Pathway

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.

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.