Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
I fundamentally agree with this, and it's one of the downsides of walkable urbanism that usually gets glossed over.
If you want a "15 minute city", you have to accept a downgrade in the quality or diversity of amenities or services unless your area is hyper-dense - like, say, Manhattan or Hong Kong-levels of population density, where within a 15 minute walk, you can have the population of a midsize city that would support things people have come to think of as standard, like a community centre with an indoor pool. Same with retail. In an era of online shopping, high streets have to support themselves with entertainment and dining; you need a much larger catchment than most residential neighbourhoods that Canadians think of when they think of walkable neighbourhoods can support. Places like Ossington and Little Italy only support great restaurants because people like me come in and dine there, depriving my own neighbourhood of good dining options. They have to be destination neighbourhoods, and a city can only have a few of these. You can forget something like that spontaneously forming in northern Oakville around Highway 407 and Bronte Road. At least Oakville is ahead of other suburban cities in actually having a few walkable destination neighbourhoods like downtown and Bronte.
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Some of it also comes down to what we mean by 15-minute cities. There's a difference between a nabe with so much of everything that there's no plausible reason to ever leave compared to one where you can access basic services like a grocery store (or perhaps just a well-stocked convince store), a park, and a cafe, etc. The latter isn't possible in many suburbs where there are huge subdivisions where nothing but residential is permitted and the path one needs to follow to get anywhere is multiple time father and more convoluted than the "crow flies" distance.
Obviously there's little point in living in a large metro area if you never leave the radius of a comfortable walking distance. But it's important that people not be forced to travel for every little thing. Having the choice to travel for something great or stay local for some perfunctory is... a great choice to have. People can choose what they prefer based on their personality, mood, and budget (in time and/or money). Unlike the conspiracy theories suggest, 15-minute cities just give the additional option of remaining local rather than removing the option of traveling further. But now there are many (generally suburban) nabes where people have to get in the car and travel well beyond a comfortable walking distance just to access the most basic and perfunctory services.
But of course not all 15 minute communities will turn out equally well.