15 Minute Cities
- Thread starter That Jekka Gal
- Start date
You can thank Thatcher for needing that.
Interesting question. I would say I live in the city itself. But I’m not sure what the exact technical difference is between the two.
I did decide to cross reference it with other places I’ve lived
London
While the barber and few local shops are 10 mins away. The main shopping centre is 22 mins away. Due to the shopping centre increasing in size since I was a child there are some shops that just fall within the 15 mins window.
Hinckley
I walked d a lot when I lived here. Morrisons was within 12 mins. Doctors and dentist was far. Main shopping centre is 20 mins away. Gym was 20 mins away(was a great warm up walking there)
Leicester
One place I lived was a tiny village outside the city area. You needed to drive.
The other place was within the city and coincidentally was right behind an entertainment retail park that had foot access, so it was a 5 min walk. The nearest place for groceries is 30 min walk to another retail park.
I think There is simply too much variability in starting location due to the sizes of housing. A 15 min walk for you can easily be a 20-25 min walk to someone else, one street across from you.
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I’m bored at work and this seems like an interesting puzzle to think over.
If you do get a walkable city that means you would need a lot of smaller grocery stores dotted around rather than a singular large one
However if you need to transport enough food to fulfill 500 shoppers. I believe a single 40t truck (or however many fully loaded trucks) transporting all the goods to a single store is more efficient. Than having various small trucks transporting the same quantity of goods to several smaller stores.
If you do get a walkable city that means you would need a lot of smaller grocery stores dotted around rather than a singular large one
However if you need to transport enough food to fulfill 500 shoppers. I believe a single 40t truck (or however many fully loaded trucks) transporting all the goods to a single store is more efficient. Than having various small trucks transporting the same quantity of goods to several smaller stores.
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From the stores logistics perspective, much more efficient.
From the perspective of town planning? That single store might need 450 private car journeys to fulfil those 500 shoppers, whereas a collection of local stores might permit 400 people to walk and only need 100 car journeys. So on balance, whilst there are a few more lorries pottering about to deliver, you've potentially drastically cut the amount of cars and reduced traffic load overall.
Would recommend some urban planning videos from Adam Something (would link but there's likely swearing)
Also Google Poundbury.
Anyway, I only came here for this...
Also Google Poundbury.
Anyway, I only came here for this...
ffs, none of you tagged me, abhorrent behaviour
@That Jekka Gal you done pretending to be a woman yet?
You know people doing shopping one a week isn't causing all the traffic. If you go to the shops off peak its a non issue.
We often get delivery for bigger shop. Then pop down to local butcher, grocery etc.
We are 2 mins to a bus and 15/30 mins walk to train or local shop. We walk and use bikes where appropriate. But the key part of this is we chose to be in this location to have those transport links. It's not accidental. I use a folding bike to get to work via train. I used to drive some of the time but it's become too difficult. I'll occasionally drive if it's useful.
That said we still do a lot of local trips in the car. So no stones from glass houses here.
I agree but the roads already need to be efficient to allow people to go to work. So nothing is really changing on that front. That also adds another factor. If people are already driving to work and are potentially doing the weekly shop on the commute home, there is less of a reason to have a smaller local store.
You climb mountains in small steps not large ones. Imagine nano bots. Do the same work just in tiny chunks.
The food chain is already ship, container truck, truck/large can then small van.
As soon as you centralize that so you only use the container truck. You create a huge amount of car traffic which is all the people going to the container location.
So it's a choice do you want a car centric society.
It's all one massive balancing act full of people, businesses and groups with their own personal priorities and the plans need to aim to accommodate as much of it as possible. The more that's available locally (and shopping is just one example of many things) then the more that reduces the overall number of vehicles trying to share road space but this will obviously never be zero either - as things stand though, I definitely think too many places have gone too far the wrong way and using a car to go virtually anywhere seems to be the default - and then we all complain there's too much traffic!
Adding more roads and thus cars isn't a solution to too many cars.
That assumes you want less car usage.
Not Just Bikes is also a good source, but again, the odd sweary.
On the topic of grocery shopping, I grew up in a family of four, we never had a car, and somehow we didn't starve to death.
I also currently don't have a car and have no problems. We now get deliveries from a company who deliver in a little electric van and can walk or cycle to 5 or so different small / large supermarkets. Bakfiets (cargo bikes) are really popular for families doing their weekly shops. (Ridding the inner city roads of cars allows for more cycling traffic and improves everyone's lives, even the people who have to drive, as this results in fewer cars on the roads.)
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The basic idea if a 15 minute city i.e not NEEDING to travel far for everything you want, im in favour of, and i already live like this anyway, buying locslly where i can etc.
Im completrly opposed to this though; I'm totally against underhand communistical stuff that tries to restrict our free movement. The 15 minute city is now just another hijacked idea, like the climate movement.
Im completrly opposed to this though; I'm totally against underhand communistical stuff that tries to restrict our free movement. The 15 minute city is now just another hijacked idea, like the climate movement.
You stay in Leiden? If it's anything like Utrecht(which is lovely), there's an inherent culture of walking/cycling/buying fresh/not needing a car, sadly I don't know of any British cities that share the same culture and changing mindsets wouldn't be easy.
Actually I had considered that but I didn’t have time to write it. Turn those distribution hubs into massive shops. One less step in handling goods, more efficient use of resources. With some clever junction design you could make them a very efficient place to visit. But that only matters if you are trying to lower CO2 emission at all costs.
Always thought investment in community allotments would be a way to reduce the need to transport food from here there and everywhere. They would have to be completely transformed in size and what they produce to do this of course. It would create opportunities of low skilled labor but also be a way to connect communities together.
Yes, live just outside of De Singel on the east side.
It really is a mindset change as I moved over here being a car commuter and driving everywhere, now I would never go back. Even when I had to cycle to and from the station yesterday in sleet and hail.
Side note, Utrecht is my favourite Dutch city.
It's only a more efficient use of resources on the delivery side though, because then you force the end users to travel to the hub (which being massive is obviously not going to be in a residential area) and now for for every truck that had 50 people's worth of shopping in it, 50 people need to drive a car to the hub. So you've taken one truck off the road and added 50 cars. Sure some might be driving past anyway on the way to work or something but that's realistically not going to be anywhere near the majority of those people.
Making the local junction an efficient design is only a tiny part of the problem, it's all the surrounding streets that start to clog up with everyone trying to get to that junction in the first place that are more likely to be the problem.
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Except its only efficient for trucks. It's inefficient for cars. Also you've made it impossible to exist without a car. It's handy for the seller. But it's terrible for people's quality of life.
This is what they did in the states. Often it's impossible there to walk or cycle to places.
This is not about emissions that's just a bonus. It's creating spaces for people not cars.
No, people need to stop driving when its not necessary. A huge amount of journeys that people take are completely unnecessary to use a car for. The roads are full of people with a single person in the car. They are full of people who are driving a mile to the shops because they can't be arsed to walk or cycle. One of my mates works about 800m away from his house. He drives. He drives in the middle of summer. Its pure laziness.
Yes there are plenty of people that need to drive to work. If you took away the 20% (probably being generous here) or more that don't, the roads would be absolutely fine.
As to people doing their shop on the way home, I imagine thats a tiny proportion of people.
All of the issues have solutions and just require some adaptation. Get a food delivery. Walk or cycle to your local shop to pick up a few bits you are missing.
Huh, how is this restricting our free movement remotely? Are they banning you from leaving your "zone". Are they telling you that you can't travel at certain times etc? Who do you think actually benefits from this that is co-opting the movement/idea? Small businesses? Green spaces? Big bike or big trainer?