How many essential services can you reach on foot or by bicycle within 15 minutes? We can get to a market, a pharmacy, a library, the post office, and various shops and restaurants. The big things missing from our list are school, doctors, and the vet.
In 2016, a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris by the name of Carlos Moreno coined the term 15-minute cities as a way to rethink urban planning. The idea isn't new—it's how many villages and towns were designed before cars— and it isn't complicated—no one is more than a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit trip from services such as doctors and shops.
Now, depending on your way of thinking, 15-minute cities are either a way to create thriving, resilient, climate-friendly, self-sufficient communities or a plot by progressives to restrict people's movement, take away their civil liberties, and confine them.
Cities from Paris to Cleveland have all embraced the concept. Over the past few years, Paris has created more than 700 miles of protected bike lanes, and more Parisians in the central city now bike rather than drive. Cleveland is changing zoning laws, among other things, as part of its quest to make more walkable neighborhoods. But in some parts of the Northeast, including NYC, where the governor recently halted a congestion pricing plan, and in my own little Connecticut neighborhood, we are moving in the opposite direction, becoming, if anything, more car-centric. The local independent bookstore that has been an anchor of the main street in my village since I was two years old announced they are moving this week.
I find the news devastating, as if a beloved friend is moving across the world. Dramatic. Yes. The reality is the store is moving less than 2 miles from its current location. Yet, it will completely change my relationship with the store as it will no longer be walkable. The route lacks sidewalks and crosswalks and is on a busy road. Technically, it is bikeable, although it also lacks a dedicated protected bike lane. We also don't have any real form of public transit. At a moment when saving as much of the planet as possible requires us to rethink our transportation systems to be less car-dependent, getting to my bookstore, which I do consider to be an essential service, will now require the car.
I in no way blame the owner of the bookstore for the move. Selfishly, I wish it was happening after my book comes out next year. But I have no doubt they are simply trying to survive and provide the community with an independent bookstore.
Decades of two different town governments overseeing the neighborhood with little cooperation have resulted in a community with a dysfunctional infrastructure catering to the tax revenue tourism brings in with little regard to the people that call the area home or even how visitors get to the area. Except for the main downtown streets, sidewalks are spotty, there are no protected bike lanes, and while there are lots of talks about extending the commuter train rail to the area, there is no actual public transit, which means anyone not within walking distance needs to drive, but there is also little parking.
About a decade ago, while writing a story about how the area could be the next great agritourism destination, I remember chatting with some of the chefs for the story that I was worried about what we would lose if we didn't carefully think through village planning. At the time, they thought the area's history would protect us from overdevelopment. Instead, it feels like we're losing that history. Long before I was old enough to drive, I could walk into town and complete various errands myself, but at this rate, the only thing my child will be able to walk into town for is a meal or plastic touristy knick-knacks.
For $3.5 million, you can buy the bookstore building. It's flooded in the past, and it will again. Eventually, the entire street may be lost to the rising waters. But more than speculating about who will buy it and what will go in the space, I find myself wondering about the crossroads we find ourselves at. Years from now, will Paris and Cleavand have got it right? Will the halt to surge pricing be the death of the NYC subway system? Will the closing of my bookstore's downtown location be simply another warning sign we collectively ignored? Or do we get serious about planning resilient, climate-friendly communities that improve quality of life and don't revolve around cars?
~ Bridget
P.S. Here are a few things that I've been working on:
Published: Dip your toes into forest bathing for John Hopkins, and a new agritourism network connects and promotes farmers of color for Foodprint.
Working: I have cover designs for my book! I'm working through thoughts on those and trying to wrap up a few other projects before leaving for New Zealand in July. I will take your travel trips to the North Island.
Reading: The Sandy Hook surviving first graders are graduating from high school, and I can't stop reading about them and wishing them all the best. Also, an old copy of Ada Limón's Sharks in the Rivers and the new from Catherine Newman Sandwich.
Oh, I find this concept so helpful! I can't think of anything that's not within 15 minutes bike ride of my Oakland, Ca, home, which i"m very grateful for. School, restaurants, shops of all kinds, doctors, dentist, library, pool, etc. There's also a lot of crime, unhoused and struggling folks (not totally overlapping!) and reckless driving, which takes away from my feeling that my kids can take full advantage of this incredible walkability.