The fifteen-minute city proposes that daily needs sit within a short walk or ride.
Shops, schools, clinics, work and green space should be reachable without a car.
The idea is old; the label is recent.
Most cities built before the twentieth century already work this way.
What changed was , which separated living from working for reasons of smoke and noise.
Those reasons largely disappeared with heavy industry, but the rules remained.
is where the concept becomes contested.
Adding services to a district raises its and therefore its rents.
Without new housing supply, the residents who most needed the services are by those who can pay for them.
A second problem is employment, which does not distribute evenly.
jobs draw from a whole area by design.
A neighbourhood cannot supply a surgeon, a translator and a machine operator to every household.
Honest versions of the policy therefore pair local services with fast public transport between districts.
Conspiracy theories about movement restrictions have followed the idea into several countries.
They are , and they have nonetheless slowed perfectly ordinary planning decisions.