to ease out governance

5.2. From the ‘Ideal’ to the ‘rhetoric’ of Fifteen Minute City: A communicative asset to ease out governance

The case studies of Portland and Melbourne show that ‘Fifteen/ Twenty Minute’ city is yet another pseudonym for creating compact city. It is not surprising since the compact city concept takes pseudonyms of ‘the near city’, ‘City of short distances’, ‘walkable city’, ‘Close knit city’ in the comprehensive plans of various cities too. (Bibri et al., 2020, p. 8; Dempsey, 2010; Solá & Vilhelmson, 2018, p. 2) The FMC is used as communicative tool and a vision in the reviewed case studies. As seen in the case of Melbourne, ’20-minute neighbourhoods’ is a way to motivate citizens to perform a daily 20-minute aerobic exercise of ‘walking’ to reduce health issues. Anttiroiko (2015) states that cities use such terms for branding in a global intercity competition to attract high-tech firms, knowledge workers and investors by providing attractions of cultural offering and lifestyle values. The study by Oguztimur & Akturan (2016) shows it is common feature of global cities. This phenomenon of FMC can be hypothecated also from the observations synthesised during the selection criteria, that, only famous global cities have adopted the concept, and no rural cities or areas were found to have adopted the concept as of yet. FMC being a ‘branding strategy’ can also be hypothesised by observing its timing of sporadic adoption across the globe during the Pandemic, when fear of ‘end of cities’ was being predicted due to ‘work from home’ patterns which freed the knowledge workers from being fixed to cities for work. These patterns had a greater impact when combined with the ‘fear of cities’ infused in urban citizens due to rapid spread of pandemic in these ‘global’ cities. Florida et al., (2021) have observed that during and post pandemic, knowledge workers as well as tech firms in North American global cities have shifted to second tier cities. Moreover, the spread of FMC rhetoric finds its origins from C40 cities, a collective organization of Mayors of 40 global cities. A closer look at this trend suggests that the three main cities that have adopted the concept, i.e., Paris, Milan, and New York are a member of c40 Mayors’ collective and were expecting mayoral elections in the period of 2020-2021. Nevertheless, certain hypothesises can be made regarding the benefits that this ‘rhetoric’ may offer beyond being just being a ‘political campaign’.

More than a Branding strategy: Aligning not only external but also Internal Actors

Unlike other pseudonyms of compact city model, the Fifteen-minute city rhetoric can be said to have more advantages than being a ‘branding strategy’ or ‘political campaign’. These added advantages may be considered as spill over effects of this ‘branding strategy’ or maybe ‘intentional’. Apart from attracting actors in the form of external investments and talent, FMC also aligns internal actors.

It brings to focus on the time poverty that exist in cities by putting value on personal ‘time’. Therefore it makes ‘urban planning’ personal and close to people. As stated in the Portland official documents (City of Portland, 2010) it makes easy to understand everyone what they can get in ‘20 minutes. Thus, FMC narrative provides a common social vision to all the territorial stakeholders.

Looking at the common pressures against density and affordable housing that come from communities due to their concerns of ‘privacy’, ‘congestion’, and ‘gentrification’, especially in western world (Gil Solá et al., 2018), it seems a good communicative strategy to convey to the local communities, the benefits of density and diversity which leads to better provision of services.

‘Fifteen-minute city’ is a common vision that requires Buy-in from all territorial actors

While ‘inherent’ and ‘natural’ temporal inequities exist in cities as a resultant of various complexes processes that create city as a system (Refer chapter 2), FMC, by commodifying ‘individuals’ time poverty’ motivates all the stakeholders involved to introspect and reduce the ‘induced’ and ‘artificial’ temporal poverties in cities. These artificial temporal poverties are created due to organizational leakages among various stakeholders. Thus, it is a narrative for planners, decision makers, citizens, and private investors alike to retrospect and align themselves to each other and thus warrants buy-in from all actors of territory.

1. A Narrative for Urban citizens:

It makes citizens retrospect their lifestyles, it puts focus on their health and time spent in commuting due to road traffic congestion. This may instil a change of behaviour in consumption patterns to buy local and stay local, while also make them change their patterns of commute to more sustainable and faster means of public transport. The narrative of ‘personal time’ may further create an intrigue for questioning the planning processes of their cities. It may push them to participate in city making and therefore take control of their surroundings. It can be observed from the fact that Low community engagement has been an issue which both Melbourne and Portland are trying to deal with.

2. A Narrative for public and private investors and firms:

By creating ‘demand’ for ‘proximity’, it nudges private developers to ‘supply’ pedestrian paths and amenities in their real estate offerings and urban design features that enable walking, biking and thus social cohesion. Similarly, it may influence private investors to provide the ‘specialised, high order’ facilities close to people and not in the hinterlands of the city.

Likewise, it motivates firms to offer ‘work from home’ to job positions for full time or partly, thus creating hybrid proximity for employees who can afford.

3. A Narrative for Decision makers and public investors:

The role of political decision makers in city making is well documented in scholarship. Gil Solá et al. (2018) in their study, which focusses on issues of implementing strategies for sustainable access, points out the urban planning is political field and political actors sometimes, rather than promoting walkability and bikeability, posit an opposite force towards promoting car-based policies. Although this proposition may not be applicable to all the cities, however, it is a common understanding that political actors decide budgetary allocation for projects. Thus, FMC, through its emphasis on ‘subjective time, may give incentives to political actors and investors to balance investments between increasing economic vitality of cities and liveability of its citizens and assist in creating proximity for all.

4. A Narrative for Urban planners:

The issue of ‘commute’ makes planners to think about access and go beyond binary approach to service provision, i.e., not just providing services but also monitoring quality. This, in turn, requires breaking silos within the departments and creating a collaborative environment for all stakeholders. It shall make them look critically on the impact of policy of density, distance and destinations and as well as promoting provision of alternate means of services and amenities in critical areas where creating further density may not be feasible.

Therefore, this ‘communicative asset’ of FMC reflects a great potential for ‘buy-in’ from all the territorial actors to build the ‘ideal’ 15-minute city or in technical jargon, a compact ‘proximity’ city with ‘reduced (commute) trips’. It becomes a tool that activates an array of principles and strategies to promote liveability in cities. It should be noted that the advantages hypothecated here need to be further cross examined by undertaking follow up interviews with the city managers of the respective cities. However, from a communicative planning perspective, it throws a new light at different measures cities take to align various territorial actors to ease governance of building compact, socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable cities.