A vision of a 15-minute Workplace

From 1925: Maximum Distance for Community Facilities.
De Chiara & Lee Koppleman

Imagine for a moment a “15-minute Workplace” vision where a network is created that allows you to work no more than 15 minutes from home.

• The idea of a “15-minute city”, a new urbanism idea was recently popularised last year by Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, with the idea that the area within a 15-minute walk you would be able to access six key components: living, working, supplying, caring, learning and enjoying.
• Going back over twenty years, Camana Bay in Cayman anchored their development on the idea of “Live, Work and Play”, using a greenfield site for development.
• More recently, It is exciting to see a transformative site be developed as a centrepiece of economic and community regeneration in the home town of the founder and driving force of the Halo project, Marie Macklin, similarly highlighting “Live, Work, Learn, Play”.
• Also, over a decade ago Tony Hsieh took his proceeds from selling Zappos to bring life to his vision of urban redevelopment of DownTown Las Vegas, centred on: “Three C’s: collisions, co-learning, and connectedness”.

Now, while central Paris is almost perfectly suited to the 15-minute (walk) city idea, and while new urbanism developments such as Camana Bay and Halo and Downtown Project have an important place, I put it to you that a quiet transformation will…