The 20-minute city is more and more gaining traction in modern city planning. As a concept that started in Portland, Oregon, many more cities across the world have since adopted it as a method to improve urban life and cover many of the issues that modern cities are dealing with. Most Councils in New Zealand are currently considering issues like congestion, greenhouse gas emissions and crashes. A 20-minute city encourages far more sustainable, healthy and safe modes of travel while also improving the accessibility of your destinations for work, community, shopping and play.
Overseas, many major cities like Melbourne and Paris have started incorporating the concept in their future plans and even more experimental and extreme, Saudi Arabia’s project The Line is planning a brand new 100-mile long linear smart city using the “15-minute” concept at its fundament. Absurdly futuristic or simply brilliant?
What is a 20-minute city?
A 20-minute city (or neighbourhood) is one where most of your essential amenities are accessible within a 15-20-minute walk or easy bike ride of your home, with a wider range of services and workplaces connected via well connected public transport routes. It encourages people to live locally and invest in their neighbourhood as well as the wider city. Moreover, this could help reduce the number of short car journeys people take.
To ensure there are enough people to support a range of amenities and public transport, the concept encourages increased density and mixed-use buildings in and around neighbourhood centres, with density decreasing as we move further out. This density change helps ensure there can be diverse accommodation options within a single neighbourhood, giving more people the opportunity to live there.
Some great research is currently being done to promote the 20-minute city in New Zealand. In 2020, Professor Iain White from University of Waikato proposed the 20-minute city as a shovel-ready project to Government, in partnership with Hamilton City Council.
Christchurch City Council has created a great resource showing the walking catchments that are within 15 minutes from destinations like education, major centres of employment or shopping centres.
Take part in the survey!
Summer Research Scholar Vivien Shaw and Associate Professor Morten Gjerde, from the Wellington School of Architecture at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington are working with WSP on a research project that further explores the 20-minute city concept.
You can support this research by completing a survey that will help the research team to better understand the current ways that people in New Zealand use their immediate neighbourhood, and their individual perceptions of that neighbourhood. The research also aims to identify what changes could be made to improve our neighbourhoods and how people’s patterns of movement might be affected.
The survey will ask you questions about the neighbourhood that you live in and your transport habits. The survey will take you 5-10-minutes to complete.
https://vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9yrrJvT1HmWY5Ei
The information from this research will be used in a report that summarises this Summer Research Project.
If you have any questions, either now or in the future, please feel free to contact:
Supervisor: Dr. Morten Gjerde
Phone: (04) 463 6233
All I can read is density housing horrible for once was a garden city no longer
A basic idea behind the strategy of a 20 minute city is the provision of comfortable walking and cycling routes to public and private amenities and services thereby reducing resource consumption and pollution attributed to car use, and offering alternatives to those whom owning and driving a car is problematic.
However, from a recent experience I had with a transport planner in Christchurch (who you would expect to understand and champion this idea) it seemed they could not, or would not, accept these basic propositions.
The particular situation discussed concerned a significant road in North West Christchurch where a number of new housing subdivisions are being built and planned. It seemed, to this transport planner at least, this particular road does not warrant provisions for a pedestrian/ cycle path even though the road is currently undergoing treatment for other services and in a year or so the area around being pretty much suburbanised. Consequently therefore, the new residents will have to use their cars for all trips as there will not be a realistically safe or comfortable alternative despite existing facilities and amenities being within 20 minutes of the area.
After my discussion with the planner about this I was left with the impression of a planner adhering to some sort of abstract, redundant planning idea or process along with a lack for grasping an urban situation (or currently not wanting to) and therefore an inability or unwillingness to promote a valuable intervention.
I came away thinking if the time, effort and training some planners take to attain the ability to formulate very articulate and professional responses to express and deflect solutions and frustrate the public, if that could be used to implement and oversee concrete action we could have real contributions to the idea of the ’20 minute city’.