The idea of the “15 Minute” city has become really popular in urbanist circles in the past year. It’s fascinating that this is a model that has really taken off, especially because it just seems like common sense. But like many great ideas, the best ones just seem so obvious.
I’ve been fortunate to have lived most of my life within what I’d consider “15 Minute” cities. I think living the “15 Minute” city lifestyle in the US is more viable than many people think.
Definitions
First, I’ll offer my definition of what it means to live in a “15 Minute City”. To be honest, I haven’t followed and read most of what’s been written about this, but to me, a “15 Minute” city is one with many “15 Minute” neighborhoods where 1) you have access to essential goods and services within a 15 minute walk of your home, 2) you have access to non-essential, “nice to have” goods and services within a 15 minute bike/e-scooter/transit ride, 3) public transit infrastructure exists to connect these neighborhoods.
My former home city of Hoboken, New Jersey—a “15 Minute” city/neighborhood on its own but connected to other “15 Minute” neighborhoods (Jersey City, West Village, Chelsea, Tribeca) via public transit.
By this definition, I’m ruling out small towns with a walkable core and even medium/large cities where its downtown is the only true “15 Minute” neighborhood. My reasoning is that if there’s only really one neighborhood where it’s possible to live car-free in the city, you can’t actually live car-free since you’ll need a car if you want to go anywhere outside your neighborhood. College towns are an interesting category but I’ve decided to exclude those since they often don’t provide a diversified-enough economy to be a real option to the average person.
Then we have to define what exactly are “essential” goods and services. Of course, everyone has a different set of “essential” needs but it’s probably safe to say groceries, drug stores, park/playground, school, restaurants, gyms/fitness, and coffee shops would be on most people’s list—places people go regularly at least once a week that would be nice to have within a 15 minute walk.
The next tier of less essential goods and services that people don’t need to visit on a frequent basis but would be nice to have within a 15 minute bike/transit vicinity might include doctor/dentist/optometrist, retail, speciality foods, nightlife/entertainment, etc.
Finally, in an ideal “15 Minute” city, visiting other neighborhoods with these great amenities should be a possible using public transit.
Choosing Local
In order to live a true “15 Minute” city lifestyle, I think it requires a commitment to invest locally. Our consumer culture has sold us this idea that we should be free to buy whatever we want and drive however long it takes to get it. Or more recently, we’ve outsourced the transport part of those tasks to low wage workers using apps like DoorDash and UberEats and don’t even think about the environmental and social costs of having people drive all around the city just for those chicken wings you want from the place on the other side of the city.
My local taqueria, just 1/2 block from my home. Are there better tacos elsewhere? Maybe? But these are pretty darn good; why drive or make someone else drive to get tacos from elsewhere?
More people committing to shop local means fewer cars on the road, less accommodations our businesses need to make for prospective customers and delivery people driving in from outside the neighborhood, and being able to build our streets, businesses, parks, schools, social services, and public amenities for primary consumption by people within the neighborhood.
Philadelphia
Just a couple months after the start of the pandemic in the US, we decided to leave the NYC metro area after 13 years. With the prospect of working from home for the next two years or so, we saw this as an opportunity to get a little more space for our family of four. We could’ve moved anywhere in the US and I had short-listed Portland, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia for our new home. The common theme between these cities is they all have bike/walk/transit-friendly neighborhoods that have a lower cost of living than the “Tier A” cities like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and DC. We ended up choosing Philadelphia, primarily because of its walkability.
In my opinion, outside of my list of 5 “Tier A” cities, Philly is the most comprehensive “15 Minute” city in the US; and the great thing is that its cost of living is significantly lower than that of those five cities. While Philly is certainly not immune to recent gentrification, it still has many neighborhoods where buying an entire rowhome is within reason for middle class households: many neighborhoods across South Philly, Fishtown, West Philly, Mount Airy, and more.
The ~15 minute walk area around my home in Passyunk Square, Philadelphia
We chose to live in Passyunk Square, a neighborhood in South Philadelphia, probably best known to non-locals for being the home of Pat’s and Geno’s cheesesteaks. It has a public elementary school we were looking forward to enrolling our kids in, a few parks, 3 grocery stores within a 10 minute walk (including one Asian grocery!), restaurants with an amazing diversity of cuisines (Mexican, Vietnamese, Indonesian, British, Italian, Thai, and more!), great coffee shops and bakeries, is adjacent to the Broad Street Line subway, and only a 15-20 minute bike ride to Center City. It’s so easy to live car-free here.
Other “15 Minute Cities”
It was surprisingly difficult to find lists of “15 Minute” cities! Here are what I’d consider “15 Minute” cities in the US according to my definition:
New York (plus Hoboken and Jersey City)
Boston/Cambridge/Somerville
San Francisco/Oakland
Washington, DC/Arlington/Alexandria
Seattle
Chicago
Philadelphia
Some cities I considered adding to the list but didn’t because the walkable areas are mostly limited to downtown, while the rest of the city sprawls:
Baltimore
Portland, OR
Minneapolis
Denver
Of course, there are many other cities where one could live car-free but I don’t think their transit infrastructure or density makes it easy for a reasonable person to choose to live car-free.
The Future
It’s going to take a lot of work to create more “15 Minute” neighborhoods and cities, but we need to because we’ve learned this past century that car-oriented cities don’t scale. Also in the face of our climate crisis and public health crisis, we need dense neighborhoods where we walk or bike to get around instead of relying on cars that produce air and noise pollution.
The “15 Minute” city model has the potential to revitalize our cities by encouraging a reinvestment and refocus on local institutions and businesses and creating people-first spaces that reconnect neighbors after a period in which we’ve become so isolated from one another.
While people have talked about making our neighborhoods more walk/bike/transit friendly for a while, maybe the “15 Minute” framework will give us a more pragmatic approach to pursuing these goals for our cities.