You probably know all about a New-York-minute but a 15-minute city might not sound as familiar.  In fact, we’ve already written about the concept in the blog post What’s the Point? where a community in Utah is hoping to create a “European one-car town” as one headline described it. The concept is that you could leave your car at home and walk or take a bicycle to work, the gym, the supermarket, or the doctor’s office, for example. A study of worldwide cities has resulted in an online database where you can check about 10,000 locations to see how accessible services are to those who are looking for a “greener” way and several French villes are in the top 40.

The database is presented as an online interactive map where you can zoom in on an area that interests you and click on a city that will be either blue (within the 15-minute criteria) or otherwise red. The categories that were considered:

• Outside activities: parks, walks, picnics…
• Learning: schools, universities…
• Supplies: supermarkets, grocery stores…
• Eating: restaurant, bistros, cafes…
• Moving: bus stations, train stations, taxis…
• Cultural Activities: museums, theatres, cinemas…
• Physical Exercise: Gyms, Sports Centers…
• Services: offices, banks, post office, town halls…
• Healthcare: hospitals, doctors, pharmacies..

The online magazine, The Local France, did an analysis of the worldwide data (I counted about 75 cities on the map of France) and concluded, “five made it to the top 20 of all global cities for having the shortest average walking time to access local services:

• Grenoble
• Nancy
• Rennes
• Paris
• Arras

If you enlarge that search to the top 40 you can add:

• Dijon
• Lyon
• Marseille
• Montpellier
• Nantes

The French cities that didn’t fare so well, meaning that services are at least a 30-minute walk away, included Vannes, Angoulême, Béziers, Albi, and Fréjus.

Although Carcassonne isn’t included in the 10,000 cities of this study, I’m happy to confirm that we can indeed walk to just about anywhere we want to go in about 15 minutes and Bill can do much more in that same time on his bike. 

If you want to see if your city is included, here’s the link:

https://whatif.sonycsl.it/15mincity/index.php

Bonus: Google maps can tell you how far you can walk in a 15 or 30 minute period from a selected starting point. With a map displayed, hover over Layers (box, bottom left), select More, and in Map Tools select Travel Time. Once you click on an address the map will be shaded to indicate how far you can walk in 15 or 30 minutes, although not every address seems to work. This could be very helpful when you are researching a new neighborhood. Happy hunting!

Photo note: That’s biking in Orléans across the top and walking in Bourges in the first paragraph.