Should Chattanooga become a “15-Minute City”?
Since joining the Smart Cities Alliance initiative in January 2021, a global project aimed at implementing technological processes in the creation of safer and more walkable cities, the discourse regarding Chattanooga’s changing urban structure has continually intensified in city council meetings, Times Free Press articles, and locals’ social media posts. Chattanooga, like the majority of modern American cities, is largely structured around movement via personal vehicle. Having previously been one of the major railroad hubs of the American South, contemporary public transportation in the Chattanooga area has been severely lacking. According to Chattanooga’s official smart city plan, vehicle accidents result in 55 fatalities per year as well as 331 serious injuries. Being one of only two American cities chosen for the Smart Cities program (the other being San Jose, CA), Chattanooga is looking to develop and adopt new technology that will aid the city in its urban planning.
Regardless of the programs it aligns itself with, Chattanooga wants to develop and has for a while. Some goals Mayor Tim Kelly and other like-minded Chattanooga politicians have for the city’s future are to promote public health, build a green economy/increase sustainability, and develop and modernize the city’s public transit. On March 28, the city council approved Kelly’s new climate action plan, which looks to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across the city by 2050 (something that will be far more likely if urban planning leans into the city’s walkability and public transit).
As can be expected, those on both sides have issues with the plans for Chattanooga’s future: some are completely anti-development while others believe the city is failing to effectively and quickly progress, calling out the multiyear construction projects that are becoming a staple of downtown. A term I’ve noticed popping up more and more in comment sections and discussion threads is “15-minute city”, a phrase often held up by commenters like it's written on a cardboard sign next to “the end is near''. I couldn’t spot this term being used on any official city statement or document regarding the city’s development, but this concept is applicable to the vision of Chattanooga’s future that the city is aiming for.
The 15-minute city (FMC for short) is a model for urban planning associated with the New Urbanism movement that is focused on creating a city/town that is not car dependent, has sustainable city practices, and is inclusively engaged with the community. The name comes from the fact that the model’s central characteristic is that from any point in the city, food, work, healthcare centers, and schools should only be a 15-minute walk away. The chaos created from the COVID-19 pandemic has given the concept a boost in popularity, making the importance of accessible health services more visible. Lagos, Nigeria is a good example of a city adopting the FMC model to respond to the difficulties of the pandemic. In 2020, to combat the harsh commute that citizens would have to undertake to get to grocery stores, Lagos temporarily converted schools that had been closed due to the pandemic into makeshift markets, which also helped prevent a larger spread range of the virus per citizen and limited the necessity to buy a large amount of groceries at once leading to food waste.
The FMC’s implementation is a very interdisciplinary process and its origins are equally diverse, taking ideas from the humanities, architecture, and tech fields. It of course ultimately originates from the premodern values of community design, in a time before automobiles, when streets didn’t divide communities. It is a subversion of the infamous neighborhood unit concept created by Clarence Perry. Perry’s ideas regarding metropolitan development are some of if not the most influential ideas in modern American urban planning. The FMC model values the Perryistic residential areas but envisions them as walkable five-minute interlinked communities. In terms of theory, it also takes inspiration from the criticism of American modernist urban design in the 1961 book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs. Jacobs is very pro-walkability and condemned the building of freeways through cities. Cities like Paris and Portland, ones that are spacious and have daily necessities at convenient locations serve as real models and inspirations for this concept.
The most common criticism regarding Chattanooga’s leaning in this direction is that in creating a FMC, one’s freedoms become limited. This criticism is not unique to Chattanooga, but is mostly unique to the United States because of the influence of modern American political strategies on the continual reaffirming of outdated social perspectives. To say that personal freedoms are taken away by FMCs is a total abstraction of a way of life that differs from what many Americans deem as standard and therefore just—has anyone in Paris or Florence ever thought of their walkable, social town as a barrier from freedom? The conspiracist argument that is being made here is that the personal freedoms of residents will be limited if they live in a community that is more accessible for actual people than it is for personal vehicles. Some even go as far as saying that by providing nearby necessities, the American government is attempting to prevent residents from having agency over their own movements.
The accessibility created by the FMC concept benefits those that have historically been discounted in urban design. By creating a city that values safety, walkability, and proximity, people with disabilities, the elderly, women and children are better served and represented. Additionally, the safety and proximity afforded by the FMC offers better protection for those more likely to be victims of violent crime.
Additional source: https://connect.chattanooga.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/One_Chattanooga_Plan.pdf
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