Exploring the 15-minute city concept and its relevance to Mumbai’s urban landscape | Representative Image
Discussions about the 15-minute city came back into circulation, not that they had completely gone away, with the world-renowned The Economist highlighting a study done by Nature Cities which mapped the cities of the world on their ability and propensity to achieve the mark. Expectedly, Paris made the grade given all the efforts that have gone into turning the French capital into the model 15-minute city. As the name goes, it means that people in cities find all essential services and spaces within their neighbourhoods – reachable in 15 minutes by foot or bicycles.
Mumbai, in this study, was quite far away from its potential in becoming a 15-minute city. Is it really that? Were a large number of areas in the city not already living and throbbing examples of the concept much before the idea excited urbanists in the western world? When was the last time we stepped out of our homes and chose to commute long distances to get our essential supplies or use amenities? How far is your neighbourhood kirana store?
Think hard about commutes in Mumbai. A long-distance commute many of us make is for our work or job purposes because commercial centres and business districts, the work hubs, are concentrated in certain areas. These areas, like the good old Churchgate and the mint new Bandra Kurla Complex, do have accommodation but it tends to be prohibitively expensive for most, several times more than monthly take-home median salaries. Very few people working in the area can afford to live there unless you are in the exalted top tier management. Even then, your service providers, people who work in your home, cannot afford to.
Another reason people commute is for education. School commutes are shorter, college commutes tend to be longer on an average. Schools, public and private, usually draw students from pincodes or neighbourhoods nearby. Older children either want specific colleges or secure admission into colleges far away, and are forced to commute. Yet another reason for commuting is leisure-recreation. Museums, art galleries, iconic bookstores and libraries (for those who still use them), and performance places are usually zoned in certain areas of the city. This is a commute by choice.
If you do not travel for work or to college, Mumbai, more than many other Indian cities, is naturally a mixed-use city with most areas, except the eastern edges where the docks and warehouses stand, having a blend of commercial or business spaces with residential ones, some schools, shops and hawkers offering most of the provisions for daily needs along the roads, and a few gardens around if we are fortunate – all by planning, land-use allocation, and design. Mixed-use dominant cities are already in the 15-minute category, perhaps even shorter time spans.
It is important to parse the 15-minute city concept given the excitement around it in the planning circles in India. It is widely attributed to Carlos Moreno, a professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris, who developed it in 2016 to address the hegemony of car-dependent cities and make urban environments more human-centric. It then gained traction during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, when commutes were discouraged, and walk or bike-friendly self-sufficient neighbourhoods were sought after. Scientific studies and research papers are now available on the concept and its application in cities around the world. And it has sparked off interest among India’s planners and urbanists too.
The question to ask is not when India’s cities, especially Mumbai, can be 15-minute cities, but how far the concept is applicable and suitable in the Indian context, including in Mumbai. There are crucial differences in the context. Western cities, especially in the United States, hardly show mixed-use approach to zoning and land-use; certain zones are purely residential and allow no commercial services at all, requiring all residents to drive or commute to make even the smallest of purchases. Walking to work or a recreation facility is either not feasible or not encouraged. The urban economy is designed around automobiles and their use. India’s cities do not show these characteristics.
The 15-minute city concept has lately been touted as a way to reduce commutes in a bid to reduce emissions and address climate change-related heat waves and floods. Reducing commutes to minimise emissions pre-supposes that people use private transport, mostly cars. Why should it be so? Emissions reduction can also mean expanding the public transport network and making it more reliable. Schools that insist on students using a designated and safe bus network, and out-lawing private cars, are already doing their bit. Workplaces that run private buses and discourage employees from using personal vehicles are helping too.
The 15-minute city concept, while attractive and persuasive on paper, has other drawbacks too. It can end up ghettoising people into their entirely self-sufficient neighbourhoods and minimising the casual but important interactions across class, caste, religion, and gender that urban life offers. These interactions are what make a city and give it its character more than ordered and sanitised living conditions. Would those living in low-class neighbourhoods and informal settlements not be cooped up in these places if the 15-minute concept was applied all over?
As Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser, with other researchers, found, the 15-minute city encouraging local usage correlated with “higher experienced segregation” in New York, where the median resident made only 14 percent of daily consumption trips locally. This, they explained, as a causal relationship between the city’s zoning policies and 15-minute usage. “…The increased local usage correlates with higher experienced segregation for low-income residents, signalling potential socio-economic challenges in achieving local living,” they observed.
India’s urbanists and conference circuits would do well to pause their enthusiastic recommendation of the concept with a one-size-fits-all approach. Millions in India’s cities, or certainly large parts of them, seem to have lived the few-minutes-away life anyway for decades, from the neighbourhood paan shop and tailor to schools and favourite restaurants. For the rest, there’s always the 10-minute delivery app.
Smruti Koppikar, senior journalist and urban chronicler, writes extensively on cities, development, gender, and the media. She is the Founder Editor of the award-winning online journal ‘Question of Cities’ and won the Laadli Media Award 2024 for her writing in this column.
