Summary in differing amounts of potential citizen power, with Paris’ participatory budgeting giving the greatest amount of local control over decision making. In terms of inclusion, Paris and Portland both make an explicit effort to include marginal and underrepresented groups in the process. Portland is specifically seeking to include minority groups (including differently abled) on city advisory boards and has formed additional committees of non-geographic groups (such as culture or shared interest) to supplement its neighbourhood-level groups. In contrast, Melbourne focused on partnerships with community organizations within the pilot projects, which may put an emphasis on those who are already holding local positions of power. The three plans also made efforts to include citizens in all stages of the process. Paris and Melbourne both included idea generation and implementation in their participatory budgeting and pilot projects, respectively, while Portland focused more on transparency through engagement and less on bottom-up processes for implementation.
42
The 15-Minute City concept and the related city plans of Paris, Melbourne, and Portland focus primarily on addressing distributive justice. This is accomplished through reconfiguring the built environment and trying to correct the unevenness between neighbourhoods and between centre and suburb. This is a good first step, but proximity-based measures may not address users’ ability to convert the proximate resource into an improvement to quality of life. Social initiatives that complement infrastructure can help address these barriers. The three plans reviewed employed different methods of engagement, but all recognized and received broad community support for their 15- or 20-Minute City initiatives. Increased decision-making power through a society-centric approach will be necessary in the creation of fine-grained plans for local implementation to ensure that whatever is created accomplishes the goals of increased mobility and quality of life. Finally, the plans and the overarching concept need a mechanism that prioritizes those with the greatest need first. Decoupling the provision of daily services from economic potential or the utilitarian goal of greatest overall good will ensure that past patterns of injustice can be corrected and all urban residents can enjoy an equitable standard of living.
