When an idea like Carlos Moreno’s 15-minute city stirs up social networks and provokes an angry reaction from the extreme right, which has begun to elaborate far-fetched campaigns on false assumptions, it means that it is proposing a reversal of reality. In his recent book The Revolution of Proximity, Moreno, Colombian by birth and French by adoption, as his Castilian accent reveals, delves into his doctrine to recover neighborhood ties, bring services closer to people and suppress compulsory travel. And he explains his vision to Lifestyle Magazine, taking advantage of a getaway to Barcelona, ​​a city he visits often and says he knows very well.
To come to do this interview I have crossed more than half of Barcelona by bicycle
Very good
…even if it is electric?…
Ahh. Well, look, we are at a point where we have to choose what is technically less bad. Ideally we are already late. A bicycle, even if it has a battery, is much better than coming by private car.
Do you have a car?
No, I already quit, about thirty years ago. I was going to university, at the age of 25, and that made me feel important, I showed off the car. But it was the last one I had.
In Paris the car is impractical
It depends where you live. But I tell you that nobody in my family has a car anymore. My daughters, ages 25 and 28, don’t even have a driver’s license. Young people have changed the chip. The climate summit that took place in Paris [COP 21, in 2015] gave the alert, but also, Greta Thunberg has created a global movement of young people who are pushing the generation of parents. We all have a Greta at home. These young people do not have a car and consume differently. They don’t mind going by subway even if they are not poor. They dress in second or third hand clothes. You can think what you want about Greta, and she’s controversial in many ways, but you can’t help but acknowledge that the global movement she spearheaded is putting pressure on her parents’ generation to change the way they live. life of her The model itself has changed compared to the car. I don’t have one but if I go somewhere I need to go by car I rent it for a few hours or a few days.
Does the 15-minute city imply a new concept of urban mobility?
Before, when you were appointed executive of a company, you asked for a company car, and they gave it to you along with a card to park, refuel and maintain it. That’s over now. For young people it is no longer a dream. If they enter a company they no longer negotiate that. Now they are asking for a salary increase because you ride your bike to work. And people have accepted, not only in Europe, that there are restrictions on the car. But I am not against the car, I am in favor of the quality of life in the city, that people live well in the city, that they have their essential services nearby, that they have correct accommodation, that their work does not force them to get up at five to arrive at seven, that you can do your shopping nearby, that you can have access to local preventive medicine…
Ambitious…
Medicine must be regenerated. Education and culture, and entertainment equally. The public space was diluted, it has disappeared due to the minerality and the presence of cars in the cities. I want there to be quality of life and there to be priorities, and these are mobility, the pedestrian that is close, that has a decarbonized radius of action.
And the criticism you have received because your freedom to move around the city is restricted?
This is all a total fake. You can read my book and everything I’ve written from a long time ago and there is never, ever talk of limiting anyone. I am a convinced democrat, a supporter of non-violence and humanism. And never in my life have I said that people have to stay in a certain place. On the contrary. What I want is to break with the current cities that are segregated, fractured, segmented. Paris is a world reference city and has the largest business district in Europe, La Défense, in the west, with many of its workers living in the east. Every day there are 1.2 million people who cross Paris from east to west to go to work. The population density of Paris is the highest in Europe, at 30,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, but that figure in the east rises to 50,000 inhabitants. That is the legacy of the postwar period and of industrialization, of urban planning like that of Le Corbusier. The 15-minute city has never talked about putting people in ghettos, having passports to go from one neighborhood to another, putting cameras on the streets and electronic bracelets on people, asking for permission. All of this is fakes and terrible manipulations of the most filthy sectors of today, of the neo-Nazi and Trumpist extreme right. On the contrary, what we seek is to rebalance the city.
And That Means?
That the quality of life has to respond to the mix of accessible functions. I have talked about the habitat, work with less displacement, shopping, local employment, health, education, culture and recreation. There has to be all of that everywhere, wherever you are, and that within a 15-minute radius, on foot or by bike, you can access them. Today 80% of daily mobility is compulsory because people have to get up early. With the pandemic, it has been seen that without so much displacement, life improves.
Does teleworking help your idea of ​​a 15-minute city?
Work today has its own process of revolution that emerged from the pandemic. There is a whole series of tasks that were done in person that can be done the same from another side. At home it is not ideal psychologically or socially. There are many companies that have seen that it is good to reduce face-to-face, in addition to the fact that with the crisis in Russia it allows them to save on energy. In London, Paris, Barcelona, ​​Madrid, New York the rate of frequenting corporate places has decreased by 20%. We are heading towards a crisis in the world of professional real estate that is consistent with a new generation of workers from 20 to 40 years of age who do not want to continue losing their lives with long journeys. The international office real estate employers, IWG (International WorkGroup place), recognizes this in a study and advises that in the 21st century a trip to work should not exceed 15 minutes. Work must be decentralized. Now we have to invent places in the city that do intermediation and allow corporate coworking.
At what point is Paris within this vision of the city of 15 minutes?
Anne Hidalgo adopted the concept in 2019 and in 2020, with my participation, she adapted it to the Paris context in February 2020 and began to implement it in 2021 after the pandemic. Schools are already being transformed to open their patios for other activities of the neighbors, converting the ‘single-use’ buildings into multi-use buildings. You can already see how the map of Paris is changing, the Sully-Morland district, for example, on the banks of the Seine, an area rehabilitated and turned into a neighborhood called Felicité with a project by David Chipperfield [architect winner of the last Pritzker prize] with social housing, rent for the middle classes, free rentals, markets, nursery, sports hall, culture hall, hotel, restaurant, rooftop, in short, a mixture, that is why it is the opposite of segregation. When I say multipurpose, I mean that there is social accommodation, that is, people from disadvantaged situations will arrive. The following will be to approve a Local Bioclimatic Urban Planning Plan. The last one approved in Paris is from 2000, 23 years ago. That plan is an agreement with the private sector, with associations and citizens, and when it is voted there will be a regulation so that these ideas can live long beyond the electoral period of Anne Hidalgo.
And other cities?
Milan of course. Vienna is spectacular for social housing. Scotland has decided, as a nation, to vote in favor of the 15 minute city plan. Also the C40 network of cities against climate change. There are many examples.
And Barcelona?
I know Barcelona very well and I have been coming here very often for a long time. And I say that a circulation plan must not be confused with the multi-service polycentrism of quality of life. Having many bike lanes is very good but it is not enough. If before you used a car for half an hour to go from A to B and now you do it in one hour by bicycle, the question is why you have to invest one hour every day. Why don’t you have those services closer? The multi-service polycentric city has services in all pairs and this reduces forced displacements. In Barcelona there is also a discussion about whether or not the superillas, but the debate cannot be whether to block one, two or three streets, the question is what quality of life you offer. You can block the streets if you offer calmer, more places to walk, more bikes, more ‘vegetation’, that’s fine, but you have to go further and generate local commerce, local employment, local services, education, schools, medical services and Cultural, entertainment services, these services fill you with humanity. I have explained to Janet Sanz [second deputy mayor of Barcelona] that in the Paris mayor’s office we have a company that is dedicated to buying or managing real estate, to rent it and to set up local businesses. So you can transfer the concept to all neighborhoods. If not, you are ‘gentrifying’.
And wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t live so many people in cities?
But it’s a fact now. We can’t go that far back. With the pandemic, it was said that people were going to discover that it was better to live in the countryside, but I was suspicious of that. Because people live in cities. I left Colombia 43 years ago, when I was 20, and then only 40% of the people lived in the countryside in my country and today Latin America is already the second most urbanized continent in the world, with 86.6% . Above is only the United States, with 88%. Europe is at 77%.
The challenge then is the livable city?
Yes, of course, the change has occurred in the last 40 years, it was the change, linked to how the city was built, with cement, with oil, and with infrastructures to go fast. At that time, cities became dehumanized, turned to minerals, and finally the post-industrial world created by these cement cities, with large avenues, the private car, energy and oil, cities were built for people to work, not for let people live.
From the cement city to the vegetable city?
Yes, it’s time to go to the vegetable city. The minerality became widespread, long distances became the norm, the city became segmented from the 30-40s. If Le Corbusier, Robert Moses, the Athens Charter had been given total freedom… we would have cities like New York crossed by three or four highways, which were foreseen in the plans. In the book I talk about the Anthropocene, a term from Paul Crutzen, the era in which human activity is destroying the environment.
Is the 15-minute city an evolution of ‘think global, act local’?
It feeds on it. Patrick Geddes was a great thinker on urban ecology and the role of the metropolis, and when he says about thinking local and acting global, he generates a current of thought about the interdependence of one with the other, which is a topic that I I insist a lot. Finally, the world is interdependent and you cannot act locally without thinking about those interdependencies. When they tell me that to take care of the planet you have to convince the Chinese or the Indians, I always answer that this is ignoring the interdependent nature of what is happening, even though we have a Europe with a low level of Co2 emissions, there is such a global relationship that we ourselves we are forced to change our rhythm of life. In France and Italy we are experiencing an unprecedented water crisis, for example, with the canals of Venice dry, but it is something much more dramatic than the fact that there is no water. The high temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea in summer mean that there will be violent storms in October and if the water falls on soils that have not reconstituted and become impermeable, that means floods. That is interdependence. Think global and act local is where you are to change the way of life.
