2.2.2. FMC and Challenge to ‘walkable’ Neighbourhood space metric

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)