The International Idiocy of the 15-Minute City

The promise of cities is that they have a lot more stuff to do, things to buy and sell, places to work, and people to meet than towns and villages. It’s why large metros manage to be richer, more attractive places than smaller, isolated communities, despite all the traffic, noise, crime, pollution, and general urban dysfunction that inevitably comes with them.

It’s strange then that all across the world, city planners and the politicians under their sway keep trying to replace the interconnected, agglomerated city with sealed-off, self-contained urban villages no one will have to leave.

Last week, the Scottish Parliament overwhelmingly approved a new national planning framework that prioritizes the creation of “20-minute neighborhoods” where residents can access jobs, housing, shopping, health and education facilities, and even food-producing gardens in a 20-minute walk or bike ride.

This national framework serves as a guideline for local councils that produce more precise plans of where new development is allowed and approve individual development applications.

Scottish national authorities are hoping that by encouraging local authorities to reject out-of-town retail outlets and other projects people would be willing to drive to, they can cut emissions and create more “sustainable and fair” cities.

Scotland’s 20-minute neighborhood plan is a slightly more modest version of its intellectual inspiration—the 15-minute city.

The term was first coined by Sorbonne professor Carlos Moreno in 2016, and riffs off preexisting ideas of an “urban village” or “smart city” where travel and emissions can be reduced or eliminated through the creation of planned neighborhoods that contain everything one might need within a few blocks.

“The idea is to design or redesign cities so that in a maximum of 15 minutes, on foot or by bicycle, city dwellers can enjoy most of what constitutes urban life: access to their jobs, their homes, food, health, education, culture, and recreation,” said Moreno during a 2020 TED Talk.

A March 2022 article published by the World Economic Forum traces the “surprising stickiness” of the 15-minute city all the way back to 19th-century Scotsman Patrick Geddes’ vision for “Eutopia.” Through proper planning, Geddes hoped that Eutopian towns and cities could transition society away from “money wages” and the messy individual plans they encouraged and toward a more communal, energy-conserving built environment of “folk, work, and place.”

Geddes’ contemporary countrymen aren’t the only ones taking to the idea.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo made the creation of a 15-minute city the centerpiece of her 2020 reelection campaign. Former Obama administration Housing and Urban Development Secretary and failed 2021 New York City mayoral candidate Shaun Donovan ran on the idea as well. Seattle has long pursued a similar urban village strategy to guide its planning and zoning decisions, all the in name of reducing car travel and emissions.

Saudi Arabia’s much-publicized The Line takes the 15-minute city idea to its extremely silly logical end-point. The $500 billion pet project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would create a brand new, linear city in the middle of the desert in which every destination is reachable by a 20-minute train ride, and all