15 MINUTE CITY &

NEIGHBOURHOOD 

A Jahnavi – 17041AA005
CH Anvesh – 17041AA014
D Sai nath - 17041AA023
Dublin 15mins city
INTRODUCTION 
Dublin Chamber is the representative body for business in the
Greater Dublin Area, representing firms across the spectrum
from small start-ups to major multinationals. The Chamber is
committed to improving the city's business environment and
quality of life in tandem, and strongly supports the vision of
compact growth, urban density, sustainability, and brownfield
regeneration contained in the National Planning Framework.
With this in mind, and based on the insights brought by the
Covid-19 crisis, this policy document explores the concept of
Dublin as a '15 Minute City'.
POPULATION GROWTH AND URBAN DENSITY

The current and future demographic pressures facing the Greater Dublin Area must inform policy to
create a 15 Minute City. The population of Dublin City and its suburbs is set to grow by 20-25% to
1.41 million people by 2040. Dublin Chamber is a strong advocate for the economic, social, and
environmental benefits of urban density. 
Failure to achieve adequate population density in urban areas is a significant contributor to Ireland’s
current housing, public transport, and infrastructure problems. The scarcity of sites available for new
large-scale residential and community development in Dublin City places a heavy onus on planners to
make the most effective possible use of remaining opportunities. In making the case for higher
residential density we need to ensure that the facilities and infrastructure to sustain residents’ needs are
also in place. By increasing its urban density, Dublin can also enhance the viability and cost-effectiveness
of public transport projects. This was a key element of the 20 Minute Neighbourhoods Project in
Melbourne.8 Increased population and consequent demand for services and public transport creates
communities that can sustain the facilities vital to their local economy. Creating a balance between
sustainable levels of growth and demand on infrastructure is vital. However, some of Dublin’s
infrastructure had already reached maximum capacity prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Planning for the
15 Minute City can help to ensure that this does not continue in the future, taking population
projections into account and investing in infrastructure accordingly.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Good public transport is essential to realise the vision of a 15 Minute City. In creating 15
-minute communities, Dublin must also link them together and into the wider city using public
transport. Modal change will be achieved if people can access reliable and efficient public transport
within 15 minutes of their home to commute to work or access the wider city. Dublin Chamber’s Vision
for Dublin 2050 recognises the importance of a world-class public transport system to a high quality of
life in the city.
The people of Dublin desire a city that is easy to move around, and where public transport is reliable,
sustainable and efficient. Dublin Chamber believes that, alongside the vison of a 15 Minute City, a
desired commute time of no more than 30 minutes should be achievable from anywhere within the
M50 to the city centre by the year 2050. In Barcelona’s Superblock design, parts of the city were
divided up into blocks of streets, eliminating cars and non-essential vehicles from the roads in the
centre of the block and rerouting them around the block.17 The internal streets were then repurposed
for active transport, playgrounds, and enhanced public realm projects. One of the main issues in
transforming a city like Dublin is to understand how people will be encouraged to slowly change to rely
on public transport, while also ensuring that the city transport system still functions for all its users,
including businesses, those making deliveries, and those who need to use private cars, maintenance
and emergency vehicles, and buses and taxis.
 CREATING WALKABLE CITIES 
Active transport plays a vital role in the vison of a 15 Minute City. Every journey starts first with a walk,
whether that is the full journey or a short walk to access a bike, car, or public transport. Having a high-
quality public realm and facilities that promote active transport is necessary to effect modal change.
Pedestrian first policies and green infrastructure have been very successful in Barcelona’s Superblock
redesign and has significantly enhanced the walkability of the city.14 Pedestrian-first policy focuses on
improving the walkability of a city and recognises the role that active transport plays in improving both
public accessibility and the health of citizens. Safe walkways, crossroads, shade and shelter,
permeability, and access are all key features of a walkable space.15 By investing in the public realm,
focusing on access for all, lighting and safety, and safe distances between cars and pedestrians, Dublin
can create communities that are walkable and support the vision of a 15 Minute City. Creating
connected and walkable places in which people can live, work, and play also encourages social
interaction, thereby building stronger communities. 
 Delivering the 15 Minute City ​
​
Dublin Chamber’s vision is that within
15 minutes of active transport from
their home, Dublin residents should: ​
 • Have access to a key public transport
hub to commute around the city to
access work or ​
higher-level services; ​
​
• Be connected to their local
community through safe, accessible,
and well-connected footpaths and cycle
paths;​
​
• Have access to an open greenspace
and high-quality public realm; ​
​
• Have facilities and services that
promote local living and a local
economy. 
To deliver this vision across the city region, Dublin Chamber recommends: 
• Use of the Local Area Plan and Strategic Development Zone models to deliver the 15 Minute City vision
and to encourage further development and regeneration in built parts of the city 
•A review to identify parts of Dublin that have a particular shortage of the facilities essential to creating a
15 Minute City, particularly greenspace and public transport 
• Accelerating investment in and delivery of the Greater Dublin Area Cycle Network Plan 
•Integration and consideration of community needs into planning conditions and zoning 
•Pedestrian-first planning to enhance the permeability of our public spaces, creating a walkable city that
supports the delivery of inclusive, vibrant and healthy communities
Covid 19 crisis 
Government restrictions during the Covid-19 crisis confined people to within 2km of their home and
mandated no unnecessary journeys. People across the country became increasingly aware of their
local facilities, and what they did and did not have access to within a 2km radius. In Paris, efforts to
develop a 15 Minute City have been accelerated in response to the Covid-19 crisis as the city tries to
manage a reduced-capacity public transport system and increased demand for local services in
neighbourhoods.10 As Dublin moves towards a model of compact growth and increased population
density, the city must achieve a balance between badly needed housing and the facilities that sustain
and enhance communities. 
 Up-to-Standard Rate of Facilities in Communities 
SHANGHAI 
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the concept of “15-
minute life circle” has been widely
recognized and promoted in China,
and gradually applied to urban
planning. In 2016, the Shanghai
Master Plan put forward the idea of
“15-minute community life circle” as
the basic unit of building community
life, providing basic service
functions and public activity space
for residents within walking distance,
aiming to form a safe, friendly and
comfortable community living
platform. 
Dining Facilities  
As can be seen from the kernel density
analysis map of dining facilities, the
distribution of dining facilities in Baoding is
multi-kernel. These kernels locate in the
business circles near Dacige, Wanbo Plaza,
and around Xiantian xia-Baobai Shopping
Square. The common feature is that it is the
central area of residents’ activities and the
densely populated area in each district. 

Educational Facilities 
 have a wide spatial distribution, covering
most areas of the research area. This shows
that the spatial distribution of educational
facilities is relatively balanced. Areas with
the most abundant facilities are located in
Yuhua subdistrict, Zhonghua Road
subdistrict and Hepingli subdistrict, where
advantages of educational resources are
obvious
Pension Facilities  
The number of POI of pension facilities
(102) is relatively fewer, and there is a
huge gap compared with other kinds of
facilities. From its kernel
density analysis, it can be seen that the
core parts mainly locate
in Hepingli subdistrict
and Xinshichang subdistrict, and other
places are scattered with some pension
facilities 
Medical Facilities  
From the kernel density map of medical
facilities, it can be seen that the
density of urban center is high and
shows a concentrated distribution, and
regional deficiency can be seen around
the Qiyi Road. In areas near the second
and third ring road, medical facilities are
only distributed along the main roads
with a low density. 
Sports and Recreational Facilities   Facility Layout Strategy Based on Reachability and
The distribution of sports and recreational facilities
in the central urban area is relatively uniform, and
the regional differentiation is obvious. Higher
density locations are concentrated in Yuhua subdis
trict, Xianfeng subdistrict, North Hancun Road
subdistrict and Hanzhuangxiang subdistrict. In
terms of POI, the number of sports venues (409) is
far more than that of public recreational venues.
Share  
According to the up-to-standard rate of facilities, the
overall allocation of community cultural facilities,
pension facilities and some educational facilities in
Baoding downtown area is insufficient. Therefore, it
is necessary to improve the distribution of
community cultural activities facilities, implement
the indicators of pension services, and build
educational facilities for all age groups. At the same
time, according to the number of up-to-standard
facilities in communities, we can accurately locate
the missing facilities in each community, and then
conduct precise construction. For the more
frequently used facilities, they shall be allocated in
areas within 15 minutes of walk, therefore these
facilities can be used by more communities and
residents, and to a certain extent, form sharing to
improve the service of facilities
 OTTAWA 15 MINUTES CITY
The idea of the 15 Minute City is fairly simple: residents should be able to access their basic needs of
food, healthcare, work, green space, etc. within a 15-minute commute from their home. Commuting
here refers to walking or cycling; cars are largely absent from this discussion. The most prominent
advocate of this concept is Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and her advisor, Carlos Moreno. According to
Moreno, our six basic social functions of “living, working, supplying,  caring, learning, and enjoying”
should be met closer to home to ensure happier citizens are more engaged in the well-being of their
communities.

The City of Ottawa is one of the first Canadian  cities to explicitly include the 15 Minute City in
their planning documents. In their new Official Plan for 2021, Ottawa has proposed five overarching
policy changes entitled the ‘Five Big Moves.’6  Within these, the 15 Minute  City is mentioned under
policies relating  to overall growth management focused on intensification, growth management
strategies in the context of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, urban and community design,
and climate, energy, and public health. Looking at Ottawa’s context is a useful case study to better
understand the concepts of the 15 Minute City within a North American context. 
Similar to the direction of cities like Paris, Ottawa
emphasizes integrating ideas from the 15 Minute City into
established communities, thereby bringing these concepts
into the evolution of pre-existing neighbourhoods. A
successful 15 Minute neighbourhood would ideally consist
of “...a diverse mix of land uses, including a range of
housing, shops, services, local access to food, schools,
employment, parks, greenspaces and pathways.”

Therefore, “planning for intensification must therefore also

consider the availability of these services and amenities in
order to be successful.

 However, developing new neighbourhoods and

communities from scratch has the most potential to
successfully utilize concepts of the 15 Minute City. Ottawa
understands this, as they emphasize the importance of
designing, from the ground-up, neighbourhoods as
complete
 NEIGHBOURHOODS UNIT
INTRODUCTION
The term neighborhood is often used to describe the sub-divisions of urban or rural settlements. In its
purest definition, a neighborhood is the vicinity in which people live. Lewis Mumford presented
‘neighborhood’ as a ‘fact of nature’, which comes into existence whenever a group of people share a
place. Since the early ages of humanity, for practical, economical, sociological and psychological
reasons, people have tended to live close together in sections of an area and form communities.
Those sections or neighborhoods have some particular physical or social characteristics that
distinguish them from the rest of the settlement. The clustering of these neighborhoods has formed
towns, villages, and cities.

The neighborhood as a unit is a ubiquitous phenomenon in every urban and nonurban area. Arnold
Whittick (1974) describes neighborhood unit as an integrated, and planned urban area related to the
larger community of which it is a part, and consisting of residential districts, a school or schools,
shopping facilities, religious buildings, open spaces, and perhaps a degree of service industry
NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CLARENCE PERRY
IDEA OF THIS NEED

•Earlier idea of Perry was to provide a planning formula for the arrangement and distribution of
playgrounds in the NewYork region.

•The necessity thought was because of the rise of the auto-mobile in the early 20th century.

•Road sense was not proper with the social conscious, thus street fatality rates were increased.

•Idea was to generate islands locked amidst a wide sea of vehicular traffic, a dangerous
obstacle which prevented children (and adults) from safely walking to nearby playgrounds and
amenities.

•Ultimately, however, it evolved to serve a much broader purpose, of providing an identity

 IDEA OF PERRY’S NEIGHBOURHOOD
The neighbourhood unit was conceived of as a
comprehensive physical planning tool, to be utilised for
designing selfcontained residential neighbourhoods
which promoted a community centric lifestyle, away
from the "noise of the trains, and out of sight of the
smoke and ugliness of industrial plants" emblematic of
an industrialising New York City in the early 1900s. 

The core principles of Perry's Neighbourhood Unit were

around these design ideals : 
•"Centre the school in the neighbourhood.
• Place arterial streets along the perimeter so that they
define and distinguish the the "place" of
the neighbourhood. 
• Design internal streets using a hierarchy that easily
distinguishes local streets from from arterial streets. 
• Restrict local shopping areas to the perimeter. 
• Dedicate at least 10 percent of the neighbourhood land
area to parks and open open space.
STATISTICS OF NEIGHBOURHOOD UNIT

• Perry described the neighbourhood unit as area

which require an elementary school with 1,000 and
1,200 pupils.
• This would mean a population of between 5,000
and 6,000 people. 
• Developed with Population Density of 10 families
per acre, it would occupy about 160 acres. 
• Any child have to walk a distance of around half
mile to school.
• About 10 percent of the area would be allocated to
recreation, and through traffic arteries would be
confined to the surrounding streets, internal streets
being limited to service access for residents of the
neighbourhood.
• The unit would be served by shopping facilities,
churches, library, and a community centre.
ELEMENTS OF PERRY’S NEIGHBOURHOOD

•Residential unit

 •Schools 

•Shopping centres 

•Traffic roads 

•Railway stations 

•Open spaces
RADBURN BY CLARENCE STEIN AND HENRY WRIGHT
INTRODUCTION
 Radburn is located within the borough of fair lawn, Bergen county, new jersey 12 miles from New
York city .

 Radburn is a planned community started in 1929 by the city housing corporation from the plans
developed by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright and landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley .

 The total area of the city is 139 acres with 23 acres as interior parks and four tennis courts, three
baseball fields, two softball fields, two swimming pools, and an archery plaza.

 It includes 430 single family homes, 90 row houses, 54 semi attached houses and 93 apartment units
along with shopping centres ,open spaces and other amenities.

 One of the principles that is applied is maximum radius for walking distance from the home to the
community should be 400m at most.

 There are extensive range of recreational activities planned for entire community like tot lots,
preschools, sports, aerobics, amateur dramatics, library, clubroom etc.
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCED FEATURES
• Rapid Industrialization • Hierarchical transportation
after World War I systems

• Migration of Rural to • Cul-de-sacs

Cities • Footpath systems
• Dramatic Growth of Cities • Underpasses

• Housing Cities • Shopping center

• Ideal size of 30,000 people
• The need to provide
housing and protect from • Homogeneity
motorized traffic  • Large-scale development
• Clustered superblock
• Mixed-use
• Interior park
CONCEPT

 SEPARATION of pedestrian and vehicular movement. 

 SUPER BLOCK - large block surround by main roads.

 CUL-DE-CAS - houses grouped around small cul-de-cas

and each house accessed from main road.

 Living Room, Bedroom faced garden and parks,

service areas to ACCESS ROADS. 

 Remaining Lands – PARKS AREAS. 

 WALKWAYS - designed such that pedestrians can

reach social places without crossing automobile street
RADBURN PLANNING CRITERIA
1. Plan simply, but comprehensively. Don't stop at the
individual property line. Adjust paving, sidewalks, sewers and
the like to the particular needs of the property dealt with - not
to a conventional pattern.
2. Arrange buildings and grounds so as to give sunlight, air and
a tolerable outlook to even the smallest and cheapest house.
3. Provide ample sites in the right places for community use:
i.e., playgrounds, school gardens, schools, theatres, churches,
public buildings and stores. Put factories and other industrial
buildings where they can be used without wasteful
transportation of goods or people.
4. Cars must be parked and stored, deliveries made, waste
collected – plan for such services with a minimum of danger, A diagram showing the street network structure of
noise and confusion. Radburn and its nested hierarchy. Separate
pedestrian paths run through the green spaces
5. Relationship between buildings . Develop collectively such between the culs-de-sac and through the central
green spine (The shaded area was not built) 
services as will add to the comfort of the individual, at lower
cost than is possible under individual operation . 
 CHANDIGARH PLANNING
LOCATION & HISTORY
CHANDIGARH was the first planned city after independence from British rule in 1947. It is the
capital city of the states of Punjab and Haryana. 

The city is located at the picturesque junction of foothills of the Himalayas Mountain range and
the Ganges plains. 

It houses a population of 1,054,600 inhabitants (2001) and is one of the richest cities of the
nation. 

American architects Albert Mayer and Mathew Novicki were the first architects to be appointed
for the project.

After the death of Novicki in 1950, Le Corbusier was commissioned.

 INITIAL PROPOSALS

Fan-shaped Master Plan Grid-Iron Master Plan

proposed by Albert Mayer proposed by Le Corbusier
BASIC PLANNING CONCEPT

Le Corbusier conceived the master

plan of Chandigarh as analogous to
human body, with a clearly defined

Head (the Capitol Complex, Sector 1), 

Heart (the City Centre Sector-17), 
Lungs (the leisure valley, innumerable
open spaces and sector greens)
Intellect (the cultural and educational
institutions), 
Circulatory system (the network of roads,
the 7Vs) and
Viscera (the Industrial Area).
 CIRCULATION:
The roads in the city have been divided into 7
categories of roads in accordance with the
hierarchy of circulation. These 7-Vs (V stands
for Voie, the French name of the road) have
been compared to the biological analogy of
arteries in human body.
V-1 Fast roads connecting Chandigarh to other
towns. traversing rural areas and cities.
V-2 Arterial roads.
V-3 Fast traffic vehicular roads dividing Sectors
with no openings on them except where they
meet V-4 and V-5 streets.
V-4 Meandering shopping streets, running
through heart of the Sector, usually situated on
the shadow side of shopping centre.
V-5 Sector circulation roads for internal
distribution of traffic inside the sector.
V-6 Access roads to houses, never receiving
transit traffic. 
V-7 Foot paths and cycle tracks.
 BARCELONA
INTRODUCTION
In these modest beginnings are already visible two characteristics
that would define Barcelona’s development over the years.

• First, it began, and has always remained, a bounded and

compressed city, dense from its founding. First physical walls
and then the limits of geography have hemmed the city in and
ensured that its residents are crammed tightly together.

• And second, it has always been an intentional city, closely

conceived and constructed by central planners. There have
been very few periods of unplanned growth in Barcelona
history. 

• Over the centuries, the city has been transformed again and
again at the hands of visionaries, mostly notably architect 
Ildefons Cerdà, still considered one of history’s great urban
planners
SUPERBLOCK
• The Poblenou superblock is Barcelona’s fourth. But it was the
first built as part of the city’s new urban plan — the first of
what are intended to be dozens, eventually hundreds, in
coming years.

•       It is not as polished as the superblock around the Sant Antoni

market, which came two years after it. It is somewhat rough
around the edges, with construction fencing up in several spots
and rows of potted trees giving it a homemade, low-budget
feeling.

•        It is still new public space, malleable, in the process of being

shaped by residents to their needs. It is this sort of small-d
democratic placemaking that the superblocks plan is meant to
encourage.
• Within the nine-block perimeter, through traffic had been cut
off and speed limits radically reduced. In a few intersections,
the architecture students had painted designs on the ground,
laid some tires down in circles for play areas, and brought in
numerous potted trees to line the streets.

• The basic idea of a superblock is to delineate a large area

of roughly three-by-three blocks as shared-use space,
with bicyclists, pedestrians, and people who simply want to sit
at picnic tables in the street given equal priority to cars.

• The long-term vision — which seems ambitious now but

must have seemed downright fantastical in the 1980s — is
to get everyone in a superblock, so everyone has access to
green and public spaces and everyone lives with a tolerable
level of noise.
Cerda's utopian plan for Barcelona
Two things are worth noting about Cerda's plan

1. he took what was,  an exceptionally holistic view of urban quality. He wanted to ensure that each citizen had, on
a per capita basis, enough water, clean air, sunlight, ventilation, and space. His blocks were oriented northwest
to southeast to maximize daily sun exposure.

2. his plan embodied what is — then and today. Each block  was to be of almost identical proportions, with
buildings of regular height and spacing and a preponderance of green space. Commerce was to take place on the
ground floor, the bourgeoisie were to live on the floor above, and the workers were slated for the upper floors.
In this way, they would all share the same streets and public spaces, exposed to the same hygienic conditions,
reducing social distance and inequality.

• Each 20-square-block district was meant to be largely self-contained, with its own shops and civic
facilities. Hospitals, parks, and plazas were to be spaced evenly throughout the city, to maximize
equality of access.
• One of the plan’s most crucial and enduring features is its
reliance on short, regular blocks. , with its short blocks
and orthogonal streets, encourages walking, mixing, and
vibrant street life.

• A regular grid is comprehensible and easily navigable.

There are multiple routes to any destination and regularly
spaced choices. Because almost all streets are the same, it
promotes the dispersion of foot traffic and street life

• The goal was to combine the advantages of rural living

(green space, fresh air and food, community) with the
advantages of urban living (commerce, culture, free flow
of goods and ideas).

• Originally, each of Cerda's blocks was to have buildings on

just two sides (sometimes three), occupying less than 50
percent of the total area, with the bulk of the interior
space devoted to gardens and green space. The buildings
were to be low enough (no more than 20 meters tall and
15 to 20 meters deep) to allow for almost continuous