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’. Balducci2 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.

2 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/