The idea that cities should be designed around 15 minute hubs, where you should be able to walk to everything you need (job, grocery, school, hospital, restaurants, etc) within 15 minutes. From Paris's new plans to Barcelona's superblocks, it looks like cities across Europe at least are beginning to catch on to how appealing this way of living is. Thoughts on how to apply this to cities outside of Europe?
EDIT: The discussion going on here is fantastic and I love you all :heart-sickle:
The "15-minute city" concept actually seems like it might be a good idea if we actually invested in frequent fare-free public transit in this country (which is one such public program we could afford by defunding police at the local level and the military at the national level). Hell, even a "half-hour city" or "hour city" would be a massive improvement in metro areas with so much sprawl that longer than hour-long job commutes are typical.
I live only 12 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. It takes me over an hour to get to it.
Something like this would be huge in the SF Bay Area
Yeah in the United States particularly the 15 minute city concept doesn't work at all because everything is so spread out due to car culture. I'm thinking the 15 minute city can be put to better use in East Asia in particular. Cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, etc could all do this 15 minute city concept rather easily, because they already have the density to support it.
No doubt it'd be a Herculean task, but this concept should be possible at least in densely-settled metro areas that already have some existing public transportation infrastructure. Extending this concept beyond the major cities would take a massive Green New Deal level of public infrastructure investment and overhaul, a national project likely costing hundreds of billions of USD, a scale on par with that of (and possibly replacing/superseding) the Eisenhower interstate highway infrastructure project.
Yeah which is why in the United States it's never going to happen, sadly.
Fewer people in the US are driving cars than in previous decades. The country is getting more urban by the year. Demand for this sort of thing is going up.
Hong Kong and Singapore are already pretty close to this by default because they're so dense.
I would gladly eat a 20% hike (or like 5% a year for 5 years) increase to property taxes in Toronto for free public transit
It really wouldn't even be that much in many cities, more like 1% a year
Below 2% a year for us is sub inflation, so city services would shrink
A one time 20% increase would effectively add transit onto taxes instead of fares
And then of course inflationary increases after that
I reran the numbers, and it looks like it would be closer to what you stated. Phrasing is important with these things, and the income taxes that fund my transit district would go from .73% to .94%, a two-tenths of one percent increase (which is what I was trying to refer to by saying it'd be around 1 percent, although it's an increase of 20-something percent). Does that make more sense?
I was looking purely at property taxes
We don't have municipal income taxes in Toronto
<3
I see, I see, it would be a small amount nonetheless. Unfortunately the head of our county transportation department is on the record saying it won't go fareless on his watch, although activists have been working toward it.
:(
It's sad
It's fareless if you don't pay for it! 🚋 😉
The important part of the concept isn't a relative reduction in the travel time (quantity), but that if the time gets low enough the quality changes. Suddenly you can reach your quarter by food or bike easily, you are free to connect to people in your proximity.