6 Boost cycling to create the 15-minute city

People are happiest in cities where they are able to reach everything they need – shops, schools, workplaces, libraries, sports centres, surgeries, friends and family – in 15 minutes or less. For people walking, this means about a mile in either direction. For cyclists, this expands to two or three miles, or further with an e-bike. Sometimes this is referred to as a ‘15-minute city’. This is especially the case if you can do more of these things in one journey or in planning-speak, to ‘daisy-chain.’ But this is very difficult in a city built around cars as all these things that we need to exist are spread about and often out of town, so we are forced to make longer journeys and make them more often. Distance and congestion put a damper on the alternatives, as pedestrians have to navigate around busy roads and cyclists have to run the gauntlet of hostile car traffic.

In order to achieve the UK’s climate change goals and reduce congestion and pollution, we need to be using our cars less and making fewer journeys altogether. It should be far easier to daisy-chain by cycle than by car, without the hassle of finding a parking space for each location and adding to the traffic on already busy roads. However, at present we don’t have enough of a cycle network to enable this ease of multiple movements, so we often have to do all this by car. With convenient access, safe cycle parking and separated cycle routes, we can daisy-chain by cycle and leave the car at home A shot in the arm for localism, this will help revive clusters of neighbourhood businesses, attracting start-ups and new local amenities creating multiple 15-minute neighbourhoods in York.

Because of its human scale, a cycle culture can preserve, revive and replicate what we love about old York: its dense, compact and convivial local communities.

The 15 minute city. Walking distances from neighbourhood centres.