Within this process of urban revolution, I want to mention one that I am leading worldwide: the revolution of proximity. You have probably heard of the 15-minute city, perhaps the half-hour territory. We are discussing a scientific concept that I began working on in 2010. I have spent 13 years of my life working on this topic.
The 15-minute city is known worldwide and, as a concept, has many denominations: happy proximity, 15-minute city, half-hour territory, my 20-minute neighbours, my happy territory, my whole territory, and neighbourhood of life… We are simply talking about something that is indispensable and implies living radically differently. This revolution is essential because we need to change our way of life radically.
I began this research in 2010, seeking to escape the technological world, the realm of mathematics and data science, and the world of numerical models for cities. As one of the pioneers of Smart cities, I understood that the complexity of cities cannot be solved with technology but with our ways of life, production, and consumption.
Climate change, the greatest threat to humanity, is felt at all latitudes, and tackling the climate emergency today is indispensable and urgent. It was clear to me that there is a direct link between climate change and our way of life, primarily urban.
There is a direct correlation between the fact of being urban, our ways of living in the city, our production and our consumption, the way we move around, and the way we use the buildings built over several decades of urbanization.
It is about temperature and the loss of biodiversity, the ecosystem, food, water, and access to the vital resources we need to live. And we feel this daily in many parts of the world, endangering even the ability to inhabit the places we live in. Cities are, therefore, at the heart of the problem, but they also hold the key to the solution.
What has happened to us as humans? For 70 years, we have accepted that our cities are based on zoning and long distances. The flourishing city is the city that goes fast and the city that goes far. Our cities were distorted in their life for humans, for their dignity, for satisfying their needs, for neighbours, for culture, for exchange, and socialization. Cities turn us into «centaur» men and women, half man or half woman, half car. And we have accepted it: long distances, a lot of time going back and forth, even in public transport, the famous «rush hours», traffic jams and their aftermath of pollution and disturbance.
I am not the first to have worked on the relationship between urban space and time. I am not the first to say that we are digging our own grave by accepting the unacceptable: the long distances, the waste of time, and our loss of humanity as citizens. For that reason, I have drawn on the work of two Nobel laureates: my friend Mohamed Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner, who wrote in 2010 the book «A World Three Zeros», Zero Carbon, Zero Poverty, Zero Exclusion, and economics professor Paul Krugman, with his concept of the New Economic Geography (NEG).
For three years, my team and I conducted a series of experiments in a city like Paris, where the mayor in 2019 adopted this concept as a key part of her election campaign. It was centered around a polycentric city of services, social mix, and functional mix. Likewise, after the arrival of COVID-19 in 2020, mayors from all over the world and the C40 network adopted this concept. The large international organisations, the UN and the large organisations of medium and intermediate cities, support us.
THE CONCEPT
It is a concept independent of population size and density that works both in a large metropolis and in small rural areas. By no means is it an obligation; it’s not a doctrine.
It is a way of thinking, a framework for social, economic, and ecological urban organization based on proximity and human-scale urbanism, adaptable to each context. Now a global movement, it seeks to reshape urban life in line with the New Urban Agenda, addressing post-COVID realities and the climate crisis.
This movement unites mayors, businesses, academics, and citizen groups to tackle daily challenges: long commutes, underutilized spaces, and declining social interaction. With 293 cities committed worldwide, its greatest impact lies not just in proximity, but in rethinking time – creating more meaningful individual, family, social, and ecological time to improve both life and the planet.
We are talking about a social circularity and proximity in which, using low-carbon means of transport, we can access essential services and things that are elementary without travelling long distances. This includes decent housing, reducing or eradicating commutes to work, access to local commerce, local employment, short circuits, local raw materials…
COVID has highlighted the importance of mental and physical health, preventive health, learning, education, culture, theatre, cinema, and public space. We need public space for democracy, social mixing, gender equality, and intergenerational exchange. In a polycentric city, as the French philosopher Pascal would say, a sphere in which God is everywhere, with a centre and no circumference. The 15-minute city embodies this idea – a big city whose centre is everywhere and has no circumference. This vision enables low-carbon mobility, a low-carbon economy, and a greater liveability in a increasingly urbanized world.
PUBLIC SPACE
Although today we understand that public space is the central axis of the humanization of the city, yet over time, it has been dominated by vehicles, reducing pedestrian areas to mere sidewalks. Today, 60-70% of public space is allocated to cars, even though they are used less than 10% of the time, spending most of their existence parked
This contradiction undermines public space as a place for connection and social interaction. The imbalance, generated over the last 70 years, must be reversed to restore cities and space for people, not just cars.
We should reclaim the city in its original sense: a place where people gathered to share common rules and care for one another. There is no magic formula to reunite people, but human-scale and tactical urbanism that encourages people to find themselves, often unexpectedly.
Even in cities dominated by vertical living, we can design spaces that foster and encourage interaction and where neighbours can naturally come together.
Tactical urbanism reinvents spaces across the city, as we did in Paris, where the roads in front of schools were transformed into mini-parks. Citizen participation is key, from voting in participatory budgets to creating spaces that bring people together.
Three fundamental elements for regenerating the city are ecology, economy, and society. Low carbon consumption alone is not enough; nor is socialization on its own. The economy is equally essential. We, therefore, must revive the common good in cities that today find themselves fragmented by zoning, segregation, and isolation.
Paris is pioneering some initiatives. One key focus is revitalizing local commerce, an evident weakness in many cities and has much to do with socialization and life. In many cities, commerce has disappeared from the centre, while zoning pushes city residents to live far away. This creates deep spatial inequality and territorial injustice, leaving those on the outskirts disconnected. As a Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom emphasized, resources should serve the common good and not speculation.
To regenerate our cities, we must balance economy, ecology and social impact. 15-minute concept pushes for precisely that – work, commerce and social life all within reach, reducing inequality and improving the quality of life of city residents.