“Convenient” – that’s how I would describe my experience living in Singapore.

Over the span of four years (2015 – 2019), I lived in four different neighborhoods in Singapore – from budget-friendly neighborhoods in West Singapore to expensive ones in Central Singapore. One thing that remained consistent across neighborhoods was the proximity to basic amenities and daily needs. A grocery store, hawker center, school, doctor’s clinic, bus stop – you name it – everything was within a 10-15 minutes walking distance. So, when I came across an article calling a 15-minute city international idiocy, I was intrigued!

A Case Study of a 15-Minute City Concept in Singapore’s 2040 Land Transport Master Plan: 20-Minute Towns and a 45-Minute City.

Old Wine, New Bottle

Before the arrival of cars, cities were designed around people. City centers also known as central forums had everything that people needed on a day-to-day basis and streets were designed compactly around the central forum. Rapid industrialization after World War II made cars more accessible leading to the emergence of sub-urban sprawls or as we refer to them today “the suburbs”.

The concept of a 15-minute city is not new, in fact, it can be traced back to the 1920s when American planner Clarence Perry introduced the idea of ‘neighborhood units’. The broader idea of a 15-minute city is similar to how cities were designed before cars. Carlos Moreno, Urbanist and Professor at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris coined the term 15-minute city to describe neighborhoods that have all necessary amenities from food, and healthcare, to education at 15-minute walking, biking, or transit distance from one’s home.

15-minute cities, walkable cities [Add Footnote: Jeff Speck’s talk on the Walkable Cities is a great resource to understand the concept of walkable cities], and livable cities – are all similar ideas in the sense that they focus on improving residents’ quality of life by focusing on people-centric urban design and planning. However, there are subtle differences in their approach. While 15-minute cities use the accessibility lens, walkable cities use the mobility lens, and livable cities combine both accessibility and mobility. Proponents of the concept believe that 15-minute cities are economically and environmentally efficient and can significantly enhance the sense of community, sustainability, and livability in a neighborhood.

Source: World Economic Forum

The Conspiracy

15-minute city conspiracy theorists claim that the concept is a devious government scheme to limit movement and individual freedom. A Twitter user called it “urban incarceration” referring to 15-minute cities as “dystopian hell on earth”. In the UK, the City of Oxford residents protested against the City’s proposed traffic filtering trial run. The residents saw the trial as an attempt to limit individual car movement and turn Oxford into a “15-minute dystopia”.

Read about the origins of the conspiracy theory here.

The conspiracy has made its way to the US. Recently, a former congressional candidate ambushed Utah Gov. Spencer Cox about an alleged conspiracy to build a “smart city” at the Point of the Mountain. The plan to develop a 600-acre community has drawn the attention of right-wing conspiracy theorists who are hoping to ride the ongoing wave against the 15-minute city. While I find these claims completely ridiculous, they might not be completely unwarranted. COVID-era confinement policies have led to concerns about the government’s power over our daily lives.

“City Planners and Mayors have a long history of developing master plans without adequately consulting communities. Top-down government planning is all too frequently based on a poor understanding of what people want and how cities function,” said Dan Luscher, a San Francisco-based Urbanist and Creator of 15-minute City Project. He further adds that “Living in a 15-minute city needs to be a choice. Not everyone may want it, and it can be a choice not to live in one,” and I can’t agree more with his remark.

A more sophisticated argument against 15-minute city comes from Harvard Economist, Edward Glaesar. He refers to a 15-minute city as a “dead end”. He makes the case that a 15-minute city limits opportunities to move from one neighborhood to another as a result they limit upward economic mobility, especially for children. I admire Edward Glaesar’s incredible contributions to urban economics, however, I can’t help but disagree with him on this one. I say this purely from my experience of living in Singapore. A 15-minute city primarily focuses on access by making every neighborhood self-sufficient, it does not limit movement between neighborhoods. In fact, having a bus stop 10-15 minutes from home makes traveling across neighborhoods via public transit much easier.

Focussing on the Key Idea

In 2009, Portland set a goal for 90% of its residents to live within a twenty-minute neighborhood. A 10-year assessment of the goal showed that the plan made Portland more accessible due to an increase in transit service, retail, convenience stores, and sidewalks. Clearly, the number (15 or 20) is important only from a branding perspective. It is important to not get fixated on the number. Instead, focus on the underlying idea that no one should be dependent on cars to access amenities that are deemed necessities to live a good life. Municipalities should encourage more mixed-use development and encourage neighborhood businesses to open up and serve their local community. Municipalities that are just getting started should consider identifying high-density corridors that can benefit from mixed-used development to serve the community (for example, see LA Livable Cities Initiative).

A recent report Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America’s Largest Metros 2023 from Smart Growth America compared “walkable urbanism” to “drivable sub-urbanism” in the largest 35 US metropolitan areas. Here’s some data from the report:

  • Only 1.2% of the land mass of the largest 35 metropolitan areas in the US are walkable urban areas. This fraction of land generates 20% of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Note that it’s just 0.07 of the total land mass of the US, where only 7% of the US population lives.
  • The rent or sales premiums in walkable urban areas are 35-45% for office, retail, rental, and for-sale housing when compared to drivable suburbs.

The report finds that “Building more walkable urban areas will increase tax revenue for cities while easing the affordability crisis.” What blows my mind is that the restrictive zoning policies in most US metropolitan areas make it illegal to build walkable urban densities and mixed-use development on much of the 98.8% of the land that is car-dependent.

The supply-demand deficit in walkable urban spaces is driving prices up and worsening the housing crisis across American cities. The meme below presents a very upsetting yet accurate description of a 15-minute city in the US.

With the worsening homelessness and housing crisis, now more than ever municipal leaders and planners should rethink urban policies and design and refocus attention on building communities around people and not around cars.