It's a global climate solution -- if it can get past conspiracy theories and NIMBYs

[Jilly_in_VA]

PARIS — In the 11th arrondissement, a middle-to-working class neighborhood in the east of Paris, if you walk out your front door, you can arrive at a preschool in one minute. A bookstore in three minutes. A cheese store in four minutes. Baguette for that cheese? Bakery's across the street.

Grocery store and pharmacy, five minutes. Parks, restaurants, metro stops, a hospital: all within a 15-minute walk. I know this because I used to live there, on a tiny cobblestone street with buildings covered in vines.

This is a 15-minute city, says Carlos Moreno, a professor at University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, who met me on the banks of the Seine River. Moreno says that in a 15-minute city, a person can access key things in their life — work, food, schools and recreation — within a short walk, bike, or transit ride of their home.

My former Paris street and much of the neighborhood were built in this dense way more than 150 years ago. But this old idea of areas with many amenities close by has now evolved into an urban planning model gaining popularity with politicians around the world. Moreno says that's because it not only improves quality of life, but 15-minute cities can also reduce cars' planet-warming greenhouse gases. Transportation accounts for about 20% of global energy-related carbon dioxide pollution, with cars making up almost 10%, according to the International Energy Agency.

In recent years, Moreno has been helping mayors put this idea to use, particularly the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. Paris is converting old military buildings and old parking structures into mixed-use buildings with apartments, retail and office space. Parisian neighborhoods are opening new parks and community gardens and expanding hours for child care nurseries. And the city has built more than 600 miles of protected bike lanes. "What is important is creating a roadmap for the transformation of the city," Moreno says.

Now the 15-minute city idea is spreading with mayors in the United States, including Justin Bibb, the 36-year-old mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, who made building 15-minute cities one of his top priorities when he came into office last year. But this climate solution is running into obstacles, from zoning regimes that prioritize single-family homes to conspiracy theories that have stirred up death threats for the idea's proponents.

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/08/1203950823/15-minute-cities-climate-solution

Little conspiracies everywhere! Oh noes!

[jaxexpat]

1. Engineers do not design 15 minute developments.

The US will go in that direction only when it embraces the concept that short-term profit is a poor template for a society.

[Scrivener7]

2. Of course this is all absolutely true. But in order for this to work for large areas, it would

would require people to live in multi-unit housing.

I live in a hundred-year-old apartment neighborhood. It is wonderful. But the opinions routinely expressed to me on DU when I say I love apartment living are really quite vicious.

I have been told by DUers (in conversations where they know I live in an apartment) that they would rather live out of a shopping cart than live in an apartment. (That's very dumb AND very rude.) I have been told that apartment living inevitably and quickly becomes ghetto living. I have been told you get into an apartment and THEN the board sneaks up on you and bam! raises the monthly fees on you (and themselves, BTW) beyond any affordability. People insist they need acres of land and a big house or life is not worth living.

All of this is, of course, total bullshit. But people have this nonsense in their heads. In conversations where someone simply speaks positively about life in multi-unit housing, DUers routinely respond as if guns are being held to their heads and they are being forced to move.

Conspiracy theories aside, people's attitudes toward this kind of housing are surprisingly irrational, and though your article is spot on, the irrationality clearly shows that the change is not something that will be easy to bring about anytime soon.

[WalkerinSC]

4. That is sad that

here you get grief for your housing choice. I don't consider it my business how people prefer to be housed. Some like apartments in a city with all the benefits/negatives that it entails. I prefer my 6 acres and modest 1500 Sqft home and all the benefits/negatives I deal with. When groups start demanding people live in a certain environment, that's when they lose me.

[keithbvadu2]

3. Change?

[hunter]

5. My children and some of their cousins live in big cities within easy walking distance...

... of grocery stores, restaurants, and public transportation.

It's not an unpleasant way to live, not at all.

My wife and I live in a densely populated area of mixed housing, everything from single family homes to large three story apartment buildings. Unfortunately this neighborhood was built in the automobile age when commercial and residential zoning were kept separate. We're about a mile from the nearest grocery stores and restaurants.

In our downtown, literally Main Street, there are all sorts of restaurants, a movie theater, bookstores, and other shops lining the street, many of these shops having apartments above them. Adjacent streets are mostly residential. Rents downtown are higher than they are in our neighborhood.

If living in these "15 minute" neighborhoods is less desirable than suburban living why does it cost more?