Urban planner and scientific director of the ETI (Entrepreneurship-Territory-Innovation) chair at the University of Paris IAE – Pantheon Sorbonne, Carlos Moreno is the ideologue of the city of 15 minutesan urban model of ‘happy proximity’ in which travel time is reduced and personal time is gained. Some objectives that have focused this week on the debates of the Time Use Week which was held in Barcelona.
Living with everything within 15 minutes sounds ideal, but is it realistic? Its viable?
Yes of course. It means shopping nearby, having close access to a cinema, a theater, a sports center, a park. Being able to breathe healthy air. Time should reflect that balance. Our day must reflect that time, because every day that passes dedicated to producing and consuming is one day less of quality of life. We talk about transforming cities with the idea of what we call happy proximity. For more than 70 years we have considered long distances to be normal. Get up early, take transportation, spend an hour or two hours commuting, run all day to go to work, take your children to school and only have the weekend for personal activities. And a part of that weekend is spent on family logistics activities. This has caused the sociability of the family, the neighborhood, and the neighbors to be lost. There are many families that disintegrate because they do not have the time to talk, to be together. We only have time to work and to consume, because it is the pace to which we are accustomed. But what we want and what is increasingly popular is to slow down that unbridled pace that dehumanizes. In 2020, the pandemic forced us in a few weeks to change our way of living and working. Many people learned to work remotely. There is a change in mentality, so of course it is realistic.
From 2016 to 2023 we have moved forward: the world has embraced the idea of happy proximity. But there is still a way to go to transform urban policy
This model assumes that you are going to find a job 15-20 minutes from home.
When I proposed this concept in 2016, they told me ‘it will never work, it’s very nice but utopian’. That was in 2016. What happens in 2023? There are already places around the world talking about happy proximity: Paris, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Melbourne, Scotland, cities in the US or Latin America. We live in a very destabilized world. Nobody knows what is going to happen with the war in Ukraine or the Middle East and you see that everyone tells you that you have to relocate, produce locally, use local raw materials. But this process should not be seen as a magic wand that you hit three times and you get a different city in which everyone works close to home and everyone walks. We are talking about a trajectory. From 2016 to 2023 we have moved forward: the whole world has adopted the concept. But we still have a way to go to transform urban policy. That is why I propose to vote on urban development plans that last 10 or 15 years.
“The private sector is moving to take into account that the pandemic meant a change, especially with people between 20 and 40 years old”
Would you recommend, for example, looking for a job close to home?
Yes. It must be accessible, no more than 20 minutes away. Another option, if the workplace is further away, is to go one or two days in person and spend three days in a closer location. It doesn’t necessarily mean being at home. You can do ‘coworking’. This is what is called the new Corporate Working, that is, intermediate places where you can go to work without having to go to the main workplace all the time. Companies must regenerate ways of working, identify those jobs that can be done without the need to travel long distances and have intermediate locations.
“Young people want to work differently, with less presence, to have more time available and to give meaning to their lives”
It seemed that teleworking was here to stay. But we have returned to presence and we are at an accelerated pace of life. What’s going on?
The pandemic caused a shock and work began to change. Indeed, there is one very important thing: the private sector. We are still in a transition. The private sector is reflecting on these changes and is moving to change its model and take into account that the pandemic represented a change, especially with younger people, between 20 and 40 years old.
“There are families that disintegrate because they do not have time to be together”
Do you think young people will be the real lever to accelerate this?
Yes. It’s already happening. It happened before with the weather. We all have a Greta Thunberg at home. Our children are no longer obsessed with having a car. They have become aware of the climate. And also in front of work. Many studies show it: they want to work differently. They want to reduce face-to-face time, spend just enough time traveling, have more time available and give meaning to their lives. They no longer go to job interviews trembling. They come knowing what they want. One of the first questions they ask is how long there is teleworking. They do not want to receive emails after hours and demand the right to disconnect after work hours and their right to personal life. That didn’t happen in my generation. You responded after hours, you went to seminars on the weekend because if not, you were frowned upon. We are experiencing a generational transformation. 50 years had to pass for teleworking. For this change in the way of working, there may be fewer. There will be different speeds on that path but the trend indicates that society is going to change.
“There will be different speeds, but we are facing a generational change”
Related news
In Barcelona, Ada Colau’s commitment to humanizing the city has involved the ‘superilles’. A judge has ordered the Consell de Cent to be dismantled. What do you think she has gone wrong here?
The most important thing is not the amount of work we are doing to humanize cities and reduce cars, but the change in people’s mentality to have a life of proximity, with services. ‘Walkability’ is important, but if there are no services (housing, education, culture, sports, local commerce and employment) we are not on the right track. In the places we want to transform, we must implement those services first. It is this set that will give viability and acceptability to the project.