If you’re reading this from somewhere in the United States of America right now, it’s likely that you commute to work.  

About 86% of us do, according to the most recent census.  

This isn’t all that uniquely American, you might be saying. And you’d be right! The whole world has to commute to work.  

What is uniquely American is that about 70% of us commute to work in a car. Alone.  

And, almost 10% of us do so for 60 minutes or more every morning.  

And we’re just talking about getting to work. Because of modern miracles like single-family-home suburban housing developments and the US interstate system, most of us also drive to just about every other life activity. We drive to Costco…. to church…. to the baby shower….to the kids’ soccer game–the third one today.  

Driving takes its toll, though. Did you know, for instance, that driving commute time is the most reliable predictor of human (un)happiness? The longer one commutes in one’s car, the less happy one will be.  

Far more than any other mode of transportation, driving dumps fossil fuels into our atmosphere. Environmentally, we’re learning, it’s the worst transportation decision one can make.  

And for all the feeling of individual freedom that comes from being behind the wheel of an ‘08 Corolla ripping down the expressway with Bon Jovi blaring in the background, driving has its social consequences, too. Have you ever looked over in traffic, wondering what kinds of little struggles and private hopes might be contained inside that air-conditioned, gas-powered greenhouse on wheels sitting next to yours? Our commute habits, dictating and dictated by our lifestyle habits, disconnect an already disconnected nation.  

Enter… the 15-minute city. 

The Makings of a 15-Minute City 

You’ll have to come with me for a second.  

You’ve taken the redeye into Paris or Berlin or Madrid. The subway shoots you underground, straight to the heart of the city, where you’ve booked a boutique hotel room for a few nights. Bags in hand, you ascend the subway stairs into a place pulsing with energy. Multi-story buildings hem you in on either side. The streets are wide, lined with tall sycamore trees. Sunlight pours in over the rooftops, flitting through branches and leaves onto shaded sidewalks below. A fresh batch of croissants (or donuts or churros) have just come out of the oven somewhere and the scent drifts through a flurry of stylish city-dwellers traveling their various which-ways. Others are sitting on makeshift patios outside cafés, sipping an espresso with a friend before work.  

This is what a 15-minute city feels like.  

It’s a concept coined by Professor Carlos Moreno of Sorbonne University. He’s even written a book about it. The idea is that in a 15-minute city, people should be able to access all of their everyday goods, services, and leisures within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. The 15-minute city represents – for Moreno and an increasing cohort of mayors, planners, economists, and everyday citizens around the world – a response to the car-centric lifestyle of much of the modern West. It’s a shift to a human-centered way of life. 

The Markers of a 15-Minute City

Moreno’s 15-minute city is characterized by 4 markers:  

1. Proximity: everyday goods and services need to be close to people. 

2. Ubiquity: all neighborhoods of a city need to be 15-minute spaces, not just the resource-rich ones, ensuring that whoever wants to live in a 15-minute city is able to do so. 

3. Density: there needs to be enough people living in a neighborhood to support a variety of shops and businesses. 

4. Diversity: land must be allowed to serve a variety of functions – mixed-use housing, commercial space, office space, etc. – in order to reflect the diverse set of needs in an urban environment. 

(Notice, these characteristics also make for a pretty nice acronym: PUDD.) 

At the core of the theory is walkability. Moreno and others in the 15-minute camp insist that life is simply better when you spend more of your time walking and less of your time driving.  

And even just at the intuitive level, this checks out!  

How much less rushed, and therefore less stressed, would you feel if your doctor’s appointment didn’t wipe out half your workday because the general practitioner was a 5-minute walk away and not a 30-minute commute through traffic?  

How do you even begin to measure how much happier you’d be if you could bike your daughter to school each morning because work is just a 15-minute ride thereafter? 

It’s probably why the 15-minute city has solidly become the global zeitgeist of urban design. 

Global 15-Minute Cities 

In New Zealand, they’ve begun to chart cities, neighborhood by neighborhood, according to residents’ proximity to the closest schools, supermarkets, parks, doctors, daycares, and pharmacies. They’re using data visualization tools to inform local governments of which neighborhoods have sufficient proximity, density, and diversity, and which don’t.  

In Barcelona, they’re experimenting with Superilles, or “super districts,” composed of multiple adjacent blocks that function as little cities within the cities. Each Superille has adopted traffic regulations that prevent non-resident cars from entering at certain hours, bringing down street noise and increasing pedestrian and bike safety.  

In Bologna, the local government has divided the city into thirty or so “proximity ecosystems” (don’t you just love the sound of that?), which facilitates the more strategic development of neighborhood resources according to a walkability standard and mobilizes self-organized citizen councils to propose and implement neighborhood improvement projects on the city’s dime!  

Your (Potential) 15-Minute City 

Okay, okay, let’s back it up. We’re getting a little carried away here.  

You’re not the mayor of your city. You’re not an urban planner.  

What does this have to do with you?  

Perhaps, if nothing else, the 15-minute city represents something for all of us to shoot for.  

Right now, the common denominator of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country – in places like San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles – is that they are all walkable. People pay a high premium to live in a 15-minute city because, as we’ve well-established by this point, folks are happier there. 

We can’t all move to these neighborhoods. We certainly can’t all afford them.  

But we can help create them, wherever we call home.  

Here are a few suggestions of where we might start:  

• Walkability audit. Conduct a little experiment of your own. Pick a Saturday and put on your walking shoes. Or, hop on a bike. Use the Kiwi standards: childcare, doctor, supermarket, school, park, pharmacy. Take some data. How many of these are within 15 minutes of travel time? For those that aren’t, why not? Bonus: the US Environmental Protection Agency has assigned every neighborhood in America its own “walkability score.” Check yours out here.  

• Zoning audit. You don’t have to be a planner to get into zoning. Do a quick Google search of “[your city name] zoning map.” How much of it is classified as “mixed use”? Do you see any commercial zones close to residential zones? A start to getting a supermarket within walking distance of your home might be to talk to your local government representative about rezoning outdated parcels of land.  

• Get with other people who want the same thing. We underestimate the power of grassroots coalitions to make change in our cities. Indeed, they’re sometimes the only ones who do! Live in a smaller city? Consider starting or joining a Strong Towns chapter. If you’re in a bigger city, see if your mayor has joined the C40 movement. In groups, ideas flow, enthusiasm compounds, and friendships blossom!  

We could be happier…

There’s an internet meme trend out there broadly entitled “The European mind cannot comprehend…” and up pops a picture of something like a Best Buy, sandwiched between Five Guys and Starbucks. A Walmart Superstore sits across a vast parking lot. The implication is that it’d be easier to hop in your car after shopping at Best Buy to drive the quarter-mile or so across the lot to park closer to the Walmart. (Don’t pretend like you haven’t done that.) The implication is also that it doesn’t have to be this way.  

We could walk, not drive, to get to the store. 

We could bike, not drive, to get to work.  

Which is to say we could be happier. We could be happier if our neighborhoods shared a vision for what else is possible. Allow me to suggest that the 15-minute city is one such (gosh darn compelling) vision.  

Let’s start building more of them.