Rethinking urban utopianism: The fallacy of social mix in the 15-minute city

Abstract

The concept of urban living is evolving, and there is a growing interest in creating smaller, more connected, and hyperlocal neighbourhoods, where everything people need is within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. This paper challenges the concept of the ‘15-minute city’ as a panacea for urban ills, by exploring the history of utopian urban planning and regeneration aimed at creating sustainable, inclusive and vibrant communities by desegregating disadvantaged groups. Specifically, we examine social mixing policies, which are recurring top-down interventions that pathologise concentrated urban disadvantage. We trace the evolution of these policies in Europe from the Garden City movement to post-war social housing redevelopment to the current 15-minute city, which we consider to be social mix by stealth. While such policies can reduce the degree of concentrated disadvantage in the short term, they tend to be ineffective in the long term, as deprived neighbourhoods often remain so despite attempts to make them more diverse. The paper argues that the 15-minute city would be implemented through de facto social mix actions at the neighbourhood level, which are insufficient to address the deeper structural issues that perpetuate spatial inequality and deprivation. We propose that longitudinal and comparative analyses, combined with ‘right to the city’ perspectives, should be considered in future research and policymaking to understand – and more importantly address – why urban renewal initiatives that aim for equitable outcomes at the neighbourhood scale ultimately fail to deliver.

Locating carbon neutral mobility hubs using artificial intelligence techniques

“…However, this concept faces significant challenges, notably displacing lower-income residents 9 and the practicality of implementing this model across diverse urban landscapes. Cities with entrenched infrastructure or sprawling layouts may struggle to adapt, highlighting the necessity for context-sensitive strategies 10 .…”

Nocturnal futures : a necessary reflection in times of uncertainty

“…11 The 15-minute city model as a driver of sustainability, livability, and health in dense urban areas is not novel in the global urban geography (Alberti & Radicchi, 2023). Moreover, the history of utopian urban planning and regeneration aimed at creating sustainable, inclusive and vibrant communities has largely been based on desegregating disadvantaged groups (Casarin et al, 2023), while the role of powerful transnational corporations has become central to the development of smart cities' governance (Fonseca Alfaro et al, 2023 ;Pieterse, 2022). In addition, and related to the purpose of this text, the nocturnal city has never been a central element in the history of urban theory in the Global North, South and East.…”

Examining Inequalities in Cycling Motility: A Pathway Towards Cycling Justice

“…Rooted in the need to rethink the spatial distribution of urban activities, these models have been put forward as alternative models for post-Covid urban development and have gained a rapid adoption by global cities (Di Marino et al, 2023;Khavarian-Garmsir et al, 2023). However, the idea has raised concerns in relation to creating new forms of social inequalities as well as its realistic application in rural or sparse urban areas (Casarin et al, 2023;Moreno & Veltz, 2022).…”