Figure 8 – Fifteen-minutes and distance covered through various transport modes and its actual overlay on Paris’ urban footprint

1 MILE 3/4 1/2 1/4 00 1/4 1/2 3/4 1 MILE 1&1/4 1&1/2 1&3/4 2 MILE 2&1/4 2&1/2 2&3/4 3 MILE

5 minute walk 15 minute walk 5 minute bike

5 minutinut m

15 minute bike

Figure 8 – Fifteen-minutes and distance covered through various transport modes and its actual overlay on Paris’ urban footprint. (Source: Re-illustrated from CNU.org)

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

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.