Table 4 - Comparison of Empirical models of spatial planning to Moreno’s FMC proposition

2.3 Density • Minimum 35 dwellings per hectare. • High density around neighbourhood centre • Minimum 30 dwellings per hectare • High density around neighbourhood centre • High density around neighbourhood centre

Spatial Organization of city

• Public transit node as the neighbourhood centre where services are colocated

• Arterial mixeduse streets connecting between neighbourhood s with pedestrian paths, bike lanes, public transit routes and minimised car lanes • Public transit node as the neighbourhood centre where services are colocated.

• Arterial mixeduse streets connecting between neighbourhoods with pedestrian paths, bike lanes, public transit routes and minimised car lanes • Public transit node as the neighbourhood centre where services are colocated.

• Arterial mixeduse streets connecting between neighbourhood s with pedestrian paths, bike lanes, public transit routes and minimised car lanes neighbourhood centre

Calculated based on the required catchment area for selected basic amenities N.A.

• High density, mixed use & walkable neighbourhood s.

• Compact polycentric city with hierarchised urban centres (job clusters) connected with network of multi-modal public transit • Undifferentiated decentralised city system in the form of local clusters

• Peripheral public transit connectivity

Table 4 - Comparison of Empirical models of spatial planning to Moreno’s FMC proposition Readers note: the comparison is drawn based on ‘urban functions’ as defined by Moreno

Therefore, it can be concluded that these FMC models of respective cities reflect the desired urban form of neighbourhoods and minimum level of services and amenities to be localised inside the neighbourhoods. The city documents highlight that density and locational differential might exist across these neighbourhoods within the city which will allow additional localization of services in some neighbourhoods while not in other.

4.1.1.2. The issue of Localising Jobs

The second highly debatable urban function that FMC proponents propose to localise are the jobs. The issue of job localization is highly criticised not only from point of view of ‘vitality’ that drives innovation and thus cities but also reducing opportunities for social mobility of economically weaker sections incoming to the city for jobs.

None of the three cities claim to localise the jobs. The increase in trend of ‘work from home’ and co-working finds its way in localization of third spaces in the neighbourhoods. Paris intends to locate co-working spaces and fab labs in each neighbourhood, while Portland

and Melbourne, due to low density have taken a flexible approach to its provision, by transforming the community centres into co-working hubs. Since density is already a given in Paris, the city managers intend to create these co-working spaces in abandoned buildings within the neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, It is clear from looking at the strategies and investments channelised in creation of new urban centres and multi-modal public transit that cities have not localised the jobs, rather than adding mixed use of retail and office spaces in the neighbourhood.

Portland Plan aspires further intensification of the city centre to increase its efficiency as a metropolitan job centre. It should also be noted that the Portland and Melbourne rely on manufacturing and industrial research sectors at city level which do not allow mass switch to ‘work from home’ for all except the managerial knowledge workers concentrated in the inner-city and middle ring areas. Both Portland Plan and Plan Melbourne being city-wide visions do not include ‘jobs’ in their agenda of 20-minute city. Melbourne has explicitly mentioned in its 20-minute neighbourhood vision that some people might have to go outside the 20-minute neighbourhoods for jobs. Paris en Commun too, doesn’t mention jobs as part of the FMC, although it application aims at only inner city of Paris which houses mostly managerial workers. These finding contradicts Moreno emphasis on including jobs.

3.4.2.3. The Argument of time, access and a new spatial planning concept

Portland and Melbourne define their 20-minute neighbourhoods as residential areas centred on the public transit node with characteristics of high-density mixed-use buildings. The spatial areas of these territories are defined by creating a radius of 800m (Euclidian distance). Temporally speaking, a radius of 10-minute one way walk, thus these 20 minute neighbourhoods are defined as ‘to and fro’ pedestrian commute from home to the neighbourhood centre (Portland) or Neighbourhood activity centre (Melbourne)18 . Although no explicit model could be found for Paris city but its Neighbourhood accreditation system can be taken as a proxy that the focus is at neighbourhood scale. These neighbourhoods are connected to other neighbourhoods through walkable paths, public transit, and automobile streets, which further connect to larger urban centres.

The overall system takes a hierarchical form across the terrain, with a hierarchy of urban centres, district centres and neighbourhood centres, connected to each other by multi modal transport system. These centres represent the high-density nodes to sustain a hierarchy of services, assuming a polycentric city. As mentioned in the introduction of this section (4.1), Moreno in his proposition, doesn’t give a complete description of his model of Fifteen-minute city. In response, to its, the study supposed an illustrative proposition of the15 minute city model based on the iterations of FMC model by urbanist Gehl and argument of different slow modes of transport i.e.

18 The jargon of nodes and streets change across the cities, however, their spatial characteristics remain the same.