Inconvenient facts for Glasser & Speck. |
Ultimately, the “15 minute city” (or less) is is the goal.
It’s not taking away your car, just lessening (in ways great and small) the necessity of using is as much as you are now, because there are only benefits to this lessening in the sense of health and well-being for everyone.
Right now, where we live on Spring Street, many amenities are within walking distance. With improved public transportation, there’d be more. Grocery shopping remains a challenge, but if I could leave the car parked most of the time, then use it once or twice a week for groceries, that’d be an improvement. We might find it unnecessary to have two cars, and already have discussed selling one of them.
What has to occur first is this: One must be able to imagine another way, unlike car-centric opinionating bloviators like Lindon Dodd and John Gilkey. As for me, I’ll continue to try to offer alternatives to the absence of creative thought so sadly lacking in my aging white male brethren.
What It Would Take to Make Paris a ‘15-Minute City’ (CityLab):
So close, yet so far: Imagine a city where all your essentials are just a short walk or bike ride from your doorstep: the doctor, your local boulangerie, even your office job. That’s the vision behind a 15-minute city, which is at the center of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s re-election bid. The plan calls for creating a more thoroughly integrated urban fabric, where stores mix with homes, bars with health centers, and schools with office buildings.
It’s a bold plan that counters the planning orthodoxy of separating residential areas from retail, manufacturing, and office districts, and would require reversing car-centric, suburban-style zoning, writes Feargus O’Sullivan. But Paris isn’t the first city to explore the concept. Cities from Barcelona to Portland, Oregon, are taking steps to curb car dependency and boost hyper-local development. The question is: Can a city like Paris expand neighborhood amenities without leaving people behind?