The work was inspired by the 15-minute neighborhood, an idea that has gained recent popularity as a means to create more-vibrant communities and reduce passenger vehicle travel, which accounts for about one-sixth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent estimate. (View Highlight)
Then there are the environmental issues. Many people prefer to live in sprawl because it feels closer to nature. Yet the closer humans live to nature, the more damage they tend to do to it. Sprawl requires lots of land, encroaching on forests, wetlands and prairies. Sprawl helps explain why North America has lost an estimated 3 billion birds in the past half-century. (View Highlight)
People, however, do not live according to the preferences of planners. Pew Research Center recently asked 5,079 American adults whether they would prefer to live in a community where the houses are smaller and closer to each other but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance — in other words, a 15-minute neighborhood — or where the houses are larger and farther apart but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away — in other words, sprawl. (View Highlight)
Most people, it turned out, preferred sprawl. The only demographic groups in which majorities were willing to give up the larger house for the walkable neighborhood were the young, highly educated and Democratic-leaning. (View Highlight)
A survey is one way to measure people’s preferences. Another way is to observe how they spend their money. As Seibert’s experience shows, real estate prices are often much higher in 15-minute neighborhoods than in sprawl. That suggests that there are plenty of homes in the suburbs but an undersupply of housing in walkable neighborhoods relative to demand. (View Highlight)
This market inefficiency could be resolved by building more walkable neighborhoods. Yet doing so is easier said than done. (View Highlight)
For one thing, many U.S. cities were designed for cars. Zoomed out, car-oriented cities all look about the same on the map: dense downtowns surrounded by sprawl with arterial highways dissecting areas where walkable neighborhoods might otherwise be built. (View Highlight)
Other cities have sought to rezone neighborhoods reserved for single-family homes so that denser housing can be built. Residents sometimes object to these changes, arguing that duplexes and apartments will bring more traffic or otherwise change their communities for the worse. (View Highlight)
But as cities across the country confront housing shortages, empty office buildings and public safety concerns, 15-minute neighborhoods could offer a way back to urban vitality. Plus, if walkable neighborhoods were more common, they would probably become cheaper. Then, my wife and I wouldn’t have to choose between living in a neighborhood such as Clarendon and having enough space to store a tricycle. (View Highlight)
The walking time data was sent to me by Matteo Bruno and Hygor Piaget Monteiro Melo of Sony CSL. For more information about their work on 15-minute cities, which they conducted with Bruno Campanelli and Vittorio Loreto, see their paper in Nature Cities. (View Highlight)
