How can the 15-minute city model revolutionize urban living, enhance well-being, and reduce our carbon footprint? Online shopping is turning cities into ghost towns. We can now buy anything anywhere, anytime. How can we learn to stop scrolling and start strolling and create more livable, sustainable communities we are happy to call home?
Carlos Moreno was born in Colombia in 1959 and moved to France at the age of 20. He is known for his influential "15-Minute City" concept, embraced by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and leading cities around the world. Scientific Director of the "Entrepreneurship - Territory - Innovation" Chair at the Paris Sorbonne Business School, he is an international expert of the Human Smart City, and a Knight of the French Legion of Honour. He is the recipient of the Obel Award and the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour. His latest book is The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
I'm inspired by this vision because we can see it in Paris and around the world how cities can be works of art. So championing the 15-minute city is also about revitalizing the social fabric and bringing back the art of conversation, which can be kind of plowed over by this commuter life. You also write about the 7,000-year long history of the development of cities. We've forgotten that it’s only in the last hundred years that cities have changed radically since the development of the car, and it’s made us turn our back on some of this intergenerational living, the intergenerational knowledge. Now we see the 15-minute city concept being adopted by cities around the world with different infrastructures, cultures, and challenges. How are you inspired by their adaptability and the innovative solutions they've come up with to create these more ecological, livable, and socially inclusive cities?
CARLOS MORENO
After COP21 in Paris, I proposed for the first time this concept of the 15-minute city as a new perspective for having a more horizontal city, a multi-service city, a city oriented toward satisfying essential needs for inhabitants, reconciling the quality of life and sustainability. For a long time, we have opposed sustainability and the reduction of CO₂ emissions. With the switch towards renewable energy and economic development and the 15-minute city, we have proposed a way for having, at the same time, a more ecological city with a strong reduction of CO₂ emissions while fostering a local economy for developing more local jobs, shorter circuits to regenerate and reinvigorate neighborhoods for having a more balanced city. This is, in fact, one of the most relevant aspects for explaining the great worldwide success of this concept. To rebalance the ecological, economic, and social aspects in our cities and territories.
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The reality is that the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has understood the importance of this concept of joining new lifestyles in the fight against global warming. Proximity is not only about fighting against global warming. Proximity is also about reconciling with nature to develop a less polluted city, having more digitalization, trees, and more nature in cities. And beyond this, to develop a new business model in cities, local jobs, and local commerce. Local commerce means not only buying or selling things. This is a question of social interactions for transforming public space for performing streets. The process of federalizing cities in Paris is at the same time about fostering people's access to the proximity of jobs, and we need to change the mindset of the new generations, in particular, kids and young people.
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The question is not 15, 10, 20 minutes. The question is how to offer a happy, polycentric proximity adapted to the local conditions. The most relevant point is to go beyond the particulars of fostering walkability and bikeability, even if this is totally necessary. But the really strong lesson from Paris, as I explained in my book, was when the mayor of Paris, just after launching this concept, said we need to change the local urban plan of the city of Paris.
The last time when we brought in Paris a local urban plan was in 2000. With this concept, with the strong commitment of Hidalgo as mayor in May 2023, the city of Paris has voted for the new bioclimate local urban plan. This is plan available for the next 10 years. Based on this idea, by their proximity, nature as a common good, development of the local services, public spaces, low carbon mobilities, local jobs, medical services, etc. I want to advise our different mayors around the world. The strategic point is to vote for a local urban plan, ensuring not only a short-term term solution but a mid-long term based on this inspiration. We need to combine the concrete, immediate measures with the mid-term in order to have this roadmap for reconciling ecological measures, new economic geography based on more local interactions, and local employees, at the same time, fostering more inclusivity, social ethnicity, and social interactions.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes, we all have to be partners in this transition. As much as there is intelligent planning, green spaces, there are opposing forces like the free market economy. Today strolling has been replaced by scrolling. In our pockets, on our phones, we have the 15-second city. People's shopping habits have changed. How do you combat that when you can purchase anything online, anywhere, anytime, and have it delivered to your door, with all the air pollution and social isolation that involves? I know that there are concrete plans for Paris, making real estate partnerships that help support local shop owners, but how does that work? Even with lower or subsidized rents, we can see cities being hollowed out with shops closing. It's hard for local business owners to compete with the global market.
MORENO
You are totally right. We need to develop a dialogue with the different stakeholders and the different economic actors and to have continuously this same dialogue with citizens. We need to listen to different citizens. Proximity is not the same for a girl from China. For young people, women, and men. It is not the same proximity for a couple with children or for elderly people. It's not the same for elderly people in good health or in bad health. We need to adapt these services in proximity to the different profiles of people that live today in a street, in a district, in an area, and in a city.
We need to mix it with the scientific analysis. We need to understand the sociodemographic and socioeconomic trends. It's not the same to develop a city with a growing elderly populaton as it is to develop a city with a rising younger population, for example. The needs are not the same.
Today, we need to support this model for reinvesting in commerce in cities, for having more local shops, at the same time as creating spots for generating more social interaction. You are totally right. This is not the same thing as having it in 15 seconds; just click for automatic delivery of my order. It’s about going to my street, to work and buying these things in a local shop. We have developed this illusory bubble of my electronic existence. If we continue to develop this isolated life, we’ll develop permanent loneliness. We need to fight against that.
It is necessary to change our mindset in this period of the intensive use of social electric networks and artificial intelligence. We need to give priority to humanizing our cities for immunizing our lives. This is our duty, and we need to discuss with the economic actors how to switch towards a more human city, including business, commerce, cultural activities, and medical services. This is the difference between a technological smart city and a real human smart city towards a 15-minute city as the expression of a human-centered urban approach. This is our challenge for the next decades and our target, to humanize our cities. The Olympic Games in Paris have shown the world that it is possible to recreate, to regenerate a really vibrant city with harmonious life between districts, different places, the role of the Seine River as nature in the presence of a lot of people for having more real livability and not an illusory computer life driven by social networks.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
What are your reflections on the importance of arts and the humanities and how they help us see our place in the world?
MORENO
Art and culture are two essential keys for transforming our mindset. We need to underline the importance of developing humanities in cities. Humanities are not only about having access to cinema, theatres, and books. This is, of course, absolutely mandatory to have this dimension. But humanities also means developing empathy in cities, developing otherness, and considering that we have a lot of people in cities with different skin color, different origins, with different lifestyles. We can coexist in a city to learn constantly from each one of us. Otherness is a really relevant value for developing more peaceful cities and for offering concrete affirmations for the next generations. We have today, a lot of social tensions in cities. We have a strong development of racism, of populism. Our democracy today is in danger in the face of this totally tremendous radicalization. At its origins, one of the sources is the isolation provoked by the preliminary role of social networks for developing hate as the most current behavior in relationships between people. We need to break out of these relationships on social networks to transform into real life with public spaces with walkability, social mixity, and happy proximity based on the 15-minute city or the X-minute city. These permanent social interactions are at the core of our humanistic project.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
In this decade of transformation, education along with so much else is changing so rapidly. As you reflect on the future, what would you like young people to know, preserve and remember?
MORENO
Education is at the core of our transformations. Nelson Mandela in South Africa said, “We have three powerful weapons for transforming our life. Education, education, education.” I’ve been a university professor for more than 40 years, and I have observed the process of transformation through different generations. When we have these capabilities for transmitting more humanistic values and for discussing with the new generation, we need to find a sense of life. We need to find a sense of belonging to this humanity. But to have this sense of life, we need to find a sense of our local community, UN-Habitat and the United Nations in charge of cities, for the next World Urban Forum taking place in Cairo in November, has taken a motto: It All Starts at Home. It all starts in our local life. To be aware that all starts at home, all starts in our local community, is to be aware that we constantly need real-life contacts for dating and for this humanistic process. Education is not only about going to school. Education is to constantly have an open mindset, at home with my family, in my building, with the others in the street, in the squares, and in different activities. The otherness should be a permanent lifestyle for transforming our individual behavior and transforming our relationships. This is the sense of this proximity.
