Close Encounters

Convenient live-work-play urban districts are being developed in various forms around the globe

- Boyd Farrow

THE CONCEPT OF the 15-minute city—that anyone living in an urban environment should be able to fulfill all daily needs within a 15-minute walk or cycle ride—was first mooted in 2015 by Carlos Moreno, a Franco-Colombian professor of urban planning at Paris’ Sorbonne University. Cutting unnecessary commutes, said Moreno, would mean longer days, healthier citizens and neighborhoods with a better mix of homes, businesses, shops, childcare facilities, arts venues and leisure amenities. At the same time, less traffic pollution would help mitigate the climate crisis. Post-pandemic, with many people working from home, many buildings being repurposed, and many transit systems being reconfigured, enthusiasm for the 15-minute city is growing.

In fact, nearly 100 city mayors have embraced the concept, seeing mixed-use districts as a way of helping businesses rebound from lockdowns, and the greening of city centers as a way of tackling the longer-term challenges of our warming planet. In Paris, for instance, the highway choking the Right Bank has become a new park, while there are promises to turn the Champs-Élysées into a pastoral idyll in time for the 2024 Olympics.

Yet there are hundreds of projects implementing the concept’s principles in various stages of development all over the world. Here are four of the more interesting ones.

Raising the Bar