The 30 minute city; a metric, not a destination

The 30 minute city is not a place. It is not a CBD or a downtown centre that can be somehow reached within 30 minutes. It is, however, a powerful and insightful metric of how a city functions. For planners and urban policy experts the 30 minute city should be simply defined as, “what can I access in 30 minutes”? That’s it!

Using GIS technology we can now generate heat maps that illustrate what any resident of a city can access within 30 minutes of their home or place of work. It has the potential to show the jobs, shopping, recreation, health care and education someone could access within 30 minutes. And from a business perspective, what labour market, customers, suppliers, ports, road and rail gateways they could access within 30 minutes.

There is an emerging narrative in Sydney that the 30 minute city should be a destination. That is, within 30 minutes, any resident should be able to access a centre designated to be a “30 minute CBD”. This concept is appealing to urban planners, it allows them to define what a 30 minute CBD looks like, and allows them to draw lines on maps and reinforce their ideological definition of what the perfect city should be.

But that’s not how cities work, and it’s not how we live in them. This concept of a 30 minute city as a destination doesn’t stack up to even the most simple scrutiny. For example, in Sydney how many 30 minute CBDs do we need? Do we need better transport networks, or more 30 minute CBDs? Where would they be located and what services would they provide? Do regional centres like Campbelltown, Liverpool and Penrith stack up as 30 minutes CBDs? Should I be able to visit an art gallery, study at a world class university, watch a football game or visit a specialist neurosurgeon at every 30 minute CBD? What kind of jobs should I expect to find in my local 30 minute CBD? Can I work for an investment bank or a tech start-up in my local 30 minute CBD? What if the economic conditions for these designated centres never eventuate, and the visions of planners become development nightmares of isolated business parks, motorways, and sprawling low density suburbs? Is that the city we want?

It’s not just the city that’s hard to define, how do we even define 30 minutes? Is that 30 minutes during the morning peak? Middle of the day? By foot, bicycle, transit or private car? Can I access these 30 minute CBDs by public transport? Or do I need to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on a private motor vehicle to reach one of these CBDs?

The idea of a 30 minute city, with urban services deemed essential by urban planners, is no place I want to live! The 30 minute city should be a metric of accessibility. With technology we can easily convey the accessibility of services and experiences someone might reach within 30 minutes, by any mode of transport. People should be empowered with this information to make personal decisions that trade-off their time and money as to where they choose to live and work. If there are parts of the city that are poorly served within 30 minutes, then we can use these measures to debate and discuss trade offs and investments, either providing services nearby or making them more accessible by better transport. We should be enabling bottom-up planning, debating the merits of transport infrastructure and land use densities, rather than dictates of ideal CBDs from above.

The idea of a 30 minute city is a great concept, let’s not confuse a powerful metric of liveability with some contrived ideology of a perfect destination.