This evening I walked with my daughter, for less than 60 seconds to where we (perhaps fortuitously) found her excellent thrice-per-week extracurricular activities.
After dropping her off, I walked a couple of doors down to the veggie & fruit shop to buy some apples, upon the request of my husband who is baking apple pie tonight.
‘House of the Rising Sun’ was playing at the shop, which I mostly observed in the background of my mind. But then about a minute later, when I was back in our apartment building, nodding at the concierge as I moved through the lobby, I noticed the same radio station was playing at his desk & the same song still on.
Then, as happens multiple times per week for me, the topic of the 5-minute neighborhood & 15-minute city as lived experience rose in my mind again…..
This topic, connected to issues of walkability as core to sustainable urban development, is my dissertation research topic & is also an established core value for me when living in cities.
I came to my research by way of ‘lived experience’ which led me to forming many of the questions I now have spent over a year & a half surveying and interviewing many residents of the city I currently inhabit.
These ‘residential narratives’ are part of the data & content I believe we need to help educate on & also storytell about the importance of spatial equality & prioritizing the potential for a walkable lifestyle for residents of urban neighborhoods.
My husband snapped this photo of me & our kids, several years ago, around the same time I heard about the 15-minute city. I had also recently established Pedestrian Space to begin to document my own observations of barriers & best practices to walkability that I was observing- as a mother to young children, as a person moving primarily by foot in the city & also simply as a resident of the city.
Planning cities for density, diversity & proximity to services is nothing new, but the 15-minute city concept as developed by Carlos Moreno presents a contemporary framing that has inspired city visions & plans across the world.
As a walkability researcher, the mobility framing within the concept (explicitly to prioritize the ability to walk & cycle to services & amenities within 15 minutes) is valuable.
As a person who lives in the city, the concept is important to me as I know its value through living it & understanding the quality of life it offers.
I look forward to publishing the research I have been working on here in Warsaw & in the meantime you can explore the more accessible content I have been creating on the topic at the Pedestrian Space website: