15 Minute Cities: Welcome

Chronicles urban planner Robert Simon’s quest to create a new kind of suburban American town that values community, nature, diversity and social equity.Simon dreamed of "another way of living" that valued community, nature, diversity and social equity. This innovative American planner set out to build a new kind of walkable suburban community that integrated citizens across racial, economic, and religious divides.

"After 50 years of creating suburbs centered around the car, a planning trend is emerging that incorporates historical knowledge in designing mixed-use, pedestrian oriented neighborhoods."

"Sustainable design underpins community development. Town founder Casey Roloff explains new urbanism and building "walkable" towns."

8 titles in the series, 2017
Over half the world’s population live in cities, and this amount keeps growing. How can cities become smarter to manage urban density and environmental issues? Eco-architect Jason Pomeroy travels to 8 of the world’s smartest cities to find out – from control centres in Songdo, Korea and Amsterdam’s carbon neutral football stadium, to Singapore’s big data solutions.

"To demonstrate the unreality of new urbanist communities, critics look at Seaside, Florida, chosen as the backdrop for "The Truman Show," a film about a perfect small town that is actually a huge television sound stage. An ABC News Production."

"Abstract - Conventional and emerging paradigms of urbanism require new responses under the current circumstances, especially in relation to the integration of sustainability dimensions and technology advances. The escalating rate of urbanization, coupled with the climate emergency, fundamentally indeed disrupt the challenges that urbanism research and practice deal with, calling for adopting more innovative approaches to urban planning and design. With cities contributing around 65% of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and experiencing an unprecedented growth of population, contemporary urban policy needs to be redefined and re-assessed accordingly. While numerous urban models, such as the Compact City, the Eco-City, the Sustainable City, and the Smart City, have emerged in response to the challenges of sustainability and urbanization, the 15-Minute City has recently gained a steep popularity. This paper explores the theoretical, practical, and technological foundations of the 15-Minute City, with a particular focus on the proximity dimension of mixed land-use and its environmental, social, and economic benefits of sustainability as supported by smart technologies. We argue that this evolving model of urbanism has the potential to gain more expansion and success in regard to building more sustainable, efficient, resilient, equitable, and inclusive cities in line with the global agendas of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, as it adds a strategic value to the amalgam of the prevailing and emerging paradigms of urbanism and their synergies with respect to increasing the benefits of sustainability while emphasizing its environmental dimension."

"Walking should be one of the primary modes of transportation in sustainable cities, being more environmentally friendly, sociable, and health conscious. The principles of New Urbanism (NU) promote walkability, creating urban patterns that support the needs of pedestrians. With that in mind, this study aims to define the relationship between walkability and NU in the context of urban regeneration, establishing the urban attributes that influence walkability in the revival of post-industrial areas."

Abstract "When Moreno proposed the concept six years ago at the UN climate talks in Paris, people considered it a great idea but too utopian, mainly because they thought it unrealistic that everyone should work close to home. REPORTS PEOPLE LIVING IN CITIES have "accepted the unacceptable" for too long, says Sorbonne professor Carlos Moreno. In Paris, mayor Anne Hidalgo made the idea an important part of her re-election campaign and invited Moreno to be her scientific adviser."