Photographing built environment and city spaces was my ‘hook’ into urbanism 24 years ago when I moved to a bustling Pacific Northwestern city. It would be my first time living a ‘walkable urban’ life and I was totally enamoured.
Many moons later, in Spring of 2020, while living in a medium-sized Nordic city, I heard about the ’15-minute city’, as conceptualized by researcher and scientist Carlos Moreno, for the first time.
As I love to share, it was a complete A-ha moment for me as that essence of a 10-15 minute lifestyle locally is what I had been experiencing and raving about in my private life.
I lived in the heart of the city and as a mom to two young children at the time, the reality that everything I needed to reach (preschool, parks, shops, clinic, playgrounds etc) was less than a 15-minute walk, was absolutely brilliant for the texture of my days and quality of life.
At some point though, I remember thinking ‘Well it’s not all that radical that I have a 15-minute city lifestyle. I live in the center of a well-planned mid-sized Scandinavian city.‘
So I decided to start testing out connectivity to suburbs as well as proximities to services there. I started a small survey (this was before I started a PhD and all this ‘research’ was a hobby and indeed curiosity driven) to see if people in diverse suburbs also viewed the city with the perspective of a 15-minute city.
It was a very small survey but importantly, none of the respondents were ‘urbanists’, and most had never heard of the 15-minute city concept, but concluded that indeed, this was a lifestyle they lived.
✍Questions included people’s preferred methods of moving around town as well as a checklist of amenities they can reach within 15 minutes of their home by foot or cycling
🟠 Respondents came from neighborhoods all over the city as well as various nearby suburbs and also represent a range of professional roles (architects, students, business owners, gardeners, professors, planners, beauticians, hairdressers, unemployed, managers and more).
Malmö is actually the city where I had some of my earliest ’15-minute city’ lived experiences in my youth, without having the language for it at the time, but recognizing the benefit and well-being I experienced in a well-planned and connected urban environment. But that’s a story for another post. You can explore more Malmö content on this site here…
Fast forward to today and I am soon beginning my 3rd year as PhD student here in Warsaw, where I am researching best practices and barriers of walkable urbanism via the 15-minute lens at the neighborhood level.
In the metropolitan context, the 15-minute city focus is naturally geared towards assessing the concept as manifest (or lacking) at neighborhood level.
I will produce my dissertation as well as a toolkit that presents the ‘urban clinic’ approach I deployed for my fieldwork in Poland’s capital throughout 2023.
I have firsthand knowledge of how common sense urban planning produces the potential for people to live locally and well-connected. But I am not blind to the challenges the concept as well as discourse around it has sometimes triggered. In fact I find those challenges to be some of the most interesting opportunities to initiate discussion on:
- Misunderstandings around concepts of freedom that have risen in the discourse around the concept
- Residential experience of heightened quality of life when having access to diverse urban amenities within a 15-minute walk
- Triggered responses based on agitation that this is an old concept in ‘new packaging’
- Unpacking the value that the viral nature of the ‘new packaging’ has brought to the visions of cities and towns worldwide
- Understanding the aspects of inclusiveness at the heart of the concept when implemented with equity in mind
- Combative communication and engagement from community inhabitants in reaction to the concept, typically with severe misunderstandings propelling their anger
- Encouraging civil civic engagement and opportunities for people to learn about the concept with community leaders and experts
- Understanding the different challenges that different areas face with a 15-minute city concept development based on different social, historical, cultural and geographical factors
Leading a talk on the 15-minute city at the European Young Leaders Spring 2024 Seminar. It was incredibly interesting to learn that in the group, the majority of young leaders felt they knew a bit but could learn more about the concept or had never heard about it before. I greatly value such opportunities to help shape awareness, insight as well as hear feedback about people’s own relationship to their communities with this concept in mind.
About 4 years ago I snapped the below photo of the central Swedish city I lived in for a few years with my family. From my early days hearing about this concept and relating it to my own lived experience to now conducting research to document others’ lived experiences, perceptions as well as expert insights, I only have sustained passion for the topic of walkable urbanism and quality of life afforded to diverse residents when communities are planned with spatial equity in focus.
I am looking forward especially to honing in on the challenge areas I have observed, particularly as relates to public awareness and community engagement, as I continue to work with these themes.
-Annika
Explore more of our 15-minute city content, at the intersection of media, research and advocacy, below
