The ‘15-minute city’ could be life-changing for Torontonians. But we won’t talk about that

Thestar.com
March 6, 2023

The concept of “15-minute cities” should be prominent in the upcoming Toronto mayoral election.

It probably won’t be, alas. The coming campaign will be dominated by the issues of crime, budget overruns, affordable housing and traffic congestion -- concerns of such long-standing that many voters will tune out.

The 15-minute neighbourhood, where most of what you need and enjoy is close at hand, offers a comprehensive approach to those same problems.

Though variations on the 15-minute community have been in use for centuries, from Indigenous villages to 20th-century communes, the concept now has a refreshing novelty and momentum.

Last year, the UN co-sponsored five pilot projects of 15-minute cities. Global consulting firm Deloitte identified these compact cities as one of the defining trends of city life worldwide.

A lot of jargon is thrown around by urban planners in their proposals for 15-minute cities. That can make the concept off-putting or even seem to pose a threat to personal liberties, which it profoundly doesn’t.

Instead, it liberates people from fears for their own and their children’s personal safety, from air and noise pollution, and from dreary commutes to work, shopping and recreation.

In a nutshell, here’s what the 15-minute model could mean for Toronto.

Our city would become a collection of self-sufficient neighbourhoods with quick and easy access to schools, medical services, daycare centres, a wide variety of shops, and abundant parks, paths and playgrounds.

There would be a mix of local workplaces, including human-scale office buildings and factories. There would be a diversity of housing types to address the issues of affordability, social cohesion and inclusiveness.

In many ways, this concept marks a return to a traditional way of life, when urban dwellers could walk to work, school, shops and the cinema. No more long commutes to Yorkdale or the suburban octoplex.

Local streets in the 15-minute neighbourhood would be vehicle-free, creating residential oases free of air and noise pollution from vehicles.

And adequate vehicle parking would be provided on the neighbourhood’s periphery, steps from home and work.

The 15-minute concept puts vehicles in their place but is not car-unfriendly. It does not aim to stop people from driving but to make it less necessary to do so.

Carlos Moreno is the Franco-Colombian urban planner at the Sorbonne University Business School credited with coining the term “15-minute city” in 2016. He has a gift for explaining the concept in plain language.

“Neighbourhoods,” he says, “should be designed so that we can live, work and thrive in them without having to constantly commute elsewhere.”

The urgent need for this kind of comprehensive progress accounts for so many diverse cities adopting variations on the 15-minute concept.

They include Ottawa, Edmonton, Paris, Melbourne, Barcelona, Oxford, England, Ghent, Belgium and Portland, Ore.

Ottawa seeks to reduce “car dependency and enable people to live car-light or car-free.”

Oxford aims to cut road fatalities in half by 2030 by diverting vehicle traffic from congested inner city streets to outer ring roads.

And Barcelona is planning car-free “superblocks,” turning major intersections into open plazas.

Everyone knows Toronto road fatalities have increased in number in recent years. Those tragedies simply can’t happen with vehicle-free streets.

The growing interest in 15-minute cities arises in part from the pandemic. The phenomena of lockdowns and WFH (work from home) spurred a renewed interest in neighbourhoods.

The 15-minute neighbourhood is also emerging as a competitive advantage for cities that adopt it. Quality of life is the chief determinant of where people choose to live.

Paris probably is in the lead on 15-minute cities. In recent years it has closed parkways bordering the Seine from vehicles, added hundreds of kilometres of new cycling routes and created local miniparks.

And there is more to come. Parisian mayor Anne Hidalgo won re-election in 2020 with a promise to build 15-minute cities.

Some voices on the far right have demonized 15-minute cities as the latest attempt by Big Brother to control people’s lives.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Developing this model is a collaborative exercise among citizens and civic leaders. What that model prioritizes differs from one city to the next.

In all cases, neighbourhood residents design their communities as they choose.

They might call for a return to local policing (the cop on the beat). They might want their parks redesigned to reflect lost local history.

They might want local water-jet parks for relief from sweltering heat, rather than having to schlep downtown to the one at Dundas Square.

Given what’s at stake, the ideal of safe, self-sufficient and more enjoyable neighbourhoods should be up for discussion in this mayoral campaign.

And someday it will be. After all, Toronto has long prided itself as both “a city that works” and “a city of neighbourhoods.”

Those attributes are mutually reinforcing, of course. But you have to ask, are they still accurate in describing our city?