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)