The 15-Minute City

15-minute city, noun: 'a city that is designed so that everyone who lives there can reach everything they need within 15 minutes on foot or by bike' ...and a term yet to make it into the Cambridge English Dictionary. Cities define the lives of all those who call them home: where they go, how they get there, how they spend their time. But what if we built our cities differently? What if we travelled differently? What if we could get a cashback on time and make it our own use it to live in a new way? In this carefully researched and readily accessible book, Natalie Whittle interrogates the notion of the 15-minute city: its pros, its cons and its potential to revolutionise modern living. With global warming reaching a crisis point and Covid-19 responses bringing a previously unimaginable decline in commuting, Whittle's timely book serves as a call to reflect on the 'hows' and 'whys' of our daily travel. Building her study around consideration of space and time, Whittle traverses both to collect models from ancient Athens to modern Paris and demonstrate how one idea could change our daily lives - and the world - for good.