modes find utility in geographically difficult cities where walking and cycling may not be as viable due to terrain differential or unfavourable climate of the city. (Duany & Steuteville, 2021) Duany argues that these modes of transport offer inexpensive and practical solutions and should be included. However, assuming an average speed if 20mph, they calculated that the Euclidian distance covered in 15 minutes can be averaged to 200 square kilometres of area. Planning for diversity within such a big shed, which covers almost a radius equal to car does not create a meaning for temporal limits.

The dilemma of public transit?

As seen in his model diagram, Moreno hasn’t included in transit and the experts at CNU have endorsed the same. It is further confirmed in one of his interviews that public transport in his vision is a peripheral connector, connecting all these 15 minute territories. (Moreno as cited in Petzer Brett, 2021) Transit service is one of the human needs that should be fulfilled in the 15-minute cities, which goes in line with internationally accepted understanding of role of public transit in social inequity, providing faster, cheaper, and 31

sustainable means for commuters across metropolitan regions to reach various parts of the city (Deponte et al., 2020) As per the founder of CNU, Counting Public transit service in the fifteen-minute transport shed presents serious difficulties and adds more confusion to the already loose ended concept.

Two phenomenon of public transit conflict with 15-minute temporal limit.

1. 15 minutes and distance covered through the transit modes 2. Supplementary time consumption to undertake a trip To elaborate further, the person undertaking a trip must walk to the station, wait for the train/ bus/ metro rail/ light rail before commencing the actual trip to the desired destination.

This ‘supplementary time’ shall vary depending on the type of location, type of mode, type of modal node, and design of the transit frequency, interconnectivity, and synchronization of timetables of public transit modes. (Levinson, 2019) Moreover, the shed of metro rail, light rails (trams), buses, metro lines vary from city to city and within cities and depend on variables such local infrastructure conditions ie. Quality of roads, congestion on roads (for buses and trams), speed enabling technologies used, etc.

(Levinson, 2019) On the other hand, walking, cycling and electric bikes don’t depend on these variables and are considered door to door. (Duany & Steuteville, 2021; Moreno, 2020)

Individual abilities, and proposal for Hierarchization of Services into 1/5/10/15 minutes.

The mode of transport also affects the density required to achieve proximity to quality services in a free market setup. The faster the transport, the lesser the density it will entail.

The modulus operandi till now have been to provide ‘basic services’ at a walkable distance at the neighbourhood scale (Guan et al., 2019) . Some authors have already proposed district level amenities hierarchization based on compact city concept taking walk as a measure of transport and its sheds (See R. Rogers, 2008).

The proponents of FMC don’t provide hierarchization of services, rather classify the services into 6 functions nor do they mention definite density values.

Another variable identified while contextualizing services in 15-minute city is the age-based abilities of individuals to walk. Literature on walking and access of various demographic show that old people are most sensitive to time and have lower capacities to walk, and generally tend to prefer amenities near parks (Leanage & Filion, 2020, p. 14). Similarly, it can be assumed that children too possess lower capacity to walk compared to others.

The speed of walk can further be differentiated with respect to gender, marriage and family status, ethnic background which can change the perception of 15 minutes of walk (Kasraian et al., 2019), however, in this study, the differentiation is limited to age-based gender differences which impact walking.

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Figure 9 - An illustrative supposition of 15-minute city model (Source: Author’s interpretation of iterations of Gehl architects & Congress for New Urbanism)

Taking these factors into considerations, namely, existing neighbourhood scale, time dimension of 15 minutes, walking as modal transport mode and scale of economies required to decentralised functions, breaking down of 15 minutes into smaller time frames is suggested by Gehl like 1,3,5 and 15 minutes and New Urbanists who propose 5,10,15 minutes with varying services placed according to the usage patterns of services and types of residents viz, children, old, married couple and individuals based on equity (Ferri et al., 2020; Gehl et al., 2020; Moreno & Murphy, 2021).

2.2.3. FMC and Challenge of existing demographic and socio-economic differential in cities The tensions narrated in this section come from the perspective of application of the FMC concept to the existing urban landscape or urban phenomenon which takes place over much wider times and space than the local space, which in turn is a product of demographic, social and economic dynamics at play at city and metropolitan scale (Peverini 33

& Chiaro, 2020).The elements of tension mentioned below can be looked at, from the standpoint of planning for possible based on existing (Dunning et al., 2021)

Not all Neighbourhoods are Equal Studies that undertook the initial mapping of amenities and services in cities demonstrate that there exists a differential in service provision among neighbourhoods. (as observed in Milan 11, Chicago 12, Bagota 13, Barcelona 14, Liverpool 15) 16 confirming the generally accepted hypothesis that their exist a socio-economic differential across the urban geography at metropolitan regions across the globe alike. This differential has a clear inverse proportion to the cross section from city centres to suburbs (The International Transport forum, 2019) The city centre and inner neighbourhoods surrounding the city centre is concentrated with high quality amenities and is populated by the higher socio-economic sections of the society and reduces towards the suburban neighbourhoods, proving that there is corelation between access to amenities/ services and existing socio-economic divisions (Bertaud et al., 2021; E. Glaeser et al., 2021; Günç et al., 2020). Dunning et al. (2021) emphasis on this phenomenon during their study based in Liverpool where 21% of the population is currently living in 15-minute cities that it is both, a positive indicator for those people living in those areas while it also highlights the inequalities in provision of active travel and services.

The suburban areas comprise of complex and diverse issues not just the amenities and services; they generally consist of sprawl development patterns compared to high density patterns of city centres, houses comparatively a larger share of lower and middle segments of the society including concentrations of vulnerable groups like ethnic groups, old groups, families, and individuals who prefer larger estates. Peverini & Chiaro (2020) describes this polarization occurs due to dynamics of residential mobility particularly spread of house and

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Transform Transport. (2020). Living Local: Mapping Milan micro- centers.

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Bright, D. (2021). Whose 15-Minute Windy City?: Evaluating Access to Walkable Places in Chicago. https://doi.org/10.17615/fcv0-cr12 13

Guzman, L. A., Arellana, J., Oviedo, D., & Moncada Aristizábal, C. A. (2021). COVID-19, activity and mobility patterns in Bogotá. Are we ready for a ‘15-minute city’? Travel Behaviour and Society, 24, 245–256. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.TBS.2021.04.008 14 Graells-Garrido, E., Serra-Burriel, F., Rowe, F., Cucchietti, F. M., & Reyes, P. (2021). A city of cities: Measuring how 15-minutes urban accessibility shapes human mobility in Barcelona. PLOS ONE, 16(5), e0250080. https://doi.org/10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0250080 15

Dunning, R., Calafiore, A., & Nurse, A. (2021). 20-minute neighbourhood or 15-minute city? (Town and Country Planning). https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3127722/ 16

The studies referred here undertake different methods of mapping. However the binary approach to provision of services across the respective urban limits of the cities demonstrates a clear inverse proportion to city centre-suburban cross section i.e. amenities get sparser from city centre towards suburbs. The different approach adopted for mapping also indicates an inconsistent prescriptive approach to define the FMC by its proponents, for example, (Bright, 2021) adopts the scale of traditional neighbourhood centres to measure the FMC in Chicago while (Transform Transport, 2020) measures the FMC in Milan with pharmacies as base, assuming that pharmacies are the least distributed services of all.

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car ownership. He observes that in Italian context, the purchase power and rents are higher in the central municipalities.

Although the severity of this urban phenomenon is less in European counterparts compared to Anglo Saxon countries (Musterd, 2016), nevertheless, critics from both the parts of the world have highlighted the same concern.

This demographic diversity of suburbs is also reflected in the difference of employment patterns, since these vulnerable groups also represent the non-knowledge intensive economic sectors of the city (De Vidovich, 2021; Guida & Carpentieri, 2021; Williams et al., 2020) On the other hand, the applicability of FMC relies heavily on the argument of digitalization of social functions and decentralization of work enabled by the ‘zoom effect’ which the author assumes would be new normal for the large force post pandemic.

E. Glaeser et al. (2021) have commented that the idea that physical mobility shall be replaced by virtual exchanged is false and temporal in nature. It is also learnt that the ‘zoom effect’ too is unequally impacted across the knowledge intensive firms and its applicability depends on factors such as type and size of firms, cultural contexts etc. (Pacchi et al., personal communication, 21 February 2021) For example, in Milan, most of the knowledge intensive firms are small or medium size firms and the employers show lower trust factor towards employees to undertake work remotely which raises the question of wide

Figure 10 - FMC's synonymity to Garden city concept (Source: downtoearth.org/isfifteenminutecityheretostay, 2021)

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applicability of ‘work from home’ patterns. Similarly, (Pasqui, 2021, personal communication, 21 February 2021) states that not all departments of knowledge intensive economies can work from home, while it may be possible for some jobs of non-knowledge intensives to undertake remote work. Thus, it can be concluded that the work from home patterns are not equally distributed in the city, and not all workers can telework.

The local scale versus the governance of metropolitan differential The ‘localist idea’ at the basis of FMC risks to divulge the urban governance at city and metropolitan scale. The scale of city and metropolitan governance which deals with rent, residential mobility and transport is decisive for the liveability enhancement of middle- and lower-income groups (Peverini & Chiaro, 2020) Moreover, the implementation of new services and infrastructure risks exacerbating of existing inequalities if not properly governed. Previous design concepts focussing at the local scale like the Neighbourhood concept by Perry C. and New Urbanism have enabled flow of capital from neighbourhood to neighbourhood through sequential gentrification thus enabling displacement and segregation in cities and regions (Hochstenbach, 2017).

This phenomenon is antithetical to the concepts’ endorsement of social mixing and mixed use in neighbourhoods (Dunning et al., 2021). Pieri (2020 as cited in Whittle, 2020) has endorsed similar view while narrating her experience in social policy context of Manchester city, that the marginalised communities end up with poor quality services through such schemes.

It is suggested that city managers should consider the issues of equity and displacement or else the distinction of neighbourhoods/ district through valuing temporal measure coupled with the presence of real estate markets; narrow view of accessibility measures and reduced function of public transportation as promoted by FMC shall worsen social divides, widening inequality between richer and poorer localities, where the former shall benefit from the higher quality service while the latter shall be less mobile than before (Dunning et al., 2021; Gehl et al., 2020; Skwierawski et al., 2020).

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2.3. Interpretative remarks, problem statement & way forward to case studies.

The concept of Fifteen-minute city was initially developed for the Parisian context. However, in the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic and the common problems experienced across the cities, the concept was globalised as a spatial planning model which according to its proponents, renders a paradigm shift in urban planning. In the pandemic-era, it has clear attractions, especially concerned with provisions for ‘work from home’ patterns and its spill over effect at the local scale. Yet, the concept has raised sharp contrasting perspectives across the academia and planning fraternity in general. Although its components of sustainable modes of travel, dense and diverse cities, proximity to services are appreciated and backed by the academic studies, the temporal limit of 15/20 minutes and its uncategorised social functions are less supported. According to its critics, it risk creating disparities and segregation reproduced due to uneven mobilities. During the study, a distinction was made while observing the ‘Arguments in favour’ & ‘Critical voices’, the former is informed by professionals which focused at the micro scale (i.e. neighbourhood to city) while the latter is informed by the macro perspective (i.e. city and metropolitan scale).

As the first theme of tension from a normative perspective to city making, it was observed that the concepts over dependency on decentralization for creating proximity of services to people stands in contrast to, what some economists and transport planners put forward as, primary function of cities i.e. Achieving benefits of agglomeration and scale of economies. Furthermore, localization of jobs from work centres to local neighbourhoods shall deprive the cities from performing the role of places of opportunities for members from low strata of society to achieve socio-economic mobility. The concept is criticized for its unidimensional outlook to cities from resident oriented perspective, risking economic vitality of cities.

From a spatial planning perspective covered in theme 2, the study attempted to analyse the concept from a prescriptive viewpoint to city design. It was found that the proponents use only normative concepts of design namely, density and diversity while no prescriptive guidelines are provided to achieve the fifteen-minute city. It also assumes proximity as an individual design principle apart from the above two, although in spatial planning practice, proximity is a by-product of design and diversity. Thus, making the concept inconsistent and ambiguous.

The concept poses a challenge to fundamental notion of time and distance consolidated in neighbourhood concept, the 8–10-minute walk (interpretated as 5-minute neighbourhood based on crow-fly distance) During the study, it was understood that the means of transport determines the size of shed, which in turn should be reflected in the density values which shall define the minimum population within that shed that is able to support the installation of services. For example, with an electric bike as a mode of transport, some suburban areas may qualify under 15minute accessibility.

Due to scale of economies and agglomeration activities as mentioned before, it is not recommended, due to economic vitality of cities, to decentralise the social functions. As an implication of it, lower order facilities can be provided at local scale however higher order facilities ought to be provided at more aggregate city level. Thus, it becomes imperative to 37

create a hierarchy of functions/ services/amenities to be provided within different sheds (example, ranging from grocery stores, post offices, hospitals to universities) categorised by considering the chosen transport mode and social equity between different users and their abilities (like old, children, ethnic, etc) Furthermore, non-decentralization of functions like industries, warehouses, water treatment plants, etc can be interpretated as; their will exist some areas in cities which will be unfavourable environments for walkability due to their large building footprint, which can be further exaggerated by their monofunctionally. For example, manufacturing areas cannot be mixed use zones with residential quarters due to reasons of health. Jane Jacobs called them ‘Border vacuums’ These tensions of spatial organizations demonstrate that, there will exist, by default, spatially distributed temporal inequalities in cities. These inequalities may be accentuated by geographic conditions of/in the city which may make it difficult to promote walkability or decentralization of services due to natural barriers of topography.

The third theme informs the application of the concept to the existing socio-economic complexities at play at scale beyond the ‘local’ scale i.e city and metropolitan scale. The study draws lessons from the opinions by various experts coupled with recent 15-minute city mapping exercises undertaken by individual authors and organization across various cities in OECD countries.

It is observed that the FMC’s oversimplified outlook towards complexities of demographic and socio-economic processes of the cities, reduced role of public transit as a mere connector of FMC modules further risks exacerbation of inequalities in cities by creating enclaves similar to the garden city concept proposed by Ebenezer Howard (Tizot & Jean-Yves, 2018). The implementation of FMC risks mobilization of capital through real estate thus risking exacerbation of inequalities by gentrification and displacement.

While these critical dimensions of the FMC are of dire consequences if applied to the city making processes, a trend has emerged in the last year especially propelled by C40s advocacy, of cities across the globe adopting this time-based urban concept. Thus, presenting an opportunity to investigate the adoption of the utopian concept into practice of urban planning.

To contribute to the debate of this rediscovered time-based urban agenda namely 15–20minute city, this thesis shall advance to contrast the theoretical presumptions covered in previous chapter by undertaking a study of the cities which have adopted this time oriented urban vision. For this purpose, case study approach (Kohlbacher, 2006) shall be used.

The explorative case studies thus shall add clarity to the highly contested concept from empirical viewpoint and provide an opportunity to validate or invalidate the presumptions around the Utopian concept.

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2.4. Analysing the FMC: Questions and Criteria The theoretical reasoning in Urban planning has always filtered through the practice of the profession, a case not unique only to the field but nevertheless is a highlight in comparison to other scientific fields. While the theoretical reasoning is useful to inform various critical elements and questions in concern with the FMC. However, it would be vacuous without the research on urban realities.

Thus, the empirical research is a tool to answer the questions emerged during the theoretical reasoning of the concept.

Using case studies approach allows the theoretical assumptions to be tested by contrasting them with its empirical counterparts, thus throwing light on application (or omission) of the various components of the concept. From the similarities and differences, the case studies become elements of valuable information for the ongoing international discussion on the new ‘time-based agenda’ of 15–20-minute city.

In the previous sections the study described, first the FMC concept and its framework as put forward by its proponents, and second, the study captures the different perspectives offered by prominent authors like Richard Florida, Saskia Sassen, Edward Glaeser and Andreas Duany who praise its some elements while warn against others.

It is observed that the FMC concept proposed by the proponents consist of contingencies which makes the concept open to individual interpretation. Due to use of only normative and broadly general principles of planning like ‘planning the commons’ and ‘different kind of density’ combined with its failure to provide any comprehensive prescriptive clarifications to city making processes, it is important to fixate the design principles of the Fifteen-minute city.

The outcome of this research exercise is intended for adding knowledge to the global mobilization of this ‘hyper-local’ concept.

2.4.1. General research questions The case studies are expected to answer the following general research question which is based on the critical aspects of the FMC concept outlined in section 2.2 Critical voices. The Umbrella research question and the sub research questions are elaborated below:

How do cities adopt the time-based concept of 15/20 minute city? Can a common planning framework be derived?

This ‘umbrella’ question can be further expanded into a subset of three research enquiries, each representing the respective ‘critical voices’ or ‘themes of conflict.’

The FMC concept treats all the urban activities in the same manner such that all the activities should be within 15 minutes, thus going against the logic of categorization and localization of services into low order/ high order or specialised services to balance the scale of economies (agglomeration) and decentralization. At the same time, its uni-dimensional 39

approach to cities from resident perspective, as reflected in its proposal to localize work, may endanger cities functions as economic centres and places of opportunities, thus, RQ 1: How do cities define the FMC concept and how do they treat different urban activities (or as defined by the proponents of FMC, urban social functions)?

The temporal threshold of 15 minutes and undifferentiated mode of transport of transport raise challenges from transport planning and equity dimensions. It directly challenges the established and well accepted principles of accessibility in the neighbourhood concept which form the basis of city making extending to district scale, town scale, city and metropolitan scale.(Guan et al., 2019) It must be noted that although different models of neighbourhood are proposed by various authors in the one and a half century (See Guan et al., 2019; R. G. Rogers, 2013; The Confress for New Urbanism, 2000), yet few principles have remained same i.e. proximity to basic amenities in a central hub (generally public transit hub) within 10 minute one way walking distance (or 5 minute Euclidian distance as prescribed by New Urbanists). As mentioned earlier, the 10-minute walk has been established based on the studies of human anthropometry and comfortable walking distance. FMC module defies this commonly accepted spatial metric of city, which leads to the second sub-question, RQ 2: Does the spatial metric of proximity in 15–20-minute city module differ from the ‘neighbourhood concept’ as defined in New Urbanism principles? If yes, what are its prescriptive components and how is it different?

Finally, the cities that have adopted the concept are an urban palimpsest (Corboz, 2016) which can be hypothecated to have existing spatially distributed temporal inequalities in their territories. Some experts (as mentioned in section 2.2.3) opine that adopting the FMC concept shall exacerbate these inequalities. Therefore, the third sub question focuses on the existing socio-economic differential in the cities, RQ 3: How do cities treat the socio-economic differential across the city to achieve proximity for all?

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2.4.2. Case study selection criteria

Cities that have announced adoption of the FMC concept

Case-study Selection criteria Criteria 1

Criteria 2

Criteria 3

Explicit adoption of FMC as a major spatial and functional element in its city planning documents

Availability of implementation strategy and action plan

Cities belonging OECD Countries

Added criteria

to

Advantage of Pilot projects

Milan, Italy Turin, Italy Rome, Italy London, UK Edinburgh, UK Dublin, Ireland Brussels, Belgium Barcelona, Spain Nantes, France Paris, France Detroit, USA Seattle, USA New York, USA Portland, USA Ottawa, Canada Montreal, Canada Bagotà, Columbia Singapore Melbourne, Australia Hamilton, New Zealand Shanghai, China Guangzhou, China Delhi, India Bangalore, India Table 1 - Selection criteria for empirical investigation of FMC

For case study identification and selection, a list of cities that have adopted or claimed to have adopted was created from grey literature data sources, especially, C40 cities web pages. C40 cities states that 38 member cities have adopted, while the media articles reflect 24 cities have adopted the agenda (Refer Table 1). In depth reviews of official documents were undertaken which filtered many cities as cases. For example, Barcelona. Although C40 cities mentions the city as a role model for 15-minute city development, however, no official 41

documents explicitly mention any reference to the concept, rather it was triangulated that the city’s recent interventions in creating complexity models in Superillas blocks was being referred to be aligned to the FMC concept, Similarly, Mayor of London had announced adaptation of 15 minute concept, however, in its final version of comprehensive plans, no explicit notion of 15-20 minute city exists (Sisson, 2020). For the purpose of narrowing the scope of selection of cases, only OECD countries were selected, as the theoretical research undertaken in the previous sections coincided with the OECD countries particularly AngloSexon and European cities. Moreover, Non-OECD countries such as China and India represent complex challenges to understand design principles related to time-use in city like Density as well as socio-economic considerations of informal economies. (Henckel et al., 2015)

The selection criteria for the case studies were developed as follows: 1. Explicit mention, adaptation, and application of 15–20-minute city/neighbourhood at city scale 2. Use of FMC as a major spatial and functional element of city planning 3. Availability of Implementation strategy and action plan Thus, only 4 cities qualified from all the city strategies explored, i.e Portland 20 minute neighbourhoods, Melbourne’s 20 minute neighbourhoods, Paris, City of Quarter hour and Ottawa’s 15 minute neighbourhoods.

Of all the four cases, apart from Ottawa, all the others demonstrated clear advantage of on-ground progress through completed pilot projects at least and thus were selected.

Overall, the formulated criteria secured the cases where FMC discourse is explicitly dealt through planning measures, practical advances and future ambitions are present.

2.4.3. Case study methodology, unit of analysis, materials, and methods Case study research has been a prominent method of enquiry in many disciplines. Creswell et. al (2018, p. 245) suggests the case-study methodology as a ‘design-type’ in qualitative research, an object of the study, and a product of enquiry. The authors concluded that the case study approach is in which the researcher/ investigators approach a bounded system (interpreted as case, here) or multiple bounded systems through a detailed, in-depth data collection involving various sources of information and reports a case description through case-based themes.

To further the understanding the phenomenon of FMC and the notion of spatial proximity put forward by the concept, defining the unit of analysis is essential to focussing, framing and management of data collection and analysis (Conticelli, 2019). Thus, the structural basis of this research is the design of strategies that create accessibility by proximity.

According to Yin (2009) Case study approach entails use of multiple sources of evidence like documents, observations, interviews, and so on. This approach provides a better synergised and comprehensive view of the object under study.

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Accordingly, data were extracted from multiple sources of evidence with a series of search executed in various online data base.

A qualitative content analysis is undertaken of the documents produced by public organization of respective cities. The typology of documents inspected included vision and strategy documents, comprehensive plans, action plans, project documents and funding plans.

Grey literature in the form of reports, newspaper and online articles, research project deliverables and webinars etc, were analysed. The webinars attended by the researcher assisted in generation of knowledge which is further mobilised in the case study analysis.

The webinars used in the section of case studies differ from the webinars mobilised in the previous sections. While the speakers of the webinars utilised in previous sections helped create a theoretical narrative and remained unfiltered from any city specific interpretations, the webinars put to use for case study were filtered by the criteria of official presence of the city representatives as a speaker in the webinar. (See for example, CHAIRE ETI, 2021; Emery & Thrift, 2021; Gorman & Dillon-robinson, 2021) In addition to the above, semi-structured telephonic and online interviews are planned with the designated city managers responsible for 15–20-minute city policy in all the three cities.

While each city expert was asked different set of questions, the focus of the interviews was similar.

It is noteworthy to mention that the interviews will be staged after the content analysis was undertaken. This structure ensured that the hypothesis created during content analysis shall get validated thereby reducing personal biases, which may present itself as a weakness of such case study approaches (Charbgoo & Mareggi, 2018). A series of open-ended questions would be asked which shall focus on three main paradigms related to study, The FMC concept in comparison to the normative concept proposed by the respective city Applicability of the adopted concept to cities, its bottlenecks, opportunities.

Finally, utility of the concept as a spatial development model for cities.

The interviews would play a pivotal role in informing the analytical findings and discussion which shall follow the case study descriptions.

2.4.4. Scope and Limitations of case studies The empirical examination undertaken in the study comes with certain general limitations.

One obviously concerns the generalization of the governance context which changes across the cities at national, state, and local levels as well as socio-economic variables which represent bottom-up engagements which again change not only across the (selected) cities but also within these cities.

For example, the education and health policies across Portland, Melbourne, and Paris. Paris is comparatively welfare-oriented state with respect to the other two with strong welfareoriented school and health policies. As a consequence, less accessibility differential observed due to performance of public and private schools compared to more capitalist economies of former two cases (Elldér et al., 2018). Going by this respect, one may question 43

the provision of schools in proximity with respect to the actual usage of those schools due to self-selection of the residents and therefore the utility of service localization in the FMC. It is worth clarifying that the intention of the study (especially with respect to the RQ 1 and RQ 2) is derivation of prescriptive elements of spatial form i.e. identification of various urban activities and spatial organization of these activities in space. Each neighbourhood is a different place (Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021) and by large, each city is a different place, with its own socio-economic and governance aspects that shape its urban form (Medeiros, 2019). These notions become pivotal in accessibility studies specially, however, the researcher assumes a spatial perspective to these issues of access (Henckel et al., 2015; Solá & Vilhelmson, 2018). The overriding goal of the study is to demonstrate the adoption of the concept of FMC and its spatial model which guides the cities’ urban form.

Thus, the study assumes an exploratory approach from spatial planning perspective.

This implies that causal relationships which ask the questions of ‘why’ are not explored (Yin, 2009). Explanatory factors of the implications of the concept remain for future analysis.

This also entails that the changes accompanied by COVID-19 Pandemic on socioeconomic processes and behavioural patterns assume limited considerations on the study, for example, the study does not strive to answer why cities are rapidly adopting the concept.

The Pandemic dimension is also kept to minimum as these changes, although phenomenal, are yet to be consolidated and studied for their lasting impact.

For the purpose of Answering RQ-3 i.e., addressing the socio-economic differential in the given territory, the author does not undertake accessibility modelling exercise, due to limited timeframe of the thesis study, rather, the analysis of strategies is guided by a ‘general assumption’ regarding the accessibility dimension and socio-economic distribution in the cities.

The ‘inner city areas’ and the ‘well-established urban clusters’ in a city are the most accessible areas and yet unaffordable. This accessibility is inversely related to the distance away from these high-density urban areas. Thus, suburbs remain the most accessible areas of the city and experience various socio-economic complexities due to composite profile of residents and built environments.

This assumption is informed by various accessibility studies undertaken by various authors mentioned in section 2.2.3 and triangulated by various accessibility studies on global cities (Bertolini et al., 2005; Curtis, 2008; Ewing & Cervero, 2010; Kasraian et al., 2019; Mulley & Nelson, 2021) Another limitation to be specifically mentioned is related to asymmetrical data across the cases. It must be highlighted that during the formulation of this study, Paris has not yet officially inducted the FMC concept in its comprehensive plans, however, creation of the office of commissioner for FMC has been taken as an indicator for the explicit mention and adaptation of the concept at city scale. Subsequently, the analysis is developed by reconstructing and thereby contextualising the discourses of FMC with the help of- white paper on pilot project of FMC, the political campaign documents, media articles, interviews and public seminars with city representatives and experts (either associated or nonassociated with the formulation of the concept). This signifies that the qualitative investigation is subject to abductive interpretation (Schöbel, 2012) of the discourses based on observations and understanding of the researcher.

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SECTION 2: CONTRASTING THE CONCEPT WITH EMPIRICAL APPLICATION

SECTION 2

CONTRASTING THE CONCEPT WITH EMPIRICAL APPLICATION 45

Chapter 3. Exploring the Empirical Application of FMC

The chapter concerns with case study descriptions of Portland, Melbourne and Paris. The learnings from this chapter shall be analysed and interpolated to create findings in next chapter according to the research objectives. The qualitative exercise is structured into three parts, 1. General introduction of the city: This section sets the contextual background of the city highlighting its general features as well as socio-economic and spatial dynamics to better understand the ‘state of being’ to situate the rational for specific modelling of FMC concept by the city.

2. Ideation, FMC definition and features: The section starts by briefly describing the documents analysed and their overall strategic frameworks. It elaborates on the adopted definition of the FMC concept and its spatial metric. The section shall be useful to answer the normative oriented sub-question RQ1 and RQ2, ie ‘How do cities define the FMC concept and how do they treat different urban activities (or as defined by the proponents of FMC, urban social functions)?’ and ‘How does the spatial metric of proximity in 15–20-minute city module differ from the neighbourhood concept If yes, what are its prescriptive components and how is it different?’

3. Strategies for Spatial proximity: A thorough analysis of various actions-policies and project plans was undertaken to answer the RQ 3; How do cities treat the socio-economic differential across the city to achieve proximity for all?

The intention of the analysis was to identify and highlight key determinants of the FMC concept from a spatial planning perspective. The content analysis method relied not only interpretating the explicit visions, actions and policies but also implicit references to implementation measures (Charbgoo & Mareggi, 2018). Apart from the normative documents like comprehensive plans, the planning procedures imbibed in annual or staged reports helped in creating a deeper understanding of the subject and case in hand.

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3.1. Portland: Towards an equitable city

Figure 11 - Panoramic view of Portland city (Source: Tumblr.com)

3.1.1. General Overview of the city The City of Portland is situated on the Northwest of USA in Oregon State. It is the principal city of its Metropolitan Statistical Area with an estimated population of 654,741 residents as of 2019 sharing 35% of the total population in the metropolitan area (City of Portland, 2015a) The city comprises of total urban area of 375 km2 covered by comprising of population density of 1,895 ppkm2, and a housing density of 1236km2 which is territorially divided into 5 districts, namely, central city, river and industrial neighbourhoods, inner neighbourhoods, Eastern neighbourhoods, western neighbourhoods (Refer Figure 12) The city centre is the densest and intensely urbanised area compared to other districts with the high-rise office towers/ headquarters of the knowledge intensive firms and high-density residential development in a fine grain urban morphology of detached structures (Bureau of Planning and Sustainability- City of Portland, 2014) The major economic sector of Portland i.e. manufacturing and international export business is situated in the industrial districts connected to the city port of Columbia river with large monofunctional urban blocks shaped by rail roads and grey infrastructure.

The city centre accounts for 34% of cities employment and industrial districts 25% respectively, while remaining growth is distributed among institutional, education and retail sectors spread across the city. It is implicit that the city centre and the industrial districts serve the metropolitan function of work-centres. (Portland Development Commission, 2020)

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Figure 12 - Territorial Governance of Portland city (Source: Portland Plan, 2012)

In terms of amenities provisions in the city, the inner neighbourhoods are provided with most quality services, the downtown city centre being the densest and highly liveability index. The high liveability index is reflected in the real estate values of properties being high in both the areas, the inner neighbourhoods serve mainly residential purpose. (Bureau of Planning and Sustainability- City of Portland, 2014; City of Portland, 2012) On the other hand, the Eastern neighbourhoods, occupied by lower income groups and lacks proper street connectivity, poor pedestrian access to parks and gardens compared to the other neighbourhoods in the city. These neighbourhoods which have been urbanised in recent decades have a characteristic of urban-rural mix with relatively low household density, although population density is high. The urban blocks are large and are punctuated by malls and commercial centres.

The streets are laid in the hierarchy of grid iron patterns to felicitate car-oriented street design over relatively flat terrain, which only changes in the hilly terrains of the western neighbourhoods following the contours and other natural features. These neighbourhoods lie in the region of high natural value.

It should be noted that the city overall suffers through the deficit of green infrastructure.

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Figure 13 - The built environment of Central city, Inner neighbourhoods, and Eastern neighbourhoods of Portland (Source: Google Earth)

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3.1.2. The FMC: Complete neighbourhoods (formerly 20-minute city) The documents analysed for this case study are the urban development documents ‘Portland Plan’ and ‘Portland Climate Action Plan’ (See City of Portland, 2012, 2015a; Portland Development Commission, 2020) formulated and published in 2012 and 2015 respectively, with the description of corresponding actions and policies to guide future development. Additional documents were taken into consideration based on the recommendations of city managers.

The Portland Plan is an urban growth plan for the city with a long-term duration from 20122035 to counter the projected population growth in the city and is based on objectives of liveability, property, education, health and equity. It is implemented through the • • •

City’s comprehensive Plan update, revisions to the city budget legislative advocacy and intergovernmental agreements.

The plan sets a framework for short term actions in a Five-year action plan which are reviewed at the end of the term and changes are amended in the Portland Plan according to the progress.

Equity has been of prime importance from the outset in Portland plan with an objective to counter the racial, ethnic and age divide in the city with special emphasis on the youth of the marginalised communities (36% of the total young population) by providing equal opportunities to jobs, equitable access to the services and building self-sufficiency of households.

The plan is articulated into three integrated strategies thriving educated youth, economic prosperity and affordability, healthy connected cities The first strategy ‘Thriving Educated Youth’ focuses on creating a supporting environment for the young population, neighbourhoods, and communities through provision of services and programs that meet contemporary challenges and opportunities.

The second strategy, ‘Economic prosperity and Affordability’ is hinged on placemaking through boosting urban innovation, local job growth and employment opportunities, access to affordable housing for all demographic sections of society and improving neighbourhood business vitality.

The third strategy, ‘Healthy Connected City’ refers to safety and health of citizens, regeneration of neighbourhoods, connecting people to natural elements and conserving the blue green infrastructure. The concept of ‘Complete Neighbourhoods’ (FMC) is mentioned under the third strategy of ‘Healthy connected neighbourhoods’ On the other hand, The Portland Climate Action Plan 2015 sets carbon emission targets for the city of Portland and County of Multnomah. Its special emphasis is on reduction of emissions generated from transportation which is the largest contributor among all sectors (43%).

The document identifies Land use planning and transportation policies as pivotal instruments to meet the targets for reducing 80% carbon emissions in the region by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

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Figure 14 - Strategic Framework of Portland Plan (Source: Portland Plan, 2012)

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The 2030 objectives are based on three factors with its territorial focus at the scale of neighbourhoods, viz.

1. The overall urban form or shape of the community, including where jobs and housing are located, the presence of parks and open spaces and the location of stores and services.

2. How people and goods move around.

3. The fuels used to power transit, cars and trucks

Ideation, definition, and features The local authority started working on the concept of 20-minute neighbourhood on residents’ request in improving walking ad provision of basic services near residences. The city administration also had recognised land-use planning as a major opportunity to address carbon emissions and climate change

Subsequently, an objective of creating ‘Complete neighbourhoods’ was adopted in the city’s urban development agenda for formulating city development plans. Although the ’20minute terminology’ was used in the drafting of its plans among the various actors, the City Council rather refers it to ‘healthy connected city’ and the promotion of ‘Complete and Vibrant Neighbourhoods centres’ (Da Silva et al., 2020; Emery & Thrift, 2021, p. 60) This amendment, the city planners suggest was due to elderly groups who highlighted that the 20 minute distance based on walkability factor can be different for different age groups and their individual mobility limitations.

The ’20-minute neighbourhood’ concept was outlined through intensive participatory processes with the citizens using the means of community workshops and surveys to enable the council in identifying the requirements of each community group. The residents reviewed the research from the city planners on the existing scenario of Portland, provided feedback and ranked their top priorities for the neighbourhoods. A final ‘negotiated definition’ of what is accessible in proximity at city level was formulated and is defined as,

Neighbourhood where one has safe and convenient access to the goods and services needed in daily life. This includes a variety of housing options, grocery stores and other commercial services, quality public schools, public open spaces and recreational facilities, affordable active transportation options and civic amenities.

An important element of a complete neighbourhood is that it is built at a walkable and bikeable human scale and meets the needs of people of all ages and abilities.

(City of Portland, 2012, p. 76) 52

Figure 15 - Components of Complete Neighbourhoods and the city scale connected network of complete neighbourhoods (Source: Portland Plan, 2012)

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The plan further elaborates its spatial features through an illustration, where the neighbourhood centres act as the focal points of the neighbourhood which provide for daily services at local scale along with central public space for encouraging community life and local businesses. They are the multimodal hubs with mixed use to anchor community life and provide public transit access to other part of the city. Surrounding these centres, are the community schools and elderly housing and grocery stores providing affordable food. The neighbourhood shall have its own decentralised energy supply system and foster local production of food through community gardens. The schools and parks are recognised as important destinations to activate community life in the neighbourhood it’s a focus on child friendly environment.

These complete neighbourhoods are expected to help build climate resilience, help build resilient communities and are also defined as the scale of focus for tackling carbon emissions due to transportation. (City of Portland, 2015b, p. 18)

3.1.3. Strategies for Spatial proximity The PCL emphasis that’s these 20-minute neighbourhoods shall be achieved by greater coordination of transport and land use planning city level and community engagement coordinated by Community planners at the local scale. (City of Portland, 2015b)

Figure 16 - Portland's 20-minute city analysis (Source: Portland Plan, 2012)

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Figure 17 - Portland's Investment Strategy to prioritize strategic neighbourhoods (Source: Portland Urban Design Framework, 2014)

For the application of the FMC, a 20-minute neighbourhood initial index was created to measure the status of existing neighbourhoods w.r.t 20-minute neighbourhoods (Refer figure 16). This analysis was based on three factors • • •

Distance (by walk).

Destinations (to grocery stores, restaurant, retail, schools and parks, transit access) Density (to support selected amenities, 12-18 household per acre minimum density was calculated)

According to the preliminary analysis, only 6% of the city population lived in 20-minute neighbourhoods in the red hotspots (city centre and inner neighbourhoods), while 69% in areas which were least characteristic of 20-minute neighbourhoods, mostly eastern neighbourhoods. The city targets 80% of the population living within 20-minute neighbourhoods (City of Portland- Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, 2008; City of Portland, 2015a, p. 136). The Portland plan acknowledges that some residential areas, for example, western neighbourhoods with large number of natural areas cannot be 20-minute neighbourhoods as increasing density and installing infrastructure will compromise the environmental function of these areas.

The index highlights that the city centre and the inner neighbourhoods are the hotspots of 20-minute walkable neighbourhoods while the eastern neighbourhoods are the challenging areas due to vulnerable populations, low density, and low transit connectivity.

(Bureau of Planning and Sustainability- City of Portland, 2014)

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Based on the analysis, a matrix is drafted to inform the investment strategy to counter the city-wide differential since the neighbourhoods vary in size and local conditions. The investments are complemented by place and people-based approach to maximise the outcome of the funds. Programs which achieve more than one goal are prioritised to be implemented in ‘high priority neighbourhoods’ (Refer figure 16). These ‘high priority neighbourhoods’ are defined as areas which are undergoing lagging commercial investment, augmented poverty, gentrification pressures, experiencing substantial change due to major public infrastructure improvements, or businesses at risk due to suburban or big box competitors (Bureau of Planning and Sustainability- City of Portland, 2014; Portland Development Commission, 2010, p. 5).

To increase the number of residents living within the 20-minute neighbourhoods, the actions of Portland Action Plan focus on, • • • •

Increasing housing density and affordability in areas with services i.e., city centre and inner neighbourhoods (Portland Metropolitan Region, 1995) Invest to enhance affordability and accommodate growth in all areas To introduce more services including transit connectivity in areas which currently are under served i.e., eastern neighbourhoods Retain and attract full-service grocery stores and retail sector in underserved areas.

The growth strategy targets new growth centres and corridors, by improving public space in parks, streetscapes, enhancement of local transit nodes and its densification to support services, mixed use and multistorey buildings, areas of redevelopment of potential spaces like surface parking lots, underutilised and vacant lands, abandoned buildings. (Refer figure 18)

Following are the six themes which summary the action-policy framework to address above mentioned four strategies

1. Building Density and Affordability Building density is the primary requirement to create complete neighbourhoods, which shall allow amenities and services, ie. Healthy food, parks and recreational areas and local businesses. Most of the housing stock in Portland, especially in its eastern neighbourhoods are single household detached housing typology. In order to tackle the issue from bottomup perspective, pro-housing zoning reforms are introduced to mobilise the houseowners.

Through programs like ‘Residential Infill Project’, the city is promoting new infill development with different types of house types by increasing the legal limit of maximum allowable household units in single residential plots. The city also removed parking mandates from 3 quarter of the city to increase the built-up area and thus indirectly promoting soft mobility. Parallelly, the city has adopted ‘Accessory Dwelling Unit’ (ADU) as a strategy to increase affordability and housing density in underserved neighbourhoods.

ADUs are small structures with maximum area of 1000 sq.ft. built on the land of existing homeowners. These ADU may have residential usage (and thus maintain affordability in the area) or commercial for micro-enterprise or home owned businesses to increase household self-sufficiency (Andersen, 2020; City of Portland, 2017; Sisson, 2018) 56

Figure 18 - Portland's Urban Design Framework (Source: Portland Plan, 2012)

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2. Increasing Access to Greens Enhancement of parks and recreational facilities are yet an important focus of creating complete neighbourhoods. Although not all parks and green areas cannot be made equal, the strategy is to create a hierarchy of connected greenways and trails across the city to provide walkable and bikeable access to the parks and other public green spaces.

3. Increasing provision of ‘Local’ Amenities and Services In terms of local amenities and services17, creating strong neighbourhood business districts is in focus. A hierarchy of business centres is proposed in the future development viz. neighbourhood centres, town centres, regional centres, and city centre. It is stated that it is not expected that all the neighbourhoods shall cover all the amenities required by households, and some neighbourhoods or districts may have concentration of specialised shops that attract people across the city. However, it is reasonable to expect daily needs to be closer to nearby, either in neighbourhoods or the district. These business centres shall be centred upon public transit with high density mixed use and connected with a mesh of greenways and civic corridors (arterial roads with car, bike, pedestrian, and wheelchair access) with ‘built to edge’ features promoting pedestrian retail in ground floor. These centres and civic corridors in turn shall connect all the neighbourhoods through a system of neighbourhood corridors. These neighbourhood and civic corridors shall be (re)designed as partly community spaces during weekends and holidays through Cities Liveable Streets framework (City of Portland, 2015a).

To support the parameter of daily amenities in low density areas (specifically eastern neighbourhoods), where specialised services are difficult to install, a Neighbourhood Economic Development (NED) strategy was prepared to support local retail through a ‘multi-variable approach’ by measuring business vitality. The Strategy supports education, development, and promotion of enterprises in the neighbourhoods through participatory approach with emphasis on businesses with greater community good and sharing economy. The strategy mobilises incentives like reduced system development charges and permitting fees, tax abatement, technical assistance, contribution of building space/ land , reduced interest on bank loans, capital loans, assistance with unconventional financing etc.

The objective of the strategy is to provide local employment opportunities to underprivileged households and retaining talent in the city (Portland Development Commission, 2010).

The city envisages to distribute full-service grocery stores within the city, which at the moment where outside the city limits housed in commercial centres or concentrated in the city centre and inner neighbourhood areas.

Moreover, since scales of economy may not allow full-service grocery stores to be located in every neighbourhood due to currently underdeveloped density, the city is promoting development of alternative means to these traditional grocery stores to support its agenda

No explicit definition of amenities is mentioned in the analysed city documents apart from ‘full service grocery stores’ 17

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of healthy accessible food such as urban agriculture and community farming and weekly farmers’ markets in the neighbourhood centres. The city plans to promote The NED strategy emphasises that mobile vending structures play an enabling start-up business activity, and the temporary usage of spaces of urban spaces, public lands and abandoned buildings shall be according to the local context shall be adopted to community gardening, urban spaces, local economic businesses etc (Portland Development Commission, 2010).

4. Schools as strategic Locations In complete neighbourhoods, Schools are identified as strategic locations to act as community centres and public aid centres to build social cohesion and resilience among communities. These (public as well as private) schools are intended to be converted into multi-functional urban spaces through co-location of activities, open to residents in off school hours, providing access to green and recreational spaces especially in the areas lacking green parks. Moreover, through safe routes to school, the areas near the schools shall be converted to only pedestrian spaces. The city, through a multi-government public and private partnerships, has created a program of ‘sun’ community schools to build community schools in eastern areas. It is noteworthy to mention that not all neighbourhoods shall have elementary schools, yet they may be provided at district level as a shared service among neighbourhoods.(City of Portland, 2015b, 2017; Portland Development Commission, 2020) The policy of Access to school encourages public school districts to consider ability of students to walk/ bike to schools and take into account attendance boundaries of schools while selecting location of new campuses. (City of Portland, 2015a)

5. Tackling Gentrification and Displacement To counter the gentrification and displacement, increase of affordable housing stock and promoting neighbourhood economic vitality are the two principles directions adopted in the plan. It must be noted that the complete neighbourhood definition already has affordable housing as a one of the principles components, which is further strengthened by zoning reforms like ADUs and defining investment priority areas. The objective of Neighbourhood Economic Development strategy is also financial resilience apart from economic prosperity. It is based on community driven approach, to build local capacity and minimise involuntary displacement of small businesses by providing financial support, education and training. Through the household self-sufficiency program, home ownership is promoted. Planning procedural implications of policy include removing discriminatory barriers, careful monitoring and evaluation of impact of investment and plans on their impact on communities and businesses, etc. (Portland Development Commission, 2020) The city has created a monitoring framework with a set of core measures and their benchmarks as indicators of progress which define the completeness of the neighbourhoods. The survey-based indicators like resident liveability satisfaction, neighbourhood safety and use of sustainable transit provide a quality check of the services 59

from the perspective of the community. The city is also monitoring the demographic distribution across the city through diversity index indicator to continuously evaluate ghettoization process, since the city is highly racially divided. (City of Portland, 2017)

6. Feedback loops For the regard of measurement of local use of services, a neighbourhood business leakage measurement indicator has been developed to monitor businesses leakages across neighbourhood. It is noted that while imbalance may persist due to metropolitan importance of some neighbourhoods and business districts like city centre, the intention of the indicator is to minimise the leakages across neighbourhoods for daily activities due to lack of services or lower quality services.

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3.2. Melbourne: A Healthy city

Figure 19 - Melbourne's skyline (Source: Tumblr.com)

3.2.1. General Overview of the city The city of Melbourne is the principal city of the Victoria State and is the most densely populated city in Australia. Its population density is 453/km2 and is the fastest growing capital city with an anticipated population increase from 4.3 million to over 8 million by 2050, thus, doubling over next three decades. To accommodate this growth, the urban renewal is focussed on both the city and the metropolitan scale more broadly. (Australia Bureau of Statistics, 2021; C40 Cities, n.d.; Loader, 2017) The Metropolitan Melbourne has a very low dwelling density varying from the highest in the city centre i.e the CBD (Central Business District) area and decreases towards the outer spectrum of suburbs (refer Figure) where it is as low as 12 dwellings per hectare (Fincher & Costello, 2005; Loader, 2017) Most of the population in Melbourne has high car ownership which is fostered not only by peoples’ personal choice but also lack of adequate public transport, which some researchers say adds to the financial burden on the households. (See Currie et al., 2018) The economic sectors of Melbourne consist of primarily knowledge sector economy, with education sector is the most profitable service export along with pharmaceutical and defines research. The Inner-city houses most of the headquarters of service economy and also most number of jobs (16% of total metropolitan jobs), while the university campuses are located in the North and West regions of the inner city. The job clusters are 61

concentrated on regional and national Employment and Innovation clusters. These innovation clusters are surrounded by medium density residential development and often under-equipped with amenities and services in the areas if middle and outer suburbs. On the other hand, the well-services central city and inner neighbourhoods are unaffordable, thus representing the city’s severe and unfairly distributed deficit of infrastructure and services in which upper and middle classes tend to cluster in inner and middle ring areas while lower income groups are moving to urban fringes in search of lower prices for housing.(Whitzman, 2017) According to Currie et al. (2018) this phenomenon has profound implications on forced car ownership with great impact and intensity felt in low density outer suburban areas. According to the Metropolitan authority, as of 2014, 89% of workers commuted by car (Dunn, 2016)

Figure 20 - Melbourne’s Urban footprint compared to inner city (Source: Boulder, 2016)

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Figure 21 - The built environment of Central city, middle ring neighbourhoods, and outer neighbourhoods of Melbourne Metropolitan Area (Source: Google Earth)

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Figure 22 - Strategic Framework of Melbourne Metropolitan Area (Source: Plan Melbourne, 2017)

3.2.2. The FMC: 20-minute neighbourhoods

The primary documents analysed for the case study included the Plan Melbourne20172050 and Plan Melbourne Addendum 2019 and the five-year implementation plan 20172022. (See Municipality of Melbourne, 2017; The State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, 2017, 2019) The analysis was carried further by undertaking content analysis of the progress report on 20 minute neighbourhoods concerning the pilot areas of Sunshine, Strathmore and Craydon (DELWP, 2019; The State of Victoria- Department of Environment Land Water and Planning, 2019b, 2019a). Furthermore, additional documents were resourced from the city representatives which concerned the indicators mobilised for the FMC strategy, internal research documents for policy guidelines and renewal plans for priority areas, namely, Fishermen Bend’s renewal project in the city centre.(C40 Cities, n.d.; City of Melbourne, 2006; Gunn et al., 2018; The State of Victoria- Department of Environment Land Water and Planning, 2017, 2018) The Plan Melbourne was adopted by the Metropolitan council in 2014 as a long-term strategy to manage its urban growth. An underlying concern of the document is achieving a balance between economic growth and liveability enhancement in the backdrop of two fold increase in population in 2050 from 4 million to 8 million (Municipality of Melbourne, 2017). It must be noted that Liveability is an important goal of the document and has been

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projected as a strategy to increase the cities global competitiveness, attracting businesses and international students.

The document highlights 6 metropolitan challenges, i.e. Population increase, growing jobs, increasing housing stock, Transport efficiency to accommodate an increase of trips per day by more than 80%, environmental challenges of heat and draught, and liveability issues.

It encompasses integrated approach to its long-term land use, transportation systems, urban design frameworks, and infrastructure investment strategies to achieve its vision of global city of opportunity and choice. The strategies are set across 9 principles, i.e. A distinctive Melbourne, A global connected and competitive city, A city of centres linked to regional Victoria, Environmental Resilience and Sustainability, Living Locally- 20-minute neighbourhoods, Social and Economic participation, Strong and healthy communities, Infrastructure Investment that supports balanced city growth, Leadership and Partnership.

(City of Melbourne, 2006; The State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, 2019) The principle of Living Locally- 20-minute neighbourhoods is embedded in policies across other principles, specifically in Jobs, Housing, Transport and Liveability principles. The principles anticipates to be fulfilling the UN Sustainable Development Goals especially UNSDG 3 Good health and wellbeing, UNSDG 10 Reduced Inequalities, UNSDG 11 Sustainable cities and communities, 13 Climate Action and 17 Partnerships for the goals.

(Mant, 2020; Municipality of Melbourne, 2017)

The complementing Urban Design Framework of 20-minute Neighbourhoods intends to bind and co-ordinate and compliment together the individual strategies of local governments in Melbourne which before use to develop their individual local area plans, transport and community plans and urban design frameworks and liaison with neighbouring municipalities on occasions. (City of Melbourne, 2006)

Ideation, Definition and Features The Melbourne Plan’s direction 5 (20-minute neighbourhoods) was developed in partnership with the Department of Health and Human services and the Australia Heart Foundation, with a series of workshops across the various government departments and agencies (Emery & Thrift, 2021, p. 63; Gorman & Dillon-robinson, 2021) The Metropolitan Strategy sees liveable neighbourhoods and suburbs as one of the potential arenas that can provide competitive advantage for city’s growth and prosperity.

The Melbourne Plan has defined the 20-minute neighbourhood as places that are safe, accessible and with well-connected areas at the scale of pedestrians and cyclists through offering high-quality public realm and open spaces. A sense of ‘local living’ shall be inculcated in people though provision of quality services and destinations which shall facilitate local economies.(Gunn et al., 2018) These 20-minute neighbourhoods shall be provided with quality public transport to connect people to jobs and higher order facilities.

Provision of elderly housing and affordable housing is also a part of the neighbourhoods.

Overall, seventeen urban social functions are localised within the 20-minute neighbourhoods (refer figure 23) 65

Figure 23 - Hallmarks and spatial organization of Melbourne's 20-minute neighbourhoods (Source: Plan Melbourne, 2012 and Melbourne Liveability matrix, 2018)

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Domain Walkability

Destinations

Indicator

Desirable values

Street connectivity

150 intersections street network

in

800m

Dwelling Density

Minimum 25 dph

NAC

Main street layout dwellings within 800m

with

NAC walkability

Ped shed ratio more than 0.6

Daily Amenities 1. convenience shop (i.e., convenience store, newsagent, or petrol station) 2. speciality food (i.e., fruit and vegetable, meat, fish, or poultry store) 3. post office 4. bank 5. pharmacy 6. general practice / medical centre 7. dentist 8. community centre or hall 9. early childhood education centre 10. library

Minimum 10

• Primary schools (for each 1500 dwellings) • Secondary schools (for each 6500 dwelling)

Schools

Supermarket access Housing

`Open Space

Equity

Percent of lowest 40% of income earners spend at least 30% of household income on rent or mortgage

Housing Diversity

• • • •

Large open space distribution

80% of dwellings < 400 m of > 1.5 ha of open space

standalone house 1 storey terrace 2 or more storey terrace 0–2 storey flat/unit/apartment • 3 storey flat/unit/apartment • 4 or more storey flat/unit/apartment • flat attached to a house

Table 2 - Twenty Minute Neighbourhood Liveability matrix (Source: DELWP, 2019)

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It must be noted that although the illustration suggests ‘local jobs. It was clarified from the interviews with officials (James Mant) that it should interpreted as promoting local retail services and thus local jobs, and also while provisions for co-working spaces shall be provided in community hubs, it may still mean that people might move out of 20 minute neighbourhoods for job commutes. (Mant, 2020; Municipality of Melbourne, 2017; The State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, 2019)

The official documents suggest that local scale of neighbourhoods represent an apt scale to meet the basic needs of citizens, promoting walkability and engagement in planning processes. A wide array of local services at walkable distance shall benefit not only minimise transport trips but also enable social cohesion.

In terms of planning, this 20-minute time distance is calculated from the research undertaken by the local administrations which concluded that people are comfortable to walk 10 minutes for a trip, thus in 20 minutes residents should be able to perform round trip to a service. In spatial terms, this 10-minute radius translates to a distance of 800m to local services. According to the city officials, this 20-minute walk is also supported by the research on obesity which suggests that at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise should be performed by an individual everyday and thus the name. (Shannon et al., 2019; Thrift et al., 2020) The structural feature of the 20-minute neighbourhood are the ‘Neighbourhood Activity Centres’ (NAC) which are the co-location hubs and community anchor points for provision of retail services, community hubs, schools and also act as public transit hubs. These hubs are to be designed with relatively high density to justify the economics of service provision and be the focus of decision making on local assets. (Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria, 2018; Pisano, 2020; Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021; Streets Alive, 2020) (Refer figure 23) It is implicit that the role and function of every NAC varies based on its location, size and socio-economic context within the metropolitan region. In order to support range of activities, these NACs should be high density developments and should be mixed use.(Stanley & Stanley, 2014) To co-ordinate the localisation of services and urban functioned in the NAC and the neighbourhood units with respect to the densities to be created, a liveability matrix is created with the intention to guide the local councils. Accordingly, it is observed that the NAC should have minimum 25 dwellings per hectare to accommodate the selected services. Table 2 illustrates the important components of the Liveability matrix. (Badland et al., 2019)

3.2.3. Strategies for spatial proximity The strategy for spatial management of Melbourne is job-focuses polycentric constellation and liveability of communities through 20-minute neighbourhoods. The former proposes creation of new six nationally significant employment clusters outside the 68

CBD and inner neighbourhoods. These clusters consist of , for example, university branches in ‘network’ with local research, private organisations (like hospitals) to enhance innovation among these clusters. (Dunn, 2016) These clusters are intended to work as a networked urban system working individually yet networked to each other. The system shall also help localise the jobs in the areas and are connected to 20-minute neighbourhoods through regional and Neighbourhood activity centres. Thus, a hierarchy of Activity centres is observed as a strategy to localise specialised higher order services and local daily need services respectively, connected by multi-modal public transit. The proposed Principal Public Transport Network (PPTN) shall connect these national and regional activity centres while not all NACs, especially in low density suburbs can be connected due to economic viability. Thus, use of flexible transit service is proposed until required densities are achieved. These NACS shall further be connected to neighbourhoods and other areas through slow mobility options like biking and walking.

(Khor et al., 2017)

Transport interventions for communities are defined as a key to delivery of 20-minute walkable neighbourhoods. The communities are engaged in identification of local features (opportunities and threats) of the neighbourhood especially walkable and bikeable access routes to NACs and local schools which are expected to improve wider mobility improvements among communities. Time based policies are activated for street calming on weekends and during school times. For example, creating no car zones during the school hours. (DELWP, 2019; Rochecouste et al., 2020; The State of VictoriaDepartment of Environment Land Water and Planning, 2019b, 2019a) As mentioned before, building density and diversity (henceforth expressed as intensification) are the pre-requisites to enable provision of services in the NACs. While Land use takes time to change, public transport is defined as an important lever for accelerating accessibility to services. For the PPTN extension in sprawled outer areas of the city, its important to create high mixed use density zones near NACs, while paying equal attention to quality of housing which might be jeopardised due to rapid development.(The State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, 2017) The Plan seeks to increase the concentration of population, activities within the network of these activity centres (Refer figure 24) The creation of priority plan for National Innovation clusters development and the three pilot projects undertaken to check delivery of 20-minute neighbourhoods suggest that the future intensification is focused on the middle suburbs to tie together built-form, transit and land-use strategies as co-functioning parts of an integrated urban constellation converging into inner city.

The three pilot projects (refer figure 25, 26 & 27) were focussed mostly creating pedestrian environment and urban design elements to streets with the help of communities. These urban design elements included uplifting facades of retail spaces, pedestrianizing the transit nodes, and painting the local dilapidated areas through street beautification.

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Figure 24 - Accessibility analysis and its related proposal for new urban clusters in suburban areas (Source: Plan Melbourne Addendum, 2019)

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Regarding Affordability, the Plan Addendum states that the 20-minute neighbourhood policy is embedded in all its project and policies, thus affordable housing is amended in renewal projects in inner city and CBD areas. Priority is given to elderly housing near the NACs and Student housing near university areas or near NACs nearby. (The State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, 2019) The plan highlights ‘all of government’, place-based approach and engaged communities and stakeholders as a pre-requisite for delivery of 20-minute neighbourhoods specially for suburban. Victoria State Government Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) is the co-ordinating and lead agency responsible for delivery of the 20-minute neighbourhoods across the metropolitan geography. (The State of Victoria- Department of Environment Land Water and Planning, 2018; Whitzman et al., 2013) In order to decapitate the liveability in suburban areas which cannot immediately be benefitted from the density, soft measures like temporary activation of urban spaces is prioritised, like temporary road closures, pop-up markets, mobile libraries and streetside parklets. Priority provision of community hubs (multipurpose buildings) shall equip the neighbourhoods for building social cohesion and resilience during the time of calamities.

The community hubs along with council buildings and vacant shops are being activated as temporary co-working spaces.

Through programs such as NAC Renewal Fund, targeted investments are mobilised to support local businesses including retailers, start-ups, service providers, cafes and restaurants, etc through providing financial support for urban design enhancement and beautification of streets.

Various community engagement tools like surveys, community workshop days and walking tours have been developed to collect ideas and aspirations of communities which are used for identifying priority urban design interventions in the neighbourhoods.

Programs like coffee with cop and shop local campaigns are targeted to engage the communities to not only identify local perception of space and help build confidence in safety of neighbourhood, but also increase social cohesion by promoting walking and using local destinations for daily needs. (Emery & Thrift, 2021) A key factor observed in mobilization of neighbourhood transformation is through embedding existing best practice guidelines to aid effectiveness of work across different agencies and departments. (Emery & Thrift, 2021, p. 63)

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Figure 25 - Final Outcomes of Melbourne’s pilot project (Croydon precinct) (Source: Croydon Pilot project Report, 2019)

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Figure 26 - Final Outcomes of Melbourne's pilot project (Strathmore precinct) (Source: Strathmore Pilot project Report, 2019)

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Figure 27 - Final Outcomes of Melbourne's pilot project (Sunshine precinct) (Source: Strathmore Pilot project Report, 2019)

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3.3. Paris: The social networks and common good

Figure 28 - Paris' Urban-scape (Source: Tumblr.com)

3.3.1. General Overview of the city Paris city with its density of 20,781 inhabitant per square k.m. ranks as the 6th most densely populated city. It is a small city (Bouard & Carriere, 2019) with an area of 23,680 acres and a population of around 2 million. (Paris Urbanism Agency (Apur), 2019) It has a relatively consistent urban form and density composed of compact system formed by winding streets and patterns of 5-8 storey buildings. (Bureau of Planning and Sustainability- City of Portland, 2014, p. 82) Paris already has a well-established intermodal transit system within the city and is pedestrian oriented (Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021) within the periferique aka ring road. Since the density of the city is nearly full with not much scope for redevelopment projects, it was decided to increase the boundaries of the city, in 2016, to include the outer suburbs within the city administrative boundaries. These suburbs are characterised by much lower density than the inner city.(Barbé, 2014; Bouard & Carriere, 2019) This shift is at sync with the socio-economic shifts in the city-suburb relation. According to The Institute of Paris Region (L’Institut Paris Region, 2019) over the last 3 decades, the Îlede-France region has witnessed a 20% increase in population and this increase has been significant in inner neighbourhoods and outer neighbourhoods with negligible increase in Paris (+17%, +33% and +1% respectively). Similarly in terms of employment, the inner city has seen decline while inner and outer suburbs have gained +25% and +47% employment 75

Figure 29 - Paris socio-economic cartography (Source: Paris Regional Institute, 2016,2019)

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Figure 30 - Urban environments of inner Paris, middle ring and Outer suburbs in Grand Paris region (Source: Tumblr.com)

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rates. The dynamic is reflected in the real-estate values. The prices in the city are the highest and affordable, while the suburb areas are appreciating in general (Desjardins, 2018) By observing the shift of medium and large companies to suburbs as an indicator for the centre-periphery dynamism, it can thus be concluded that the major social and economic renewal is occurring in the suburbs. (Bouard & Carriere, 2019; Halbert, 2006) In terms of profile of economic sectors in Paris and the larger metropolitan region, the Paris city is primarily knowledge intensive and future directions consist of promoting digital and innovation economy based on circularity principles.(L’Institut Paris Region, 2018) In this knowledge economy intensive urban system, Barbé (2014, p. 18) notes that their exist a spatial divide between managers lower economic strata of workers live which can be clearly observed among the neighbourhoods of the city.

3.3.2. The FMC: The Quarter Hour City The 15-minute city concept is a part of the Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s 2019 Mayoral Electoral campaign entitled ‘Paris En Commun’ (See Paris En Commun, 2019). The implementation of the 15 minute city ideal stems from the Paris Climate Action Plan (See City of Paris & Green Parks and Environment Urban Ecology Agency, 2018), which aim to address issue of climate change by putting focus on revival of Paris’ neighbourhoods (Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021, p. 16; Semmer, 2021). The Paris En Commun strategy strives for a carbon-free economy and enhanced liveability for the residents and is based on four pillars, Ecology, Solidarity, Engagement and Proximity. Through an integrated place-based approach, the document envisions reducing the car dominance within the inner city area, increasing green cover and enhancing pedestrian mobility. The strategy emphasis these transformations should occur with strong citizen engagement. The four pillars of the strategy are further classified into 5 directions i.e. city of greens, healthy and cycling city, city of culture, committed city and inclusive city. The actions and programs shall address fulfilment of these visions for Paris (Paris En Commun, 2019). (Refer figure 31) It must be noted that the Paris En Commun Strategy is a political document and concerns only the inner city (refer figure 29). Thus, for the purpose of a comprehensive understanding of the spatial strategies concerning the Paris city (newly defined administrative boundaries of inner city and outer suburbs) it was decided to include the documents related to Grand Paris project along with Paris Climate Action Plan 2030 and Paris Resilience Strategy 20152025 (See Bouard & Carriere, 2019; L’Institut Paris Region, 2019; Office of the Mayor of Paris, 2018). Furthermore, knowledge gained from the pilot projects related to the Fifteen minute city is also put use to define the qualitative analysis of the case study. (See CHAIRE ETI, 2019)

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Figure 31 – Framework of Paris En Commun strategy

(Source: Paris En Commun, 2019) 79

Ideation, Definition and Features The La Ville Du Quart d’Heure or the City of quarter hours is mentioned under the proximity pillar and is defined as ‘ In a 15 minute city, the citizens are able to access all essential needs by walk or bike’. Although it is not explicitly mentioned which ‘essential services’, however the technical assessments conducted during the ‘ Paris North Gates’ pilot project (CHAIRE ETI, 2019) where at the neighbourhood scale with essential services defined as, • • • • • •

Preschools and schools, Primary healthcare facilities, Community hubs Parks and gardens, Local shops and production spaces including grocery stores, cafes and restaurants and co-working hubs Affordable housing options

The intention of the Climate resilience strategy is to create self-sufficient arrondissements through principles of ‘dwelling in dignity, local provision of services, well-being, education, leisure and access to work and housing and disabled access, stability of community, neighbourhood pride, sense of belonging and safety’ (Office of the Mayor of Paris, 2018, p. 37; Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021, p. 17) The FMC of Paris, unlike other two cities, does have an explicit 15 minute city neighbourhood model at the moment rather a contextualised approach in addressing the issues, local capacities and responses are specific from neighbourhood to another (L’Institut Paris Region, 2017, p. 2), thus the spatial localization of the ‘essential services’ i.e. distance of each services from the neighbourhood centre and its ped-shed.

Rather the Parisian Neighbourhoods are covered under the national, regional, and local accreditations namely, Eco-Quartier (EQ), New Sustainable Neighbourhoods (NQU) and Innovative and Ecological Neighbourhoods (QIE) respectively (See table 3) (L’Institut Paris Region, 2017, p. 3). The accreditation is designed foster response to following objectives within the new and existing neighbourhoods (L’Institut Paris Region, 2017, p. 5):

1. Sustainable Energy: biomass heat network, wind turbines, geothermal, bio-source materials, solar panels, etc 2. Biodiversity: vegetation covered terraces and facades, communal gardens, agriurban farms, water treatment, etc 3. Pollution, risk, and waste management: worksite charter, composting etc 4. sustainable forms of transport: multimodality, relay stations, carpooling and pooled parking, bikes and pedestrian focus, electric charging terminals, etc 5. Circular economy based local production, consumption, and recycling 6. Third places like co-working hubs, fab labs, smart city etc 7. Local consultation, urban coproduction, participative working events, etc.

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Éco-Quartier (EQ) 1. Collaborative approach and process.

2. Integrating life, environment and uses.

3. Integrated territorial development.

4. Enhancing environment and climate.

New Sustainable Innovative and Ecological Neighbourhood units Neighbourhoods (QIE) (NQU) 1. Territorial coherence 2. Quantitative and qualitative production of dwellings 3. Functional mixing and compactness 4. Environmental quality 5. Evolution of urban practices and ways of proceeding.

1. Contributing to the regional housing Effort 2. Mixing housing, jobs and services 3. Providing support to the ecological and energy transitions 4. Promoting sustainable forms of mobility 5. Conceiving of projects in their entirety and anchored in their territories 6. Promoting a transverse “laboratory of tomorrow’s cities” rationale, in which 7. Each neighbourhood must demonstrate Innovation

Table 3 - Objectives of various accreditation systems (Source: Paris Region Institute, 2020)

3.3.3. Strategies for spatial proximity While the Paris En commun strategy is for urban management of the inner areas of the city, since 2016, because of the centre-periphery dynamism of Paris, as explained before, managing urban development on the outskirts and its link to the inner city has been of primary importance so as to organise the areas as an integrated urban unit. (Desjardins, 2018; L’Institut Paris Region, 2019) The principal accessibility strategy includes enhancing the efficiency of the existing multimodal transport infrastructure and constructing a new public transit system designed primarily to establish inter-suburbs connects though the Grand Paris Express project (Bouard & Carriere, 2019). In this context, the inner sub-urbs have become highly strategic territories to exploit in the Grand Paris scheme. Various projects have been scheduled 81

Figure 32 - Various Strategic projects scheduled till 2030 in Greater Paris region (Source: Paris Region Institute, 2019)

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through national and regional funding procedures in the inner neighbourhood ring (See figure 32) These projects are intended to generate new high density urbanization in vicinity to the surrounding stations of the new metro line in order to reduce territorial inequality, reinforce greater Paris attractiveness and add housing stock capacity to the already full city (Bouard & Carriere, 2019). The supporting elements to achieve the target of dense development include (Barbé, 2014) • • •

Limitation of urban extension through strict regional planning regulations Regeneration of former industrial zones into mixed use areas Densification of traditional urban neighbourhoods

For the inner-city area, since high building density already exists which allows economically justified decentralization of services and provision of amenities, the Paris En Commun strategy with respect to 15 minute city access can be said to be focussing on: 1. Further Intensification of the neighbourhoods to mix housing with shops, entertainment with open spaces, offices with educational buildings etc (Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021, p. 17), 2. Sustainable transport, pedestrianization of city urban spaces, adding greenways and parks which shall serve as multi-purpose recreation spaces with amenities like open gyms, community gardening (Emery & Thrift, 2021; Gorman & Dillon-robinson, 2021; Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021) 3. Liveability programs and improving access through time-based policies 4. Equity based policies and programs (equity of health services, housing) These four analysed domains of ‘15-minute city access’ are elaborated below.

1. Intensification of Neighbourhoods Paris En Commun relies on participatory budgeting and community engagement to identify the needs of the community in individual neighbourhoods and what services need to be provided. The residents can participate in the selection and design of projects to be implemented in the area. For the provision of amenities various programmes have been adopted, viz, •

•

•

A semi-public company called ‘Semaest’ is established whose role is buy, `through its ‘pre-emptive’ right, the ground floor spaces in the city with the purpose of retail and commerce. These spaces shall be activated by inviting local businesses and economic actors to introduce services like doctors, cultural places, associations and resource centers and solidarity canteens in the neighbourhoods. (Emery & Thrift, 2021; Paris En Commun, 2019, p. 7; Pisano, 2020) Furthermore, in order to promote ground floor shops (Read local shops), zoning codes have been updated, while local production is supported through the ‘Made in Paris’ campaign (Paris En Commun, 2019). Hybrid spaces like co-working spaces and fab labs have been installed in some neighbourhoods already since 2016 and ongoing.

In neighbourhoods and monofunctional areas where ground floor active usage is limited, for example in social housing neighbourhoods (built in modernist era) and urban job clusters such as La Defense, pop-up markets are promoted which provide access to recreation activities, local food, mobile libraries, etc. (L’institut Paris 83

•

Region, 2018; Paris En Commun, 2019). The city intends to promote localisation of cafés, restaurants, and full-service grocery stores near university areas to provide access to healthy food and reduce trips.

Co-Location strategy has been adopted to add inter-related and complementary services close to each other and promoting hybrid shops (for example, bike repairing and library facilities in a single space) to enhance access to basic services.

Such spaces provide economic justification of service provision in limited ground floor areas and low-density areas. (L’institut Paris Region, 2018)

2. Sustainable transport and greening of neighbourhood and city: Walking is prioritised in the city coupled with sustainable transport modes. The proposal includes intensification of public transport in areas less served and increasing pedestrian access through increasing bike lanes and pedestrian pathways. Access to parks and gardens shall be increase by provision of greenways and temporary as well as permanent bike lanes as per the context and priority (Paris En Commun, 2019). The city intends to invest 300 million euros for bike lanes and improving existing routes. Street parking has been converted into parklets, parking slots have been added with bike parking options and pooled parking priority over private car parking. During the pandemic more than 50 km of temporary bike routes were added to the city (Global mayors COVID-19 recovery task force, 2020) and by 2024, as part of the Paris resilience strategy, every street in the Paris region should have a separate bike and pedestrian lane. (Office of the Mayor of Paris, 2018, p. 14) School are the focal point of fifteen minute neighbourhoods (Paris En Commun, 2019).

Through the children streets program, the school access streets shall be pedestrianised during school rush hours.

The pedestrianization in the city is coupled with greening initiatives. For example, through the ‘Oasis program’ school premises are being transformed into community gardens access to public in off school hours thus providing access to greens (Paris En Commun, 2019).

The city plans to create new ‘urban forests’ of various scales (Office of the Mayor of Paris, 2018) through greening arterial roads, street beautification projects, squares and gardens.

Other greening initiatives include incentivising citizens for greening the private roof areas and allowing residents to garden anywhere within the city limits (Arnarsdóttir, 2020; Reimer, 2020)

3. Liveability programs and time-based policies Under the FMC concept, each neighbourhood shall be added with public authority owned citizen kiosks to function as gathering place, information dispersal, neighbourhood services enquiry, to get daily assistance like key-drop etc. (Paris En Commun, 2019).

Emphasising time as an important element of urban poverty, the city has launched flexible city program (Gorman & Dillon-robinson, 2021, p. 65) though which various ‘time based policies’ (Charbgoo & Mareggi, 2018) are promoted. Some of which include increasing nite bus services, opening up school playgrounds on weekends and holidays to general public, temporary limits on cars in the arterial roads on Sundays and extending public library hours (Paris En Commun, 2019).

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4. Equity based policies and programs The Paris En Commun strategy lays emphasis on under-represented communities in the neighbourhoods. Special program are put in place to include ethnic, LGBTQ and homeless communities in planning processes. The program aspires to convert 30% of its housing stock in the city into public domain by 2029 (Rolland, 2020 as cited in Sisson, 2020) The new housing stock shall be informed by inclusionary zoning standards, i.e mixed use, built to edge with active ground floors and variety of housing options to accommodate different type of users. Solidarity canteens and storage shops have been planned in each arrondissement to increase the liveability of homeless people (Paris En Commun, 2019)

Governance of 15-minute city An office for 15-minute city is setup to coordinate the related efforts by different departments and co-ordination of various provisions across neighbourhoods (Nieuwenhuijsen, 2020).

The local administration suggests that priority plan is well in place where the third places like co-working hubs and fab labs shall be added to neighbourhoods where there are none (Rolland, 2020 as cited in Sisson, 2020).

The city has adopted participatory budgeting in each neighbourhood since 2014, which allows decentralization of decision making power close to people through public representatives of the neighbourhood (Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021).

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3.4. Interpretative remarks on the Case study descriptions Out of the three case studies undertaken, it was observed that Portland, compared to other two cities is a structured case study. The Portland Plan clearly defines its 20-minute neighbourhoods, its features, its relation to the scale of city and regional scale in absolute terms. The city managers have created unique tools and measurement indicators like ‘Neighbourhood leakage indicator’ and ‘Neighbourhood Economic strategies’ for intraneighbourhood governance of local amenities at city scale. These indicators suggest that the city is monitoring, both, provision and quality of services/ amenities, and thereby, as a whole, progress of neighbourhood development to meet its minimum standards from citizens’ perspective.

On the other hand, the case of Melbourne shows many contingencies. The three pilot projects of Sunshine, Strathemore and Creadon in Melbourne only demonstrate community engagement for identifying street beautification projects like adding pedestrian/ bike paths and commissioning mural paintings as part of urban spaces in underutilised lots, etc.

Furthermore, Melbourne case does not propose any specific indicators or strategies like Portland’s NED strategy, which make the case of Melbourne weak. However, it should be noted that the city of Portland is a relatively mature case since it was initiated in 2012, while Melbourne adopted the narrative in 2017, thus it may be assumed that the FMC policy still in development taking into account that new updated document informing the FMC policy was published, entitled ‘Plan Melbourne Addendum 2019’ as an addition to ‘Plan Melbourne 2017’. On the other hand, Portland is a relatively small city, and the scope of FMC policy is the within the city limits.

Regarding Paris, FMC, at the time of writing this thesis, is only a political commitment through the current Mayor’s electoral campaign programme published in 2019. Although the Mayor has appointed a commissioner for the 15-minute city , the official city-documents studied mention only ‘neighbourhoods and eco-quartier’ terms, however, no mention of ‘Fifteen-minute city’ or city of quarter hour’ is found in official documents. (The principal document studied under Paris case study; the Paris En Commun strategy, is a part of current Mayor’s electoral campaign) In the pilot project undertaken at Paris Northgates. The white paper suggests, that only mapping of local services was undertaken and proposal for increasing community engagement was suggested.

The differentiation between scales of inner core, city, and Metropolitan scale.

As mentioned above, the operating territory of FMC in Portland is the scale of city, while for Melbourne is the metropolitan territory. Both the cities have had focussed on car-oriented policies (and less on public transit access) producing low-density sprawl-like environments, especially in the suburbs, while the city centres of both the cities consist of high-rise towers and dense aggregation of population, depicting mixed land use features.

Thus both the cities have combined structural spatial changes in the city, specially in the suburban areas (like installing public transit infrastructure, sidewalks, adding density through inclusionary zoning regulations) with public actions (like weekend farmers markets) and incentives to private firms for providing access to amenities to its residents.

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While the Paris En Commun strategy encompasses only the inner core of Paris city, where, due to already given high population density, facilitating ‘desired’ services and amenities makes it primarily a governance issue of combining technical assessments and community aspirations (a complex topic in itself which is discussed in Chapter 5.

Moreover, the inner-city socio-economic profile suggests its reliance on consumer economy and primarily managerial workers residing within the boundaries, with the advent of ‘work from home’ trends in recent months, for most of the citizens, the inner city might become a 15 minute city, therefore increasing the chances of highly segregated inner 15 minute city and ‘outer 51 minute city’ (Bouard & Carriere, 2019) due to price action of real estate markets.

However, in the Paris case study description, the author combined the Paris En Commun strategy with the Grand Paris strategy which encompasses both inner Paris as well as suburban region, with a core intention of creating symmetrical data. Interestingly, a combined study of both strategies demonstrates similar use of structural measures i.e., extension of public transit and building density around transit node through densifying traditional neighbourhoods and new neighbourhoods, coupled with public actions (like promoting pop-up economy, like farmers market on streets and urban plazas) and soft measures like providing incentives to private stakeholders.

The following chapter synthesis the findings of this case studies and adds nuances to the understanding about this ‘time-based Rhetoric’. The chapter shall be structured to primarily respond to the three research questions elaborated in research design section, and which were established as guiding tools for analysing the empirical application of the proposed ‘new spatial planning concept’

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Chapter 4. Findings and Synthesis: The Spatial form of FMC

Moreno in his proposal has promoted establishment of 15 minute ‘urban villages’ selfsufficient, which many experts claim as a recipe for creating segregation and exacerbate inequalities in the city. Furthermore, the proposal of Moreno lacks sufficient prescriptive elements to define the urban form of this 15 minute. We observed in chapter 2 that such a claim puts the already established scholarship in tension, challenging the existing urban spatial models on which cities are based on.

The author then undertook empirical case studies to investigate the form of FMC cities to develop a better understanding about the spatial characteristics of ‘Fifteen Minute Cities’.

The findings of cities suggest a strong acknowledgment to the themes of conflict put forward by various ‘critical voices’ (chapter 2), thus neutralizing the controversial debate around the components of accessibility forwarded through the ‘spatial’ proposal of FMC by Moreno.

From looking at the case studies, it can be concluded that the FMC is not a new ‘spatial planning concept’ as claimed by its proponents and is based on traditional conception of neighbourhood unit (as defined in the Principles of New Urbanism). Section 4.1 narrates the findings regarding the FMC rhetoric by drawing a comparison with Moreno’s proposition.

Section 4.2 furthers on the focus of this study, the ‘spatial form of FMC’, by observing the common strategies of ‘urban form’ the three cities have mobilised to create proximity at city level.

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4.1 Empirical findings regarding FMC as a ‘New Spatial Planning Concept’

The section is dedicated to direct findings from the case studies regarding the FMC rhetoric and is subdivided into two parts, The first part draws comparison of Moreno’s concept and the empirical case-studies based on various critical voices formulated in chapter 2.

The three themes of conflict related to, 1. The issue of not differentiating between different ‘urban functions’ 2. The issue of not differentiating between modes of transport and their different area coverage within the given time limit of 15 minutes.

3. The issue of localizing jobs and thus reducing the ‘vitality’ of cities and ‘social mobility’ that cities entail by being places of opportunity.

The second part unveils the findings regarding the ‘title’ of Fifteen Twenty Minute City’. It is realised that it is a ‘communicative tool’ rather than a new concept.

4.1.1. Comparing Moreno’s ‘new spatial planning’ concept to the case studies 4.1.1.1. Proximity to basic amenities, public transit for higher order services The 15-minute city concept by Moreno doesn’t provide any classification among broad categories of its 6 ‘social urban functions’, which, as detailed out in chapter 2, leads to normative debate of functional equity and its consequential concern for ‘social equity’ in these ‘local’ clusters.

The case study findings suggest that all the three cities aspire to localise only basic amenities within their 15/20-minute radius of access.

The common basic amenities include, Primary school, parks, grocery stores, 3rd spaces like community centres. (Refer table 4 for details) In all the three cases, the provision for access to higher order services like hospitals, universities, higher education institutes, urban parks rely on public transit and cars, although former is more emphasised. The resource allocation of these services is decided based on the strategic location informed by the technical variables like larger metropolitan access potential, required density for justifying its economic viability, land markets differential and impact of service localization, etc (the list is tentative and not comprehensive)

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Case-study profiles Portland

Melbourne

Paris

Key take-aways of casestudies

Moreno’s features

FMC

Provision of basic amenities only.

No classification between urban social functions

Localization of services (Minimum standards) Living • Diversity of housing options Working • Community centre as 3rd spaces / coworking spaces) • Public transit access to jobs Supplying • Specialised Grocery stores • Urban gardens with community farming Caring • Primary health service • Open gyms • General Pharmacy Learning • Primary school • Public library Enjoying • Urban garden • green trails • treelined streets

• Diversity of housing options

• Diversity of housing options

• Community centre as 3rd spaces / coworking spaces) • Public transit access to jobs

• Community centre • Co-working hubs • Public transit access to jobs

• Local Grocery stores • Urban gardens with community farming

• Local grocery stores, • Urban gardens with community farming

• Primary health service • Open gyms • General Pharmacy

• Primary health service • Gyms • General Pharmacy

• Primary school • Public library

• Primary school • Public library

• Community parks • Tree lined streets • Public parks

• Urban gardens • Green streets • Public parks

Spatial metric 2.1 Transport sheds • Walkable • Walkable access access to to proximity proximity services services • Public transit for • Public transit higher service for higher orders outside service orders the FMC cluster outside the • Other modes FMC cluster remain optional • Other modes remain optional

• Walkable access to proximity services • Public transit for higher service orders outside the FMC cluster • Other modes remain optional

Sustainable access • No differentiation pyramid hierarchy: between different modes of • Walkable access transport. to basic • Reduced role of amenities public transit as • Public transit territorial access to higher connectors order services in the city • Bikes & electric scooters remain optional • Least preference to private cars

2.2 Spatial catchment area/ Distance and time 800m from neighbourhood centre

800m from neighbourhood centre

NA

10-minute walk one way or 5-minute Euclidian distance from

15-minute Euclidian distance from residential node

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neighbourhood centre

2.3 Density • Minimum 35 • Minimum 30 dwellings per dwellings per hectare. hectare • High density • High density around around neighbourhood neighbourhood centre centre

• High density around neighbourhood centre

Calculated based on the required catchment area for selected basic amenities

N.A.

Spatial Organization of city • Public transit • Public transit node as the node as the neighbourhood neighbourhood centre where centre where services are coservices are colocated located.

• Public transit • High density, node as the mixed use & neighbourhood walkable centre where neighbourhood services are cos. located.

• Undifferentiated decentralised city system in the form of local clusters

• Arterial mixed- • Arterial mixeduse streets use streets connecting connecting between between neighbourhood neighbourhoods s with with pedestrian pedestrian paths, bike lanes, paths, bike public transit lanes, public routes and transit routes minimised car and minimised lanes car lanes

• Arterial mixeduse streets connecting between neighbourhood s with pedestrian paths, bike lanes, public transit routes and minimised car lanes

• Compact polycentric city with hierarchised urban centres (job clusters) connected with network of multi-modal public transit

• Peripheral public transit connectivity

Table 4 - Comparison of Empirical models of spatial planning to Moreno’s FMC proposition Readers note: the comparison is drawn based on ‘urban functions’ as defined by Moreno

Therefore, it can be concluded that these FMC models of respective cities reflect the desired urban form of neighbourhoods and minimum level of services and amenities to be localised inside the neighbourhoods. The city documents highlight that density and locational differential might exist across these neighbourhoods within the city which will allow additional localization of services in some neighbourhoods while not in other.

4.1.1.2. The issue of Localising Jobs The second highly debatable urban function that FMC proponents propose to localise are the jobs. The issue of job localization is highly criticised not only from point of view of ‘vitality’ that drives innovation and thus cities but also reducing opportunities for social mobility of economically weaker sections incoming to the city for jobs.

None of the three cities claim to localise the jobs. The increase in trend of ‘work from home’ and co-working finds its way in localization of third spaces in the neighbourhoods. Paris intends to locate co-working spaces and fab labs in each neighbourhood, while Portland 91

and Melbourne, due to low density have taken a flexible approach to its provision, by transforming the community centres into co-working hubs. Since density is already a given in Paris, the city managers intend to create these co-working spaces in abandoned buildings within the neighbourhoods.

Nevertheless, It is clear from looking at the strategies and investments channelised in creation of new urban centres and multi-modal public transit that cities have not localised the jobs, rather than adding mixed use of retail and office spaces in the neighbourhood.

Portland Plan aspires further intensification of the city centre to increase its efficiency as a metropolitan job centre. It should also be noted that the Portland and Melbourne rely on manufacturing and industrial research sectors at city level which do not allow mass switch to ‘work from home’ for all except the managerial knowledge workers concentrated in the inner-city and middle ring areas. Both Portland Plan and Plan Melbourne being city-wide visions do not include ‘jobs’ in their agenda of 20-minute city. Melbourne has explicitly mentioned in its 20-minute neighbourhood vision that some people might have to go outside the 20-minute neighbourhoods for jobs. Paris en Commun too, doesn’t mention jobs as part of the FMC, although it application aims at only inner city of Paris which houses mostly managerial workers. These finding contradicts Moreno emphasis on including jobs.

3.4.2.3. The Argument of time, access and a new spatial planning concept Portland and Melbourne define their 20-minute neighbourhoods as residential areas centred on the public transit node with characteristics of high-density mixed-use buildings.

The spatial areas of these territories are defined by creating a radius of 800m (Euclidian distance). Temporally speaking, a radius of 10-minute one way walk, thus these 20 minute neighbourhoods are defined as ‘to and fro’ pedestrian commute from home to the neighbourhood centre (Portland) or Neighbourhood activity centre (Melbourne) 18 .

Although no explicit model could be found for Paris city but its Neighbourhood accreditation system can be taken as a proxy that the focus is at neighbourhood scale.

These neighbourhoods are connected to other neighbourhoods through walkable paths, public transit, and automobile streets, which further connect to larger urban centres.

The overall system takes a hierarchical form across the terrain, with a hierarchy of urban centres, district centres and neighbourhood centres, connected to each other by multi modal transport system. These centres represent the high-density nodes to sustain a hierarchy of services, assuming a polycentric city.

As mentioned in the introduction of this section (4.1), Moreno in his proposition, doesn’t give a complete description of his model of Fifteen-minute city. In response, to its, the study supposed an illustrative proposition of the15 minute city model based on the iterations of FMC model by urbanist Gehl and argument of different slow modes of transport i.e.

The jargon of nodes and streets change across the cities, however, their spatial characteristics remain the same.

18

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4800m 1600m 1200m

800m

800m

10 minute walk

400m

Urban park

Departmental store Access to all modes of public transport

5 minute walk

Local bar Kids play area

Specialised sports facilities

Basic amenities only

Public transit for higher order services

10 minute walk

Bank

15 minute walk

Local park 5 minute bike District hospital University/ higher school 15 minute bike Cinema theatre

Derivation of 15-20 minute city cluster from casestudies

An iterative proposition of ‘15 minute city’ (Illustrative)

(Author’s interpretation of iterations of Gehl architects & CNU)

Figure 33 - Comparison of Case studies' model 15/20-minute cluster to the iterative supposition put forward in chapter 2 (Source: Author)

walking, biking and electric scooters, which assumed deconstructing the 15 minutes into 5,10 and 15 minutes and provision of various urban functions within these temporal values.

The case studies show that cities do not follow this dynamics of service provision either, and rather rely on static measure of ‘walking’ as primary mode of transport and services clusters around the service centre using 15/20 minutes as way to illustrate a 10-minute one way walk from door-to-door trip from residence to service hub. (Refer figure 33) From the perspective of urban planning theory, these concepts are not new and have been proposed before and have long been a part of discussion in transport planning and accessibility discourse, especially since 1950 19 (Duranton & Guerra, 2016) Clarence Perry first proposed ‘neighbourhood units’ based on 10-minute walk and further developed by New Urbanists in 1980s, where urbanist proposed 5-minute neighbourhoods, yet the spatial radius was the same, 800m. The 5 minute was the Euclidian 19

Accessibility and Buchanan

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(crow fly) distance to help measure the mapping of the diameter of neighbourhood area from the neighbourhood centre, which when seen in actual human experiences, translates to 10-minute door to door walk navigated through street patterns, called network walk.(Guan et al., 2019) (Refer figure 34) Thus, it can be concluded that FMC, rather being a new spatial planning concept or a city as its name suggests, an iteration of the neighbourhood unit.

4.1.2. ‘Fifteen-minute city’; its negotiation and mobilization.

The content analysis undertaken for case-studies, especially Portland and Melbourne gave a nuanced understanding about the rhetoric of FMC from procedural perspective to urban planning (and not spatial planning, the main emphasis of this study).

It was observed in the case of Portland that the city managers came up with the rhetoric of FMC, to be precise, 20-minute city, while drafting the Portland Plan documents. The accessibility mapping carried henceforth was titled ’20-minute city’ analysis and undertook a complex effort of mapping various provisions like restaurants, cafeterias, hospitals, schools, and many other higher order services, through what appears as, a ‘gravity-based modelling’, a standard practice to map accessibility through a binary approach to service provision in the form of heat maps.(Ewing & Cervero, 2010) However, a careful observation into pre-analysis documents reveal that while finalising the official Portland Plan documents, the title was changed to rather be called as ‘20-minute 800m radius 10 minute Networked walk 5 minute Euclidian Distance

Neighbourhood center (Transit node with local amenities nearby)

Predominantly residential blocks High-density mixed use buildings

Public transit route with active ground floor retail Streets connecting neighbourhood to districts (with car, bike and pedestrain paths & active ground floor retail) Inter-neighbourhood streets (primarily pedestrain oriented)

Figure 34 - Spatial organization of 15/20 minute neighbourhoods (Source: Author)

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neighbourhoods’ instead of 20-minute city, before presenting it to the communities for an extensive city-wide counselling of ‘Portland Plan 2012’.

The Urban Design Strategic Framework document suggests that the title of 20-minute neighbourhood’ was further negotiated to be called as ‘complete’ neighbourhoods, after opposition raised by old residents of the city. The titled seemed to be un-inclusive to elderly populations due to physical limitations. (Bureau of Planning and Sustainability- City of Portland, 2014; City of Portland, 2010) Participation in various webinars during the study enabled gathering of the knowledge about mobilization of this Rhetoric from Portland to Melbourne. The city managers of Melbourne (Mant, 2020 as cited in Thrift et al., 2020) had confirmed that they adopted the 20-minute city concept from Portland. Furthermore, the city managers of Melbourne (Specifically Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, State of Victoria) undertook efforts to convince all the local council elected representatives and planning departments to embed the 20-minute narrative in Plan Melbourne, which was finally adopted as ‘20-minute neighbourhoods.’

Moreover, the Plan Melbourne focuses on health benefits of daily 20-minute aerobic exercise, which they aligned with 20 minute ‘walkable’ neighbourhoods.

On the other hand, In the pre-analysis document, Portland city managers mention that, ‘20-minute neighbourhoods are nothing but walkable environments, we have used the term 20-minute neighbourhood because we think it is easier to understand—it is where people go and get to in about twenty minutes.’ (City of Portland, 2010, p. 2) Similarly, in the case of Paris too, a review of local media articles undertaken recently 20 suggest that the officials are calling ’15-minute city’ as a ‘City of proximity’ (Lorriaux, 2021; Pertusini, 2021) Nevertheless, these findings from content analysis and media articles triangulate and confirm the conclusion that FMC is not a ‘new spatial planning concept’.

However, a careful observation of the case studies reflect that all the three cities have enforced similar sets of strategies to achieve accessibility and proximity at the city level.

These patterns were tabulated and interpolated with the scientific scholarship and are presented in the following section.

The study was initiated in November 2020, while the first draft of this chapter is written in November 2021. The aforementioned review of media articles was undertaken in September and October 2021 in order to populate the data sets for the case-study of Paris.

20

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4.2. Synthesizing the urban form of FMC cities

The primary goal of this thesis is to investigate the spatial form of Fifteen-minute city.

Although the empirical findings stated in previous section suggest that the 15-minute city relates only to the neighbourhood scale unlike its linguistic segregation of ‘city’ into ‘selfcontained city’, all the three cities under the rhetoric show similar strategies for creating spatial proximity at neighbourhood as well as city level.

For the purpose of identifying these features of creating spatial proximity, a tabulation of all the strategies of the three cities was formulated. Then the strategies related to the theme of ‘spatial planning’ and ‘accessibility’ were filtered, which were then through a rapid scoping method (Gilgun, 2016), was interpolated to the scholarship found by doing a keyword search on ‘urban form’ and ‘accessibility’ and ‘proximity’. For the purpose of searching the literature, only google scholarly portal was scanned.

Based on the scholarship, three main themes could be identified which enable ‘proximity’ and ‘access’ at city level.

The themes are presented as ‘principles’ on which the cities have envisioned their transition from ‘car-based and long commute’ cities towards ‘walkable and short commute cities’.

These principles are inter-related and share some elements with each other. However, each emphasizes specific aspects of creating an ‘accessible’ city (also environmentally sustainable), thus they should be seen in synergy and not independently.

The following synthesis can also be interpretated as the ‘urban form of 15-minute city’.

The first principle of ‘compact city’ relates to spatial planning, thus considers mainly spatial organization, while second theme ‘multi-modal sustainable transport’ relates to transport planning and mobility services, and third theme ‘Distributed and Networked urban system’ relates to socio-economic policies at city scale.

4.2.1. Principle 1: Compact City The first principle relates directly to the physical form of the cities. The concept has been discussed as the most sustainable city form (Conticelli, 2019) and was developed specially to curb urban spawl and increase sustainability of urban environments by limiting the urban footprint of the city. The concept is known to reduce long commutes by making cities relatively more dense and mixed use, thereby increasing proximity. (Boussauw et al., 2010; Li et al., 2014; Mulley & Nelson, 2021)

Density x Diversity = Proximity 21

This formula differs from Moreno et. al. (2021) where the proponents put ‘density’, ‘diversity’ and ‘proximity’ as independent pillars of 15-minute city framework rather than ‘proximity being an outcome of density and diversity.

21

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Boussauw et al. (2010) suggests that this feature of short commute is the ‘selling point’ for the model. In the scholarship and academia, it is referred as the ‘Smart Growth Model’ in North America while the term ‘Compact city’ finds its origins in European scholarship.

(Dempsey, 2010) A number of OECD and UN-Habitat reports suggests that the ‘sustainable’ compact city model has positive implications on resource efficiency, economic vitality, citizen health and social cohesion as well as cultural dynamics. It does so by reducing the travel time and commute time, lowering car-dependency and promoting walkability (thereby mitigating pollution), maintaining diversity of choice for workplaces and service facilities, lowering per capita energy consumption, limiting consumption of buildings and infrastructure, limiting the loss of green and natural areas. (Chhetri et al., 2013; Li et al., 2014; The International Transport forum, 2019)

The following characteristics of compact city create benefits of agglomeration to make a ‘commuter’ self-sufficient in terms of choice of jobs, shops, schools, and other services per neighbourhood (Bibri et al., 2020; Boussauw et al., 2010)

Work

t an grou h bounda ry Urb

Live

su Outer burbs le Midd ring

Leisure

I Work

ty

er c nn i

Live

Leisure

Co-location of compatible mixed uses

Urban growth boundary & infill development of Density

Proximate environments & time efficiency

Figure 35 - Compact city principle and its features (Source: Reinterpreted from Bibri et. al, 2020)

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1.

2.

3.

4.

Inward growth and densification from core to outwards Relatively high density Land use mix and Intensification Quality of urban design

4.2.1.1. Inward Growth The main feature which distinguishes compact city model is establishment of urban growth/ smart growth boundary to cities and developing the city centrally and reserving outer areas for future considerations. The city should grow within these boundaries through renewal of central areas to make city centre larger, more attractive, and accessible by mixing residents, workers and visitors and drawing in knowledge sector companies (Bibri et al., 2020). It entails to make use of what already exists and focussing energy and effort where it will make the difference, for example, brownfields and underutilised industrial lands. Achieving compact form requires strategic outlook to city making. It requires retrospection of existing land resources for further growth by densifying the abandoned lots and buildings and renewal of brownfield areas.

All three cities have put urban growth boundaries at the periphery, which ensures infill development through renewal and regeneration of neighbourhoods. Melbourne, in its city centre, is renewing the port areas to increase the mix of people and economic functions.

Similarly, Portland is renewing its inner-city areas through riverbank redevelopment. In the case of Paris, since the inner city is completely developed, it has put focus on suburbs through grand Paris project, under which the priority is to densify existing neighbourhoods.

4.2.1.2. Relatively High Density The proponents of compact city model propose an ‘optimal’ (Boussauw et al., 2010) or ‘relatively’ (Dantzig and Saaty, 1973 as cited in Bibri et al., 2020) high density which should be enough to keep residents in proximity to amenities but low enough to avail access to green spaces, reasonable privacy, and ‘acceptable’ conditions. This means the technical density required to avail services should be combined with community perception of density.

All the three cities show similar characteristics regarding patterns of densification. Since inner city areas quite dense and thus well serviced, cities are focussing on densifying the middle ring areas as potential place to add more population in vicinity of services. At the same time, renewal of suburbs is underway to add density.

Density has been the main concern for Melbourne Plan which mentions ‘density’ 32 times in the student manual of 20-minute neighbourhoods. (Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria Inc., 2015)

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4.2.1.3. Land-use mix and Intensification Land use mix must be complemented with inward growth and buildings density. Since not all uses can be mixed, it is suggested to co-locate complementing activities. Importantly, this mixing should be promoted at various scales, from regional, city, district, to the local scale of neighbourhoods. In other words, mixing activities in urban centres to mixing building stock and local services/ shops of neighbourhoods. (Bibri et al., 2020; R. Rogers, 2008; R. G. Rogers, 2013) These features are being enforced by respective cities in their individual contexts. Portland has enacted inclusionary zoning to add diversity of buildings in the neighbourhoods, similarly, Melbourne, through its ‘hallmarks of 20-minute neighbourhoods’ suggests ‘multiple options of living’ which means creating diversity of building stocks.

At the city scale, all the cities are enhancing retail sectors around urban centres, principal roads and transit nodes.

4.2.1.4. Quality of Urban Design The primary objective of the model is to make cities as accessible to people through soft mobility. Thus, the compact city’s layout and features should support pedestrian traffic.

Structural design elements like small land layouts and porous street network provides fine grained morphology which promotes slow modes of transport. (Bertolini et al., 2005; Bramley & Power, 2009) While Paris has a tradition of good urban design of streetscapes, Portland and Melbourne have started focussing on it. Melbourne, for example, is identifying streets which deter people from undertaking walk and using tactical urbanism methods to regenerate those areas. Portland has induced incentives for local retail shops and private developers to undertake façade upliftment.

4.2.2. Principle 2: Multi-modal sustainable transport The compact city is based on the principle of sustainable means of access and discouraging car-oriented mobility. It is a major strategy for all the three cities to achieving sustainable urban form and proximity for people. By relying on sustainable transportation, the characteristics of ‘density’, ‘diversity’ and ‘mixed-use’ render compact cities to be socially beneficial, environmentally sound, and economically viable (Bibri et al., 2020, p. 8) Jordan and Horan (1997, as cited in Bibri et al., 2020, p. 12) define ‘sustainable transportation services’ that reflect the overall social and environmental costs of their provisions, considering; carrying capacity, need for mobility, need for access, safety, environmental quality and neighbourhood liveability. Sustainable transport system involves provision of physical infrastructure as well as quality and level of services availed to citizens with an aim to increase accessibility and reduce commute (The International Transport forum, 2019). This signifies that cities not only have to invest in structural changes 99

to the city, but also use soft measures like incentives and public actions to increase sustainable access.

The Strategic framework of this principle can be divided into, 1. Quality provision & variety of public transport modes 2. Promoting soft mobility & reducing car Commute 3. Mobility as a service (MaaS)

4.2.2.1. Quality provision & variety of public transport modes The OECD International Transport forum (2019) states that public transit is an important investment for inclusive and equitable access. The provision of public transit access is based on the ‘Transit oriented developed (TOD) principles of New Urbanism. It takes the form of hierarchical order of provision from regional scale to neighbourhood scale to provide variety of options to residents to reach from point A to point B encompassing various mods of public transport like, regional and local trains, metro lines, trams, bus services and radio taxies.

The official documents of Portland and Melbourne state that the cities are investing heavily on public transit and provision of infrastructure for slow modes of transport.

Portland is increasing its light rails line (trams) in the eastern neighbourhoods, while Melbourne due to very poor density intends to temporarily resolve the issue by providing bus services until permanent infrastructure is provided in outer neighbourhoods.

The Grand Paris strategy, too, primarily relies on upgrading the existing public transit to increase its efficiency and extend the provision of public transit to ‘Grand Paris’ region. The Paris En Commun strategy envisages increasing the frequency of flexible modes of public transport services (like trams and buses) within the inner city. The provision of these flexible services shall be extended into night-time too.

4.2.2.2. Promoting soft mobility & reducing car commute In order to reduce (long) car commute and reduce pollution due to congestion in cities, its important to complement the provision of infrastructure and services for slow mobility options. The current literature on multi-modal transport suggests that often cities focus only on public transit, however, connecting soft mobility options bike paths and pedestrian paths are lacking in many cities, especially in the sub-urban area. This issue of service delivery leads to citizens adopting car-transport despite of provision of public transit options. (Cheng et al., 2007; Gil Solá et al., 2018; Jabareen, 2016; Motieyan & Mesgari, 2017) Promoting soft mobility requires installing hardscape elements like pathways, sidewalks and as well as softscape elements like green spaces. All three cities as per their varying capacities and local context have introduced these elements.

A Few common features can be identified among the three cases, 100

For example, Portland is adding pedestrian and bike paths in its arterial road connections.

These are further supported by active ground floor retail offices to create a bustling high street environment. Portland locally calls them ‘civic corridors’.

Similarly, Paris has transformed its peripheral arterial road by adding more greens, pedestrian paths and bike paths. On the hand, Melbourne is adding bike paths under its automobile-oriented highways.

These pedestrianization efforts can be traced to be integrated across various renewal projects in the city. For example, Paris has converted its Seine River banks into pedestrian friendly urban space. Melbourne inner city port area renewal project, Fishermen’s Wharf, has similar approach.

These pedestrian and green oriented redevelopments not only serve city as a whole but also revitalise the nearby neighbourhoods by giving them access to urban space and greens. (Lecroart, 2020 as cited in Pouliquen, 2020) Apart from these infrastructural actions, soft measures like street calming can also be identified in the cities. Paris, for example, during the first Sunday of the month, intends to close the peripheral roads to car-use and reserve it for only pedestrian use by converting the arterial road into urban spaces.

Car based commute

Mobility as a Service (MaaS)

Figure 36 - Principle of Sustainable mobility and its features (Source: Re-illustrated from, The International Transport forum, 2019)

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4.2.2.3. Role of private automobile transport It should be noted that the multi-modal transport system does not curb cars totally, rather prioritises use of cars only for people in need (like disabled and old people) and promoting slow modes of mobility for those who can.

Some authors suggest that since cities are in the phase of transition to completely adopt TOD (Transit Oriented Development) and many suburban areas in cities across the globe don’t have quality provision of public transit in suburban regions, people are forced to use personal cars (Cheng et al., 2007; Gil Solá et al., 2018; Jabareen, 2016). A similar view is shared by Pécresse, Valérie, president of the regional council for Île-de-France, ‘“Some people don’t have any solution other than driving into Paris for work, because they don’t have the means to live there.” (Pécresse as cited in O’Sullivan, 2020, para. 22) To tackle the issue, all the three cities have adopted policies based on promoting carpooling. The comprehensive plans of Melbourne and Portland have framed policies to support private firms to offer car-pooling as well as bike sharing services. Portland and Paris are promoting car-pooling by dedicating car-parking lots to ‘car-pool only’ parking lots.

Paris has taken an employee-based approach to reduce car-based trips, by giving incentives to private firms by promoting use of public transit and slow modes of transport among employees.

4.2.2.4. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) This sub-principle requires to see transport planning as not just an installation of infrastructure, but to rather look at it from the perspective of reducing mobility and increasing efficiency of people. Therefore, it broadens the scope from just transport planning to service and information provision to commuters by methods and means of mobile applications, citizen kiosks, etc.

For example, Paris, under Paris En Commun strategy has installed citizen kiosks in neighbourhoods to provide information to people about the local services. Such measures not only help reduce commute but also help promoting local retail and increasing social cohesion in the neighbourhoods.

4.2.3. Principle 3: Distributed and networked urban system Although Compact city concept may reduce trips to local amenities, depending on the urban density and diversity found in the city. Boussauw et al., (2010) found that shorter commutes relate to the function of ‘Job accessibility’. This is justified by the fact that ‘job commute’ is the most plastic trip of the day and people organize their daily schedules based on job (McCahill, 2018).

Therefore, proximity to ‘jobs’ within a compact city should include economic structures that are distributed across the territory rather than being monocentric which may increase transport pressures in one part of the city, especially during office rush hours. This warrants 102

alignment of economic policies to the land-use (spatial) planning and transport planning to create an equally distributed economic system. (Roberts et al., 1999)

This distributed system is an advanced form of polycentric urban system. (Roberts et al., 1999) Overall, the system consists of two main elements: 1. Nodes/ Anchors 2. Networks/ Connections

4.2.3.1. Nodes/ Anchors Dividing the urban centre into smaller parts means compromising the benefits of agglomeration effects. Hence it is important to organize this division into compact strategic nodes within the city, developing them using the principals of co-location and density in a such a way that each node may be a hub of firms specialised in compatible sectors.

Therefore, more developed these strategic nodes are, more the benefits of agglomeration to the nearby areas by localization of (higher order) services.

Polycentric city with connected satellite clusters

Networked Urban System

Urban growth boundary (compact city)

Neighbourhood links

Principle urban centers

City links

District links

District centers Neighbourhood centers

Figure 37 - Principle of Networked urban system and its features Source: Re-illustrated from (Babelon, 2015)

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These urban centres take a hierarchical form in order to balance economic growth with liveability of citizens as well as from governance point of view. (Haase et al., 2021; Hall & Pain, 2012) All the three cities follow this hierarchical order of metropolitan/ regional urban centres, district centres and neighbourhoods’ centres. It is observed that different cities use different terminologies, for example, Portland describes these centres as ‘central city’, ‘gateway regional centre’, ‘town centres’ and ‘neighbourhood centres’, while Melbourne refers them as ‘Metropolitan activity centre’, ‘major activity centres’ and ‘Neighbourhood activity Centres (NAC)’, however, it must be noted that the function remains the same. These centres/ anchors/ nodes are built around public transit and present a hierarchical descending order of density, mixed land, social and economic used (and thus localization of services) and connected slow mobility services.

All the cities intend to further intensify the existing already developed nodes, and simultaneously are focussing their investment in developing the suburban urban centres.

Developing these nodes based on compact city principles will contribute to physical landuse mix, economic mix as well as social mix. (Bibri et al., 2020; Haase et al., 2021; Picon, 2018)

4.2.3.2. Connections These strategic nodes need to be connected to each other. It must be noted that these connections should not only be in physical space, through streets and high-quality public transit, but also through telecommunications network, thus making cities compatible in local, regional, and global scale. (Picon, 2018) Unlike, polycentric urban system which emphasizes connections between principal urban centres only, distributed, and networked system, emphasises intensification of connections across all the nodes in an equal and distributed manner.(Roberts et al., 1999) This phenomenon is observable in all the three cases.

Moreover, green connections can be considered, a third form of connection. Although covered under the compact city model as ‘green structure’ or ‘green spaces’ (Bibri et al., 2020; Jabareen, 2016), these green spaces apart from adding environmental biodiversity in cities, they also help providing access to greens for individuals. They act as informal connections across the city, and also promote slow mobility.

Portland is a good example of this. The city intends to create a network of ‘city greenways’ which connect and bind the whole city, right from neighbourhood scale. These ‘green corridors’ and ‘trails’ also connect to larger blue green infrastructure in the city. (See figure 18 in Chapter 3)

4.2.3.3. Social Welfare Policies and an integrated Approach to Spatial & Transport planning: As mentioned before, creating a distributed system requires not only an economic and land-use mix, but also social mix of population. Therefore, integrating not only land-use, transport, and economic policies, but also social welfare policies.

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The literature suggests that cities focussing only on economic structures and land use diversity, shall although create the effects of agglomeration and avail provision of betterquality services in the neighbourhoods, but risk creating exclusive communities and increase socio-economic disparities in the cities. (Bramley & Power, 2009; Gil Solá et al., 2018) The three cities, although to a varying extent according to their local socio-economic and political set-up, have adopted strategies of adding affordable housing, increasing home ownership, initiating rent control policies to address the issue of polarities and create an evenly distributed social mix at city scale while also addressing densification and diversification strategies of compact city.

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SECTION 3: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

SECTION 3

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

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Chapter 5. A discussion regarding ‘proximity city’ and ‘Fifteen-minute City’

Based on the previous chapter’s findings and synthesis, two different trajectories can be traced: First, Unlike the claims of Moreno.et. al. (2021) the FMC rhetoric is not a new spatial planning concept but rather, the underlying urban form is based on compact city model.

It is related to creating compact and integrated neighbourhoods and provision of only basic amenities.

This finding now shifts the focus of the study from ‘what’ to rather ‘how’. The issue of creating proximity ‘to basic services’ is the issue of governance of how to create compact neighbourhoods and how to provide basic amenities. Section 5.1. elaborates on two interrelated topics of governance regarding this topic.

On the other hand, Section 5.2 elaborates on the second finding of the thesis, i.e. the title of ‘Fifteen-twenty-minute city/neighbourhood’, from a perspective of communicative planning and emphasis its merit goes beyond than just being a ‘political advocacy’ and hypothecates how it may assist decision makers to create compact ‘proximity’ city and reduce ‘time poverty’, the main issue put forward by the proponents of FMC regarding scarcity of time for urban citizens.

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5.1. Creating ‘proximity city’ starting from Neighbourhoods and people

The initials findings and synthesis show that the cities are transitioning from car centric cities to match the ideals of ‘compact’ and ‘Networked city’ long established in theoretical discourse. ‘Compact city’ and ‘Networked urban system’ is also adopted across various cities in the western world, especially in European context. (Hall & Pain, 2012) The cities have adopted different visions to achieve these theoretical ideals depending on various local issues and future goals. For example, Portland envisions an equitable city and address the issue of inequality and racial segregation that exist and is increasing at an alarming rate. Melbourne is focussing on creating a ‘healthy’ city arising primarily due to lifestyle preferences of its population and car-oriented behaviour of people. On the other hand, Paris intends to increase social cohesion and reduce isolation in the city. Overall, these the underlying agenda of these cities is to make a more ‘liveable’ city.

To achieve these ‘local’ visions, these global cities have emphasised on walking and biking as the priority mode of access in cities. While Moreno doesn’t differentiate between these slow modes, the cities have defined walking as a primary mode of transport. It is justified since ‘walking’ is most equitable mode of transport. Overall, slow modes of transport have many co-benefits such as social cohesion, health of citizens, reducing environmental pollution, cost reduction on infrastructure provision, etc. (Claris et al., 2016) In this bigger scheme of cities, FMC is a policy related to creating compact (dense), integrated (connected to public transit) and walkable neighbourhoods. Cities are treating ‘proximity (by walk)’ under the bigger umbrella of ‘Sustainable access’.

Thus, from these observations, we can now reinterpret the statement of FMC, from,

‘Providing people everything within 15 minutes by walk or bike, to, ‘Providing access to (basic) amenities and services within 15/20-minute walk (neighbourhoods) to all citizens’

This reinterpretation aligns with the ‘Arguments in favour’ described in chapter 2. The Rhetoric’s claim of ‘by providing amenities and services close to people, we can reduce commute’ is well embraced and supported in the planning fraternity. For example, Ewing & Cervero (2010) in their study of time and built environments concluded that provision of high-quality amenities in neighbourhoods helps promote walkability and reduces commute thereby increasing liveability of people and reducing pollution. Moreover, Barbé (2014), giving the example of Grand Paris region states that only 30% of car trips are job related and there has been an increase in non-job trips overall.

Anyways, it is obvious from looking at the case studies and the restricted role of ‘FMC Rhetoric’ which is limited only to neighbourhoods, that this issue is more inclined towards

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an issue of governance (of how to provide basic amenities) rather than challenging the spatial planning concepts as previously assumed in this thesis.

From a spatial perspective, it relates to question of how to transform existing cities into compact city, which, through inward densification and diversification, promotes proximity of (quality) services and walkability at neighbourhood scale, at the same time, from a socioeconomic perspective, it relates to question of how to reduce ‘time poverty and commute’ for citizens by providing ‘amenities’ they need in the neighbourhood.

This requires governing at local scale and building compact and proximate cities from neighbourhoods based on accessibility of its users.

In other words, it requires, governance of, 1. the service provision that densification and diversification of compact city entails in a free market, and, 2. matching it to the service provision that the local community need.

These two statements can be divided into two types of strategies of accessibility at local scale.

1. Strategy of Enabling service localization in Neighbourhoods (in free market economy) 2. Strategy of Defining and providing services to people It should be noted that the proposition of these two types of strategies is suggestive and interrelated. It is made to ease the understanding of the complex phenomenon of Accessibility.

Access is a contextual phenomenon and is based on social and economic function that occur in the space of cities [For example, location of residents (social dimension) with respect to location of jobs (economic dimension) in the city (spatial dimension)]. Thus, in order to simplify the governance of making compact neighbourhoods based on access, the first type of governance relates to making of space that enables proximity to amenities (i.e. making ‘compact neighbourhood/ city’) and other relates to the socio-economic function (i.e. people and what they need).

They both share similar approach to city making i.e., building neighbourhoods with people through a place-based approach. However, few distinctions can be made regarding the two.

The first Strategy, as mentioned before, prioritises spatial dimension over socio-economic dimension, and focuses on creating compact cities from bottom up. It primarily relates to the structural actions on spatial characteristics of the neighbourhood and intends align it to the ideal of compact (dense, diverse and walkable) and integrated modules (connected to the city network by public transit and streets). These features shall automatically enable localization of services in the neighbourhoods within a free-market economy setup.

Example: Building density near transit nodes, creating pedestrian environment and promoting mixed land-use, promoting construction of mixed-use buildings with active ground floor retail spaces.

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Thus, this strategy can also be called as ‘building compact and networked city from bottom up’, or ‘Strategy of creating compact neighbourhoods’ On the other hand, The second strategy relates to the socio-economic dimension of neighbourhoods and relies primarily on socio-economic policies rather than structural transformations. It requires aligning the socio-economic policies to the neighbourhood scale and governing the type of ‘service’ that should be availed either by building ‘density and diversity’ or directly by ‘public actions.’

Example: Deciding which services should be housed in the ‘newly built’ or ‘abandoned/ existing’ ground floor retail shops or buildings. This can be done by implementing various socio-economic policies and incentive instruments.

Thus, this type of Strategy can also be called as ‘buildings neighbourhoods based on access from bottom up’ or ‘Strategy of reducing time poverty in cities.

The following two subsections further elaborate the shared as well as specific characteristics of these two interrelated and complex strategic dimensions of creating ‘walkable’ and ‘proximate’ city with neighbourhoods and people as focal point.

5.1.1. Strategy of ‘Enabling Service Localization in Neighbourhoods’ From a spatial planning perspective (in a free market economy), enabling services and amenities to be localised in neighbourhoods requires structural changes in neighbourhoods based on creating density and diversity and increasing pedestrianization through urban design measures.

This strategy can also be called as ‘building compact city from bottom up’, or ‘Strategy of creating compact neighbourhoods’ Transforming neighbourhoods to the compact city ideal requisites infill densification and diversification in underutilised lots and brownfield areas. This infill densification needs to be prioritised near transit hubs to avail localization of services close to from where people commute.

Generally, this densification is bought about by amending zonal regulations. For example, increasing the allowable limit for floor area ratio (FAR) is a common tool for increasing density. Such tools activate private developers to increase density within their properties.

As suggested from the literature reviewed on compact cities and observing the case studies, building (compact) cities from local scale of neighbourhoods requires a ‘placebased approach’ to city making. A place-based approach warrants ‘comprehensive strategic framework’ to resolve the issues of creating compact cities (Barca et al., 2012).

A place-based approach mandates co-creation of neighbourhoods with communities. By doing so, it gives a fine-grained focus on the issues of the neighbourhood. It helps to identify potentials and difficulties for infill development of density and diversity by looking at existing resources in the neighbourhoods. For example, Portland has added inclusionary zoning policy through which it is allowing production of different building types in 110

neighbourhoods as per what is needed in each area. Moreover, it is giving incentives to local communities to become private developers and therefore generating buy-in from citizens to develop density in a socially sustainable manner.

Similarly, by engaging with communities, Melbourne is identifying issues that exist in neighbourhoods and brainstorming the provision and regulation of pedestrian environments. For example, Melbourne in its pilot projects, developed the campaign program of ‘coffee with cops’ in which citizens helped identify the critical issues of safety in the neighbourhood which deter them from walking or biking.

It should be noted that such campaigns also help bringing ‘non-planning departments of the public sector’ to engage more in the local issues. They mobilise resources by treating citizens as social capital, increase social cohesion and thereby lead to budget savings.

Thus this example reiterates the co-creation feature of ‘place-based approach’, i.e., ‘all of government’ emphasis on co-creating neighbourhoods with communities.

A common feature among all the three case studies is the pedestrianization and greening of school streets, community centres and transit hubs to prioritize access of vulnerable populations like elderly people and children within neighbourhoods.

These features of density, diversity and pedestrianization although create a walkable and service rich environment, but also endanger gentrification and displacement. Thus, these structural actions, policies and campaigns should be equally strengthened by focussing on economically weaker groups, using tools like affordable housing, and rent controls.

Going beyond affordable housing, Portland has created a ‘Neighbourhood Economic Strategy’ (a combination of various welfare policies and actions) to invest in retail shop development by specifically providing support to the vulnerable groups. Through this strategy, the city intends to not only create diversity of retail in neighbourhoods but also protect vulnerable groups from gentrification and displacement that pedestrianization and greening fosters.

Similar set of strategies can be seen in Paris. Through its ‘made in Paris’ campaign, it is supporting vulnerable populations by promoting local production spaces in the neighbourhoods in the form of fab-labs and other hybrid spaces.

This gives a clue that governance of creating compact neighbourhoods or governance of enabling service provision by creating compact neighbourhoods requires a co-ordination of the micro (neighbourhood) as well as macro scale (city) policies. Melbourne Addendum (an updated version of Plan Melbourne document) states that through their pilot projects they realised that the ’20 minute neighbourhood’ policy needs to be included in all plans and projects at metropolitan level.

It requires an integrated approach to planning procedures, aligning land-use, transport and socio-economic policies to neighbourhood scale.

Additionally, feedback loops can be an important instrument to track the co-ordination of spatial development of the local neighbourhood scale and the macro ‘city scale’.

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5.1.2. Strategy of ‘Defining and Providing services to people’ As stated before, this strategy relates to the second dimension of ‘accessibility’ and is concerned with ‘people’ and ‘what they need’ This strategy can also be called as ‘buildings neighbourhoods based on access from bottom up’ or ‘Governance of reducing time poverty in cities’ or ‘Strategies of proximity services’ While the strategy of creating compact neighbourhoods requires building density and diversity in the neighbourhoods for localization of services through free market, the strategy of ‘defining and providing services to people’ brings to focus the communities in the neighbourhood and their needs.

Unlike the strategy of creating compact neighbourhoods, It has a pronounced emphasis on soft measures rather than structural actions. However, it must be noted that both the strategies share some common principles and action-policy frameworks’ and are highly interrelated to each other. For example, both require a place-based approach and coordination of neighbourhood’s actions and city actions.

The element that distinguishes both is that the former looks at neighbourhoods from technical point of view ie. Technical assessment of density, diversity, etc while the latter looks at neighbourhoods from communities’ perspective.

This Strategy too, like the Strategy of building compact cities, warrants decentralizing governance structures close to people and defining together ‘which amenities are basic amenities’ or ‘which services are proximity services’ that needs to be availed.

In the case of the three cities analysed in this thesis study, all of them show diverse attitudes in ‘defining basic amenities.’, based on their local socio-economic and political context. For example, Portland city undertook intensive consultation processes with the communities during the formulation of the Portland Plan 2012 and created a ‘citywide definition of basic amenities and services’ to be provided in all the neighbourhoods. On the other hand, the city of Paris has ‘participatory budget allocation processes’ already installed in the neighbourhoods/ arrondissements. Although it is not clear about its exact details, but it can be assumed that the ‘the definition of amenities and services’ will be decided individually by respective arrondissements, unlike Portland’s citywide definition. As seen from the pilot projects of Melbourne, the city has not undertaken any consultation regarding what amenities are requires by the communities and has only focussed on co-creating pedestrian environments with the residents. This shows the limitation of Melbourne case study for defining basic amenities and services through a strict top-down approach.

This observation may also be interpretated as, Melbourne is inclined towards ‘Governance of Enabling ‘Service Provision’ in Neighbourhoods (by free market)’ only and is focusing on creating compact neighbourhoods which does not bother governance of provision and regulation of services in the neighbourhoods.

The definition of ‘which amenities are basic amenities’ then can be further linked to ‘what kind of’ local retail is needed through new densification of lands and buildings, or what 112

should be provided in existing and abandoned buildings/retail spaces (using various tools of incentives or public actions). Hence, this type of governance acts as a guide to the ‘governance of creating compact neighbourhoods.’ Thus, the policy goal of ‘supporting local retail shops’ mentioned in the previous section can further be aligned to the amenities needed by the people.

Moreover, putting emphasis on people and their access to services also brings focus to those neighbourhoods where traditional means of service provision by building density is not possible, like (modernist) monofunctional residential neighbourhoods with no ground floor retail spaces, or neighbourhoods in critical environmental zones where building density will threaten environmental sustainability.

Therefore, this type of governance prerequisites investments in strengthening welfare oriented socio-economic policies and warrants public actions rather than free-market mechanisms.

It deems necessary to enable alternate forms of service provisions in critical areas of low accessibility (due to low density, or due to population profile) For example, Paris has inducted policies to provide alternate means of services in neighbourhoods with high number of elderly populations through programs like ‘Weekly farmers’ market and ‘handicrafts markets’.

It can be said that both Portland and Paris show many similarities regarding this form of ‘alternate’ service provision.

For example, in both cities, the public school in the neighbourhood open up during the offschool hours for public use of school library and school parks, thus providing access through non-traditional means. Similarly, community hubs and abandoned buildings can be a good source to insert alternate means of service provisions.

Both the cities have plans to invest in local production of fresh food through urban farming in public parks of the neighbourhood as well as city. This shall reduce reliance on traditional means of food access through grocery stores. Since Portland has a history of red-lined and segregated neighbourhoods, such policies not only help provide local access to food but also helps increasing sustenance of marginalised groups, typical of such neighbourhoods.

Furthermore, Paris is promoting ‘Local childcare’ services in its neighbourhoods by bringing together the service providers (in this case, local Au-pairs) and service recipients (neighbourhood residents).

Focus should also be on promoting ‘local consumption’ using various programs and campaigns. Melbourne’s neighbourhood campaigns like ‘eat local, shop local’ help build social cohesion among neighbourhood communities and promotes local consumption patterns thus reducing commute.

Therefore, this strategy too, like the previous one, emphasises on place-based approach to making neighbourhoods. City managers need to carefully analyse the socio-economic potential in the neighbourhoods and devise innovative forms of service provision to reduce dependency on commuting outside neighbourhoods.

Furthermore, like the previous type of governance, this one too requires co-ordination of city level socio-economic policies with neighbourhood policies. For example, city level 113

policies need to be drafted to incentivise the free-market actors to realign the development of big box commercial centres from outskirts to inside the city, close to public transit. At the same time, reducing ‘time poverty’ ‘easing commute’ at city scale may be supported by synchronising the ‘social time-table’ of the city similar to what Paris has put to practice.

This type of straegy too, requires creating feedback loops that not only monitor development of services but also quality of services in the neighbourhoods. For example, Portland has created ‘Neighbourhood leakage indicator’ which helps monitor quality of provision of services in the neighbourhoods.

Building neighbourhoods based on ‘sustainable-access’ deems necessary to include community planners in accessibility planning, a domain that is generally reserved for land use and transport planners (Solá & Vilhelmson, 2018) since community planners have a better knowledge of local needs of people and their issues.

In short, the Strategy of creating compact neighbourhoods that emphasis on structural action, needs further alignment with the Strategy of proximity services that primarily relies on soft measures, by, • • •

Creating a constant communication and alignment between long term visions of creating compact cities and short-term vision of increasing liveability.

Active mapping of city scale accessibility (the city of 40-50 minutes) and neighbourhood scale proximity (city of 15/20 minutes); as well as Coordination of top-down actions and bottom-up actions.

An example for this co-ordination of different types of Strategies can be found in Portland city. The city is promoting creation of ‘Ancillary Dwelling Unit’ in suburban (sprawled and segregated) areas that typically consist of low-density single household dwellings with lawns. Through this policy, it has allowed suburban dwellers to add an additional residential room, or a home owned local stores/ office in their private lands. Thus, this policy benefits from citizen-buy-in to attain density, increases self-reliance of these households, and at the same time, adds amenities and services for the neighbourhood community.

Thus, designing neighbourhoods based on ‘increasing proximity for its people’ and ‘reducing time poverty’ requires combining the technical capabilities of building compact dense neighbourhoods with aspirations of people, using tools of social innovation and building cities for and with people.

Looking from the current state of cities and issue of reduced access in suburbs, doing so requires investments diverted to suburbs to create compact neighbourhoods and meanwhile provide alternate forms of services as per people’s needs. From the case studies, few learning can be identified regarding the action policy framework and principles of governance to promote accessibility in the city and proximity in the neighbourhoods. Table 5 on the following page gives a summary of derivations from the case-studies.

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It may be noted that Portland case study provides a comparatively better example regarding the ‘governance of proximity services’ and ‘governance of building compact neighbourhoods’ combined. Initial findings suggests that Melbourne is only focussing on the governance of ‘building compact neighbourhoods’, and Paris’ measures, due to limitations of asymmetric data, appears to be applicable only in the inner city which is already well developed, thus, the case study is only related to the second type of governance ie. Providing services to people.

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Creating and Governing ‘Proximity’ in compact cities City scale policy goals: Densifying and adding Affordable Housing in well served neighbourhoods Providing hybrid spaces like co-working areas and fab-labs in the densifying and vulnerable middle ring and suburbs to attract knowledge workers Promoting House Ownership and supporting local businesses to promote sustenance of vulnerable groups and counter gentrification and displacement Strengthening Transport Infrastructure and services like adding bike paths and pedestrian paths, transforming grey infrastructure into social spaces.

Neighbourhood scale policy goals:

Strategic Neighbourhood Locations for intervention Building Social housing close to transit nodes • Streets and parklets • Car parking areas Cross check service delivery of walkable and • Public schools pedestrian paths connecting to transit nodes.

• Abandoned buildings and lots Adding Density and Diversity of buildings and people • Community hubs • Public parks and gardens Encouraging economic diversity and local production • Transit nodes in neighbourhoods by supporting local retail shops, light industries and third spaces through incentives and investments and promoting circular economy principles Promote local consumption by creating local neighbourhood campaigns and increasing social cohesion among communities Provide alternate means of services for critical areas, like areas with elderly population, using tools of popup economy and tactical urbanism, eg. Local farmer’s market, pop-up cafes and restaurants Governance of ‘Proximity Services’ in Neighbourhoods Co creation involving communities as social capital in identification of issues, provision and regulations of services.

A greater co-ordination between city scale and neighbourhood scale.

Creating Investment plan to prioritise in strategic neighbourhoods (eg. Portland) Breaking Government silos and creating public-private partnerships E.g., Involving police forces in local campaigns to identify local safety issues in areas with program like ‘coffee with cop’ (Melbourne) Knowledge sharing of ‘evidence-based strategies’ with neighbourhoods.

Establishing Feedback Loops to monitor quality of services like neighbourhood leakage indicator (Portland) Table 5 - Creating and Governing ‘Proximity’ in compact cities

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5.2. From the ‘Ideal’ to the ‘rhetoric’ of Fifteen Minute City: A communicative asset to ease out governance

The case studies of Portland and Melbourne show that ‘Fifteen/ Twenty Minute’ city is yet another pseudonym for creating compact city. It is not surprising since the compact city concept takes pseudonyms of ‘the near city’, ‘City of short distances’, ‘walkable city’, ‘Close knit city’ in the comprehensive plans of various cities too. (Bibri et al., 2020, p. 8; Dempsey, 2010; Solá & Vilhelmson, 2018, p. 2) The FMC is used as communicative tool and a vision in the reviewed case studies. As seen in the case of Melbourne, ’20-minute neighbourhoods’ is a way to motivate citizens to perform a daily 20-minute aerobic exercise of ‘walking’ to reduce health issues.

Anttiroiko (2015) states that cities use such terms for branding in a global intercity competition to attract high-tech firms, knowledge workers and investors by providing attractions of cultural offering and lifestyle values. The study by Oguztimur & Akturan (2016) shows it is common feature of global cities. This phenomenon of FMC can be hypothecated also from the observations synthesised during the selection criteria, that, only famous global cities have adopted the concept, and no rural cities or areas were found to have adopted the concept as of yet.

FMC being a ‘branding strategy’ can also be hypothesised by observing its timing of sporadic adoption across the globe during the Pandemic, when fear of ‘end of cities’ was being predicted due to ‘work from home’ patterns which freed the knowledge workers from being fixed to cities for work. These patterns had a greater impact when combined with the ‘fear of cities’ infused in urban citizens due to rapid spread of pandemic in these ‘global’ cities. Florida et al., (2021) have observed that during and post pandemic, knowledge workers as well as tech firms in North American global cities have shifted to second tier cities. Moreover, the spread of FMC rhetoric finds its origins from C40 cities, a collective organization of Mayors of 40 global cities. A closer look at this trend suggests that the three main cities that have adopted the concept, i.e., Paris, Milan, and New York are a member of c40 Mayors’ collective and were expecting mayoral elections in the period of 2020-2021.

Nevertheless, certain hypothesises can be made regarding the benefits that this ‘rhetoric’ may offer beyond being just being a ‘political campaign’.

More than a Branding strategy: Aligning not only external but also Internal Actors

Unlike other pseudonyms of compact city model, the Fifteen-minute city rhetoric can be said to have more advantages than being a ‘branding strategy’ or ‘political campaign’. These added advantages may be considered as spill over effects of this ‘branding strategy’ or maybe ‘intentional’. Apart from attracting actors in the form of external investments and talent, FMC also aligns internal actors.

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It brings to focus on the time poverty that exist in cities by putting value on personal ‘time’.

Therefore it makes ‘urban planning’ personal and close to people. As stated in the Portland official documents (City of Portland, 2010) it makes easy to understand everyone what they can get in ‘20 minutes. Thus, FMC narrative provides a common social vision to all the territorial stakeholders.

Looking at the common pressures against density and affordable housing that come from communities due to their concerns of ‘privacy’, ‘congestion’, and ‘gentrification’, especially in western world (Gil Solá et al., 2018), it seems a good communicative strategy to convey to the local communities, the benefits of density and diversity which leads to better provision of services.

‘Fifteen-minute city’ is a common vision that requires Buy-in from all territorial actors While ‘inherent’ and ‘natural’ temporal inequities exist in cities as a resultant of various complexes processes that create city as a system (Refer chapter 2), FMC, by commodifying ‘individuals’ time poverty’ motivates all the stakeholders involved to introspect and reduce the ‘induced’ and ‘artificial’ temporal poverties in cities. These artificial temporal poverties are created due to organizational leakages among various stakeholders. Thus, it is a narrative for planners, decision makers, citizens, and private investors alike to retrospect and align themselves to each other and thus warrants buy-in from all actors of territory.

1. A Narrative for Urban citizens: It makes citizens retrospect their lifestyles, it puts focus on their health and time spent in commuting due to road traffic congestion. This may instil a change of behaviour in consumption patterns to buy local and stay local, while also make them change their patterns of commute to more sustainable and faster means of public transport.

The narrative of ‘personal time’ may further create an intrigue for questioning the planning processes of their cities. It may push them to participate in city making and therefore take control of their surroundings. It can be observed from the fact that Low community engagement has been an issue which both Melbourne and Portland are trying to deal with.

2. A Narrative for public and private investors and firms: By creating ‘demand’ for ‘proximity’, it nudges private developers to ‘supply’ pedestrian paths and amenities in their real estate offerings and urban design features that enable walking, biking and thus social cohesion.

Similarly, it may influence private investors to provide the ‘specialised, high order’ facilities close to people and not in the hinterlands of the city.

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Likewise, it motivates firms to offer ‘work from home’ to job positions for full time or partly, thus creating hybrid proximity for employees who can afford.

3. A Narrative for Decision makers and public investors: The role of political decision makers in city making is well documented in scholarship. Gil Solá et al. (2018) in their study, which focusses on issues of implementing strategies for sustainable access, points out the urban planning is political field and political actors sometimes, rather than promoting walkability and bikeability, posit an opposite force towards promoting car-based policies. Although this proposition may not be applicable to all the cities, however, it is a common understanding that political actors decide budgetary allocation for projects.

Thus, FMC, through its emphasis on ‘subjective time, may give incentives to political actors and investors to balance investments between increasing economic vitality of cities and liveability of its citizens and assist in creating proximity for all.

4. A Narrative for Urban planners: The issue of ‘commute’ makes planners to think about access and go beyond binary approach to service provision, i.e., not just providing services but also monitoring quality. This, in turn, requires breaking silos within the departments and creating a collaborative environment for all stakeholders. It shall make them look critically on the impact of policy of density, distance and destinations and as well as promoting provision of alternate means of services and amenities in critical areas where creating further density may not be feasible.

Therefore, this ‘communicative asset’ of FMC reflects a great potential for ‘buy-in’ from all the territorial actors to build the ‘ideal’ 15-minute city or in technical jargon, a compact ‘proximity’ city with ‘reduced (commute) trips’. It becomes a tool that activates an array of principles and strategies to promote liveability in cities.

It should be noted that the advantages hypothecated here need to be further cross examined by undertaking follow up interviews with the city managers of the respective cities. However, from a communicative planning perspective, it throws a new light at different measures cities take to align various territorial actors to ease governance of building compact, socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable cities.

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Chapter 6. Conclusion: A Reflection on the Narrative of FMC

6.1. The Narrative of FMC and its Significance The ‘15-minute city’ renders an urban imagery, an utopia, which hardly anyone would not aspire of. Specially with the profound rediscovery of time (and its positive impact on quality of life) during the COVID-19 Pandemic’s movement restrictions, which in prepandemic life was spent on commute makes, the idea more than appealing. According to Hoch (2016), this aspect is a ‘peculiar feature’ of every Utopian concept. He states that, ‘Utopia dramatizes emotional attachments to the daily details of a purposeful way of life for some future imagined place.’ (Hoch, 2016, p. 1) Every Utopian idea or a concept offers important ways to envision the future of cities. It helps us to imagine how future consequences of present actions might influence current hopes and expectations (Hoch, 2016).

For the desire to achieve the utopian ideal of ‘15-minute city’, the study investigated the present ‘city’ and its various processes with an attempt to offer pragmatism to the concept.

The study tested the ideal from theoretical as well as empirical perspective of ‘city making’ with an intention to uncover the potentials and tensions that emerge when the concept is put to practice.

By undertaking an extensive review of various opinions and views offered by urban planning experts and theorists, the study could identify the themes of consensus or ‘Arguments in favour’ that are well accepted regarding the ‘ideal’ of FMC put forward by Moreno and C40 cities organization alike, and the themes of conflict or ‘Critical voices’ that challenge the concept’s ideation. These tensions were identified to be fuelled by Moreno’s unclear and contingent prescriptive elements of creating ’15-minute city’.

A common consensus exists regarding the Rhetoric of ‘15-minute city’ with regards to its underlying principles of increasing accessibility of people in cities, and, enabling provisions for new ‘work from patterns’ and using it for a resolving the common socio-economic and environmental issues that cities commonly face and are exaggerated by the Pandemic.

However, these favourable opinions are equally contrasted by the ‘Critical voices’ that highlight the limitation of FMC; its ‘mono-dimensional’ resident oriented perspective to ‘cities’. The themes of conflict arise from perspective of ‘social equity’ in cites which the concept proposes to execrate due to its proposal of ‘localizing jobs’. This is also argued to undermine the ‘vitality’ of cities as places of economic innovation and places of opportunities for weaker sections of society to achieve upward socio-economic mobility.

These issues mean that cities cannot be completely decentralised as proposed by Moreno, and Urban centres (job centres) cannot be localised into neighbourhoods, for the reason of social equity and economic productivity of firms. Moreover, the time bound notion of ’15 120

minutes’ brings the issue of ‘intra-neighbourhood social equity’. Since not all individuals can walk at the same pace, or bike, these complications further question the ‘fussy’ definition of 15 minutes.

Thus the forces of social equity as well as city’s economic vitality make the utopian ideal of ’15-minute city’ to shift and adjust to become ’10/20/30/40’ minute city from a normative perspective, in simple words, technocratic perspective.

In order to inspect further the application of the model to cities, the study undertook a scientific empirical investigation of Portland, Melbourne and Paris, with an intent to explore and learn more about the two interlaced issues identified in ‘critical voices’ i.e., the form of the fifteen-minute city as a ‘new spatial planning concept’, and its relation to the issues of accessibility and social equity that exist in cities.

The case studies proved of being an immense source of knowledge. They present enormous insights to learn more about the FMC rhetoric and its nuances. The varying socioeconomic and political contexts of the case studies in the form of converging and diverging patterns helped triangulate a few theoretical hypothesises and advance the understanding of this new ‘Time Based Urban Agenda’ that pave way for further research directions.

It was observed that, similar to experts’ opinions, described as ‘Critical Voices’, the controversial issue of ‘social equity’ is also acknowledged by the communities of respective cities, explicitly in Portland and Melbourne. This signifies further shift and adjust of the controversial yet appealing ideal from ’15/20-minute city’ to ’20-minute neighbourhoods’ (Melbourne), ’complete neighbourhoods (Portland) and ‘Proximity city’ (Paris) from communities’ perspective.

From the case study analysis of the spatial oriented accessibility strategies of the cities, it can be concluded that, FMC rather than what its proponents suggests, as a new ‘spatial planning’ model, is an iteration of neighbourhood unit to create a compact and networked urban form.

From the urban planning perspective, rather than creating segregated ‘urban villages’ and spatially decentralizing the city as posited by its proponents (and its linguistic interpretation), FMC rhetoric demands, • • • • •

Decentralization of Investments from city centre to suburbs.

Decentralization of Decision making at the tune of neighbourhoods, close to people.

Decentralization of Services and include access to local amenities in accessibility planning, apart from ‘jobs/ opportunities’ Decentralization of Demographic polarities between centre and peripheries.

Decentralization of Urban innovation from city scale to neighbourhood scale

The FMC rhetoric can be seen as an narrative to bridge the gap between the practice of city making to meet the theoretical ideals of urban planning. It represents consolidation of practices of co-creation (with all stakeholders) and place-based approach to deal with the issues of densification and transition from mobility-enhancing strategies to (sustainable) accessibility-oriented strategies in order to create liveable and inclusive cities.

By putting value on (individual) time, it brings forward issue of governance of ‘proximity services’ to reduce time poverty for all and thereby also reduce environmental degradation 121

brought about by commute and transportation. It can be affirmatively said that it promotes proximity-oriented planning to address the needs of people and putting amenities in proximity of people.

6.2. Relevance of Study and future scope of work:

The exploratory study of the ‘New Time-based Agenda’ of ‘Fifteen Minute city’ can be said to have, in hindsight, consolidated the scattered literature in the form of Moreno’s proposition, its related discussions, debates and opinions offered by different experts through an exhaustive data collection process of grey literature in the form of media articles, seminars, white papers and reports. The scientific literature thus generated adds to the urban planning scholarship which can be further utilised to create new discussions and explorations based on the topic.

By adopting a critical perspective to comprehend and analyse the subject of FMC, this study presents a plurality of complex themes related to creation of (15-minute) Cities. It puts forward different perspectives from which (15-minute) cities can and should be analysed.

By doing so, the study undertook a controlled investigation of the empirical investigation to focus on spatial perspective to the complex socio-economic issue of accessibility.

The findings can be said to have brought further clarity to the issue of FMC and the proposition of Moreno. By investigating the three cross-continental case studies, it clarifies the spatial organization of ‘cities’ to create proximate environments and emphasises the issue of ‘governance of proximity services’ to reduce time poverty and create equitable cities. It presents an ‘action-policy framework’ which shall inform future research under this study of ‘Time based agenda’.

Few directions can already be set in this regard.

1. Further Development of the framework for ‘Strategy of Enabling Service Localization in Proximity’ The study undertook empirical investigation of three cities based on certain criteria like OECD countries and relative maturity of the FMC policy reflected through Pilot projects. To create a better understanding of the ‘strategies of proximity services’ the scope of investigation can be expanded to include other contexts like Singapore (20-minute town, 40-minute city) and China (15-minute community life-cycle policy). These case studies, apart from adding nuances to the understanding developed regarding strategies for service provision, may also aid in further confirmation of spatial characteristics of FMC synthesised in this study.

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2. Exploring the ‘Alternate means of service provision’ The case study of Paris and Portland led to discovery of ‘alternate means of service provision’. As stated before, these cities are providing alternate service provision in areas where Density cannot be established either immediately or due to environmental concerns, and to areas with vulnerable demographic profile.

Various components can be observed regarding this, for example use of tactical urbanism and pop-up economy, like weekly farmer’s market on streets or mobile libraries, kids play areas and pop-up restaurants.

Although these ideas have been a common practice in European context, they have been primarily seen as tools to social cohesion in the neighbourhoods, street calming measures and supporting local retailers. Through the study, a new perspective is added to the cobenefit of these tools in the form of providing access to services.

Further research can be undertaken to explore the usage of these tools in providing different forms of amenities and services beyond access to fresh food, library services and recreational activities. Due to their low-budget and modular nature, these tools may also hold potential which can be exploited in rural contexts where the issue of extremely lowdensity environments forces commuters to undertake car commute to ‘big box’ commercial centres that are shared between various small towns.

3. FMC as a ‘Strategic communication tool’ and quantification of its impacts The major finding of the study can be contributed to the discovery that the origin of FMC rhetoric is related to Portland Plan- 2012 (in the form of 20-minute city). This finding goes in contrast to the general belief about the origin of idea in 2019 Electoral campaign of Paris’ Mayoral candidate and the international debate that has ensued since.

The rhetoric was developed and supported by city managers Portland (and Melbourne), instead of a being just a political campaign. Based on these findings, in this study, chapter 5 discusses its possible impact to align stakeholders.

Developing a better understanding the topic of FMC as a ‘strategic communicative tool’ shall require addressing the limitations of the study, i.e., undertaking extensive interviews with city officials of respective case-studies to further triangulate the hypothesises developed about the FMC rhetoric.

This exercise may then also open another research direction to quantify the impact of FMC rhetoric in these cities.

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Appendix Appendix A: List of Seminars

1

Title

Speakers/ Experts

Organizers

Date of event 18/03/21

Retrieval Information Link

The City Of The Future: Vision, Projects And Utopias

Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chairs The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, US

Milan Digital Week, Italy

Future of Cities Summit, Dublin

19/11/20

Link

London School of Economics / Cities, London, UK

20/05/21

Link

Urban Promo, Italy

18/11/20

Link

Carlos Moreno Scientific Director of the Chair eTi (Entrepreneurship – Territory – Innovation) Panthéon Sorbonne University – IAE Paris

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The ‘15-minute city’: why shouldn’t all you need be near where you live?

Francesca Bria Chairman of CDP Venture Capital SGR, Italy.

Jan Gehl, Gehl Architects, Copenhagen Rob Hopkins, Founder of Transition Network, UK Hazel Chu, Mayor of Dublin Julain Agyeman, Tufts University, Dublin

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LSE Urban Age Debate 3: Localising Transport, Towards the 15 minute city of the one hour metropolis

Architectural Critic, Dublin Prof. Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics, Harvard University, USA Sir Peter Hendy, Chair of the London Legacy Development Corporation, London, UK Yolisa Kani, Chief Business Development Officer (CBDO), Transnet, South Africa Philipp Rode Executive Director of LSE Cities, London, UK

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Abitare prossimita

la

Isabel Dedring, Group Board (Transport), Arup London, UK Ezio Manzini, DESIS Lab, Milan

Member

136

Salvador Rueda, Agència d'Ecologia Urbana, Barcelona Birgitte Bundesen Svarre, Gehl Architects, Copenhagen Carlos Moreno , Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne I IAE, Paris Pierfrancesco Municipality of Milan

Maran,

Cristina Tajani , Municipality of Milan Giordana Ferri , FHS Social Foundation, Milan

Housing

Prof. Stefano Boeri , President of the Triennale, Milan Prof.Davide Fassi Foundation Politecnico di Milano, Milan Prof. Carolina Pacchi, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, Milan

5

The Rise of the 15Minute Neighbourhood

Michele Talia, President of INU Debate, Milan Richard Florida, Urbanist and theorist, Toronto University, Canada Carlos Moreno Université Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne I IAE, Paris, France

The Aspen Institute Energy & Environment Program, USA

20/11/20

Link

Design Culture Learning platform, Milan

08/12/20

Link

Municipal Art Society of New York, USA

25/02/20 21

Link

Janette Sadik Khan, former New York City Transportation Commissioner, USA

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7 8

A 15-Minute City: Thoughts of Ezio Manzini

The 15-Minute City

Padden Murphy, REEF Technology’s Global Head of Public Policy, USA Ezio Manzini, DESIS Lab, Milan

Carlos Moreno Université Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne I IAE, Paris, France

137

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Young Urbanists: The 15 Minute City Concept

Jarrett Murphy, Executive Editor of City Limits, New York, USA Floriane Ortega, Manager and Adaptation Lead, Cities & Regions, The Carbon Trust, UK

The Academy of Urbanism, London, UK

10/12/20 20

Link

WRLDCTY, International

03/02/20 21

Link

Campbell and Tickell, London, UK

13.01.21

Link

Columbia Global Centre, USA

17/12/20 20

Link

Monica Laucas, Consultant in the Economic Development team at AECOM, UK Simon Long, Consultant in the Economic Development team at AECOM ,UK 10

The 15-Minute City Explained

Jennifer Keesmaat, Former City of Toronto Chief Planner, Canada Andre Brumfield Global Director, Gensler, Peter Hyland Regional Director, Urbis Singapore James Rayner Architect and Urbanist, Director at Broadway Malyan, Abu Dhabi

11

The 15-minute neighbourhood

Nazeya Hussain, Executive Director of Place, Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, London, UK Alba Menendez Senior Consultant for Transport & Mobility Advisory, Arup London, UK

12

Pandemic and ReShaping The Urban Landscape: Hyper Localization and 15 Minute Cities

Tom Titherington Executive Director, Development and Commercial, Sovereign Housing, London, UK Hayrettin Günç, Program Manager, NATCO, Global Designing Cities Iniative Hazem Zureiqat, Partner at Engicon, Transport Consultant and Advocate, Jordan Juan Francisco Saldarriaga Chaux, Senior Data & Design Researcher, Brown Institute, Columbia University

138

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Creating urban hyper proximity with 15-minute cities

14

The 20 Minute Neighbourhood learning from Down Under

Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi, Lecturer in City Diplomacy at Sciences Po and École Polytechnique, Paris Carlos Moreno Université Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne I IAE, Paris, France

Julia Thrift, Director of Healthier making, TCPA

Place-

James Mant, Planning projects Manager, Department of Environment, Land, Water, and planning, Victoria, Australia

Smart City Expo World Congress organised by CHAIRE ETI GFI, Paris The Town and Country Planning Association, UK

13/12/20 19

Link

08/11/20 20

Link

New USA

02 to 25/02/20 21

Link

Prof. Trevor Shilton, Director of Active Living, Heart Foundation Australia Naomi Gilbert, Senior Co-ordinator, Healthy built environments, Heart Foundation, Australia

15

City on a Mission: Proximity City

Prof. Iain White, Professor of Environmental planning, University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Alain Bertaud Senior Fellow, Marron Institute New York University

Cities,

Carlos Moreno Scientific Director of the Chair eTi (Entrepreneurship – Territory – Innovation) Panthéon Sorbonne University – IAE Paris Dan Hill Director of Strategic Design, Vinnova; Professor of Practice, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose Gabriella Gomez-Mont Founder and Principal Experimentalista: Urban Creative Studio

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Philippe Chiambaretta Architect and Founder,PCAStream, Paris, France Richard Sennett

139

Senior Advisor to the United Nations on Cities, United Nations Diana Lind Executive Director at Arts and Business Council for Greater Philadelphia, USA Greg Lindsay Director of Applied Research, NewCities, USA

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15-minute cities for pandemic recovery?

Start with streets

Claudia López Hernández Mayor, City of Bogotá, Colombia Tom Skwierawski, City of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, USA Francisco Ramos, NewVue Communities, York, USA

GBH Forum Network, USA

5/10/20

Link

New

Aimee Gauthier, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, New York, USA Denise Delgado, Executive Director, Egleston Square Main Street, USA

140

Thank you