Figure 10 - FMC's synonymity to Garden city concept

car ownership. He observes that in Italian context, the purchase power and rents are higher in the central municipalities. Although the severity of this urban phenomenon is less in European counterparts compared to Anglo Saxon countries (Musterd, 2016), nevertheless, critics from both the parts of the world have highlighted the same concern. This demographic diversity of suburbs is also reflected in the difference of employment patterns, since these vulnerable groups also represent the non-knowledge intensive economic sectors of the city (De Vidovich, 2021; Guida & Carpentieri, 2021; Williams et al., 2020)

On the other hand, the applicability of FMC relies heavily on the argument of digitalization of social functions and decentralization of work enabled by the ‘zoom effect’ which the author assumes would be new normal for the large force post pandemic. E.Glaeser et al. (2021) have commented that the idea that physical mobility shall be replaced by virtual exchanged is false and temporal in nature. It is also learnt that the ‘zoom effect’ too is unequally impacted across the knowledge intensive firms and its applicability depends on factors such as type and size of firms, cultural contexts etc. (Pacchi et al., personal communication, 21 February 2021) For example, in Milan, most of the knowledge intensive firms are small or medium size firms and the employers show lower trust factor towards employees to undertake work remotely which raises the question of wide

Figure 10 - FMC's synonymity to Garden city concept (Source: downtoearth.org/isfifteenminutecityheretostay, 2021)

applicability of ‘work from home’ patterns. Similarly, (Pasqui, 2021, personal communication, 21 February 2021) states that not all departments of knowledge intensive economies can work from home, while it may be possible for some jobs of non-knowledge intensives to undertake remote work. Thus, it can be concluded that the work from home patterns are not equally distributed in the city, and not all workers can telework.

The local scale versus the governance of metropolitan differential

The ‘localist idea’ at the basis of FMC risks to divulge the urban governance at city and metropolitan scale. The scale of city and metropolitan governance which deals with rent, residential mobility and transport is decisive for the liveability enhancement of middle- and lower-income groups (Peverini & Chiaro, 2020) Moreover, the implementation of new services and infrastructure risks exacerbating of existing inequalities if not properly governed. Previous design concepts focussing at the local scale like the Neighbourhood concept by Perry C. and New Urbanism have enabled flow of capital from neighbourhood to neighbourhood through sequential gentrification thus enabling displacement and segregation in cities and regions (Hochstenbach, 2017). This phenomenon is antithetical to the concepts’ endorsement of social mixing and mixed use in neighbourhoods (Dunning et al., 2021). Pieri (2020 as cited in Whittle, 2020) has endorsed similar view while narrating her experience in social policy context of Manchester city, that the marginalised communities end up with poor quality services through such schemes.

It is suggested that city managers should consider the issues of equity and displacement or else the distinction of neighbourhoods/ district through valuing temporal measure coupled with the presence of real estate markets; narrow view of accessibility measures and reduced function of public transportation as promoted by FMC shall worsen social divides, widening inequality between richer and poorer localities, where the former shall benefit from the higher quality service while the latter shall be less mobile than before (Dunning et al., 2021; Gehl et al., 2020; Skwierawski et al., 2020).