The 15-minute city is a popular topic these days. So here is a recent study that used GPS data from 40 million US mobile phones to estimate the percentage of consumption-related trips that actually adhere to this concept. The unsurprising result:
The overwhelming majority of Americans have never experienced anything resembling a 15-minute city. The median resident, we found, makes only 14% of their consumption trips within a 15-minute walking radius.
There is, of course, regional variation. For New York City, the data suggests that 42% of consumption-related trips occur within a 15-minute walking radius. Whereas in more sprawling cities like Atlanta, it's only 10% of trips. Again, this is not surprising. But it begs the question: What should we do?
The challenge is that 15-minute cities generally require built environments that are dense, conducive to walking, and filled with a concentration of different amenities. And this is more or less the opposite of the prototypical suburban model, where the car and single-use zoning tends to spread everything out.
The good news is that zoning is relatively easy to change. For instance, if we want to allow corner stores in our residential neighborhoods, that is a decision we can make. The greater hurdle will be transforming car-oriented communities into places where people might actually want to walk. This is much more difficult.
(pictured above), which uses open data from the city to plot sidewalk widths.
It was originally intended as a map of where social distancing is possible (oh, how far we've come), but today it serves as a really interesting way of looking at the city. What it makes clear to me is that we could use a lot more sidewalk, and that too many areas of the city have a discontinuous public realm.
Sometimes there's very little that can be done until an adjacent property gets redeveloped. And when this does happen, the city will demand pedestrian widenings. But in other cases, there are solutions that could be implemented today, without private participation.
So I sure hope that someone is looking at a map like this and trying to come up with holistic solutions for making Toronto a more walkable and more pedestrian-friendly city.
Note: Sometimes a narrow sidewalk does not necessarily equal an inhospitable street. I mean, look at this example.
I have remarked this before, but I’ll say it again anyways: sneakers are very popular in Paris. Everybody seems to be wearing cool and colorful sneakers, regardless of what the rest of their outfit happens to look like.
Full business suit? Why yes, you should be wearing cool sneakers.
But why is that?
Paris is a famously walkable city. At any given time, you’re on average just about 500m from the closest subway station. So my entirely unproven sneaker theory is this: shoes follow built form.
If you build a city around people walking everywhere, one will ultimately choose the most appropriate kind of footwear.
