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“Walk to work” has been a bit of an old concept, made popular by real estate advertisements while selling housing inventory way back. “15-minute city” comes to the rescue, but should possibly come with a disclaimer that it may have certain demographic and geographical relevance. That is because, a large part of the world and scores of cities may still not be prepared to immediately embrace the poised city planning concepts like above due to multiple structural challenges including real estate unaffordability, the uncertainty of job location over the years, dual and multi-income households, budget deficit etc. Thinking of a dual-income nuclear family and multi-income joint family for instance, at least one or several of such family members might still have to travel long distances to places of work, 5 to 6 days a week, these families may also not be getting time or have the motivation to visit recreational places, parks, sports centres etc., even in walking distances, due to work-life imbalance.
Thinking of millions of those who will still willingly prefer to use e-commerce sites for shopping or use food delivery apps instead of going out. Thinking of all those paying all the bills from home and those who never really required to visit utility kiosks, banks, post office, ATMs or municipal offices, for many of them the distance of neighbourhood facilities may not be of much importance.
It is noteworthy that while there are forces on one side trying to make cities accessible, meaningful and vibrant for wider demography, at the same time there are reverse combined forces of commerce, industry, real estate, and employment market instilling juxtaposing demographic changes, i.e., either forcing people to commute long distances causing exhaustion or making them habitual of a sedentary lifestyle.
The last real changes in city planning concepts that actually altered the urban morphology altogether across the world were driven by technology like high-speed transit and mass transit options. We are fortunately standing at a crossroads when real changes in urban morphology and urban management will possibly again be visible and will be driven by the force of technology only. Many such concepts being already tested in smart city pilots (#autonomous ground and #airmobility etc.) as well as city-scale projects, (#micro-mobility, #MaaS, etc.) as well as some new social change concepts seem to be finding ground (remote working, hybrid working, remote learning, etc). This new technological renaissance to be witnessed through aid of #startupecosystem #ML #AI #IoT ect.
Author: Anoop Jha
#urbanmanagement #urbanplanning #urbandevelopment #walktowork #15minutecity #smartcity #livinglab #infrastructure #UMD #WFH #micromobility #publictransport #MRTS #Rotterdam #France #Paris #Hague, #Eindhoven #Amsterdam #Netherlands
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