From this brainstorm about Community Re-Development came a fantastic idea about 20 Minute Neighbourhoods.

So, I just finished my UBC Continuing Studies class in Sustainability and Transformational Leadership. Last week, teammates Heidi, Roger and I created a consulting firm – 20:15 (we present the concept of “20-Minute Neighbourhoods” in 15 minutes) – and delivered a presentation that outlined a pretty cool strategy for re-developing communities in vibrant, local and stranger-less ways. Here’s a synopsis of our pitch.

20-Minute Neighbourhoods Are…

A 20-minute neighbourhood is a place with convenient, safe, and pedestrian-oriented access to the places people need to go to and the services people use nearly every day: transit, shopping, quality food, school, parks, and social activities. A 20-minute neighbourhood is a walkable environment where people can go and get their basic needs met in about twenty minutes from their home. Many researchers believe that the key to making great strides with climate change rests within cities. Cities are the most densely populated areas; therefore it is also where between 50 to 75 per cent of greenhouse gases are produced.

The 20-minute neighbourhood is not a new concept. In the 1920’s when the car was not yet the main way of getting around, most people lived in 20-minute neighbourhoods by necessity. Even with a growing popularity of the car, there was a strong desire to preserve 20-minute access to all needed day-to-day human needs. In 1949, the famous writer E. B. White described the same small-city concept in an essay called ‘Here Is New York’:

“Each area is a city within a city within a city, thus no matter where you live in New York, you will find within a block or two a grocery store, a barbershop, a newsstand and shoeshine shack, an ice-coal-and-wood cellar, a dry cleaner, a laundry, a delicatessen, a flower shop, an undertaker’s parlor, a movie house, a radio-repair shop, a stationer, a haberdasher, a tailor, a drug store, a garage, a tearoom, a saloon, a hardware store, a liquor store, a shoe-repair shop.”

Twenty-minute neighbourhoods have the following three basic characteristics:

1. A walkable environment
2. Destinations that support a range of daily needs (i.e., shops, jobs, parks, etc.)
3. Residential density

Create a 20-Minute Neighbourhood by…

Going to Portland! The City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability have written a great report and we adapted it for our project and summarized some of their “next steps” ideas below. Broadly speaking, 20-Minute Neighbourhoods succeed when there is social (people in the community/neighbourhood) and organizational (leaders in the community as well as municipal representatives) buy into the project. The 20-Minute Neighbourhood campaign must always start with a “living laboratory” or a “living show-room” – many communities from Halifax to Victoria are already in possession of some (or all) of the “20 minute essentials” and these neighbourhoods must be found, approached and given the additional elements required to become champions of this concept.

Set Priorities for These Three Things

1. Walkability. We propose that your cities understand what it feels like to walk places. To get started, we recommend that the City Council – your Municipal Leaders – forfeit your cars for a month, which will give you a true sense of what 20-minutes of walking feels like and where – from your home – you can reach in this amount of time. As leaders in the community, people will take notice of this, which leads us to our second recommendation surrounding walkability: the City should provide incentives for people who voluntarily surrender their car(s) in favour of walking, cycling, public transit, or a car-share/co-op program.
2. Residential Density. Creating partnerships with developers who are interested – and excited – about urban densification is another key part of our 20-minute Neighbourhood strategy. These developers will know where it will be possible to create neighbourhoods with 18-20 households-per-acre (as well as where such neighbourhoods already exist).
3. Living Showroom. One of the key outcomes of 20-minute Neighbourhoods is tourism. By finding a champion – an existing 20-minute neighbourhood, such as the West End of Vancouver – the city can create a “living showroom” that perfectly captures the cultural landscape of a 20-minute Neighbourhood. By entering these “living laboratories” guests – and community members – will be able to explore the concepts of a 20-minute neighbourhood for themselves in real time.

By implementing these three things – and addressing the questions (follow this link) outlined within each priority (thanks, Sam Adams!) – a city will be able to document its current capacity to champion existing 20-minute neighbourhoods as well as assess gaps between their current urban landscape and the one they want to create. Because the future should only be 20-minutes away.