Trend Watch March 2020

Paris Mayor Calls for 15-Minute City:

In her re-election campaign Mayor Anne Hidalgo proposes plans to ensure that every Paris resident can meet their essential needs within a short walk or bike ride, writes Feargus O’Sullivan forCity Lab.

Mixing many uses within the same space challenges much of the planning status quo of the past century, O’Sullivan writes. It once made sense to separate residential zoning from industrial sites when urban factories posed health risks, he says, and car-centric suburban style zoning intensified the separation. Now some of the world’s most ambitious planning projects are bringing the zones back together: Barcelona’s superblocks, East London’s Every One Every Day and Portland, Oregon’s plans for 20-minute neighbourhoods.

The project could be relatively easily achievable for Paris’ Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who oversees the city’s heavily populated historic centre where pre-industrial roots already facilitate some use-mixing, O’Sullivan writes.

Paris en Commun – Hidalgo’s campaign – proposes to remove more car lanes in favour of pedestrians and bicycles, assigning multiple uses to public spaces (such as schoolgrounds hosting sports at night) and encouraging small retail outlets such as green grocers.

Read more at CityLab.