Do You Live In A 15-Minute Neighborhood?

As COVID-19 drags on many employers are unfortunately requiring workers to come back into the office.  Some who were enjoying full-time telework are now having to deal with their miserable commute again. 

Savvy financial warriors know that transportation (car ownership for most) is one of the big three expenses in life, and if they’ve been driving less during the pandemic they have undoubtedly seen the savings. 

In addition to making the air far cleaner across the globe, reduced car miles have also made people less stressed and healthier.  But since America has a car infatuation, a large portion of the population live in car dependent areas. 

These are areas that make it difficult or impossible to access certain necessities and amenities with reasonable convenience without the use of a car.  I posted about car dependency last year, and it’s one of my more popular posts because the data about how deadly cars are in our lives surprises many. 

The opposite of a car dependent area is a walkable or bikeable area, or at least an area where you don’t have to drive very far to get what you need.  These areas are sometimes called “15-minute neighborhoods”.

What exactly is a 15-minute neighborhood?

 

15-Minute Neighborhood

A 15-minute neighborhood is defined as:

A neighborhood where everyone is able to meet most, if not all, of their needs within a short walk or bike ride from their home.  It is a city composed of lived-in, people-friendly, ‘complete’ and connected neighborhoods.  It means reconnecting people with their local areas and decentralizing city life and services.

When referencing someone’s “needs” we’re referring to grocery stores, doctors offices, parks, and more. 

The 15-minute neighborhood idea was first introduced by Carlos Moreno, a professor at the Sorbonne in France, as a way to structure communities for future sustainability. 

COVID-19 has kept many at home this year, only venturing out for food and essential activities.  At the same time people have been walking outside and discovering their local areas more because their gyms have been closed.  And in many cases they don’t like what they’ve found, or what they haven’t found…  

Like the ability to walk to anything.  If you live in America and don’t live in a sizable city, that’s probably your situation. 

Melbourne Australia has gone all-in on creating 20-minute neighborhoods – I guess they felt the need to add 5 minutes for being in the Southern Hemisphere.  Here is a nice graphic of the concept from one of their sites:

 

So do you live in a 15-minute neighborhood?

 

Go Ahead Dave, Map It!

Because I’m a map geek and subscribe to literally hundreds of mapping websites, I found a nice resource that will tell you!  The 15 minute mapping site is from Here Technologies and can help you find what kind of amenities a particular area has. 

It’s a bare-bones site, so no need for instructions.  Your only option is to enter your address or zip code in the box on the left and click the search icon.  The map will zoom to the area and default to the 15 minute walking option, letting you know if it meets the criteria or not.  What are the criteria?  From the site:

…whether you can access medical care, grocery stores, cultural attractions, transit stops, education facilities and leisure spots within 15 or 20 minutes of walking.

A cool feature is that it will also show the number of amenities reachable from each category above from the location you choose.  If your location does not meet the 15 minute walking criteria you can click the 20 minute walking option (perhaps the Aussie’s asked them to add this), as well as a 15 minute driving option which obviously expands things tremendously. 

Here’s a sample result of what you can expect to see after entering your location:

 

Some Flaws

When I tested my home address I noticed that I can walk quite a bit further in 15 minutes than the area they show.  I’ve been living in my house a long time and walk a lot, I’ve got it down.  I think their walk speed algorithm could use some adjusting. 

Another shortcoming is that the map doesn’t have information on which streets or routes are actually safe to walk or ride a bike on.  They just assume it’s possible to do so everywhere. 

I did some testing for this as well and found it routing me through private fenced areas in one case or assuming it’s safe to walk down other areas that don’t have sidewalks and that I’d avoid due to crazy homicidal drivers.  Being a cartographer myself though I realize having that kind of hyper-local data and knowledge is extremely difficult if not impossible.

Overall it’s a good start and a great companion too to some of the walkability tools I link to on my Geoarbitrage resources page.  Also be sure to see my full post on walkability scores and mapping tools to assist with finding walkable places.

I’ve done lots of other geographic-based posts showing various aspects of money and finance from a location perspective.  I hope you find these resources handy and I will continue to expose valuable tools that can help when deciding on a geoarbitrage strategy.

*After I had this post written and ready to go Bloomberg decided to do a big article this week on 15-minute neighborhoods.  It’s a good read.

Your Turn – Do you live in a 15-minute neighborhood?  Chime in below!