Shrink the City

July 22, 2024
Journalist Whittle’s enlightening debut surveys ways in which cities around the globe have created compact neighborhoods where residents’ daily needs are quickly accessible on foot or by bicycle—a concept known as “the 15-minute city.” Whittle begins by highlighting the 15-minute city’s benefits to not only the climate (it reduces emissions) and human health (it promotes daily exercise and limits pollution) but also to commerce, as many studies have shown walkability and bikability increase a community’s economic activity. The examples she spotlights are deeply researched and winsomely written. In a chapter explaining why Paris has been leading the way on walkability and car-reduction, she attributes the development to the doggedness of longtime mayor Anne Hidalgo but also to the fact that Parisians never really developed a strong attachment to the automobile (in Paris, the car has for decades been “like a nervous aristocrat, getting on with life but catching glimpses of the guillotine”). In another chapter, Whittle explains how “Latino Urbanism” is now being studied as a powerful force for revitalizing deadened, sprawling suburban areas of Los Angeles, where incoming waves of Latino residents have brought food stalls, front-yard gardens, and other small, inexpensive changes that “lift up the spirit of the place” and create walkable corridors. It’s an invaluable overview of the cutting edge of urban planning.