Entitled “Droit de cité, de la “ville-monde” à la “ville du quart d’heure” (“From the Global City to the 15 Minute City”), the latest book by Carlos Moreno, a member of AIVP’s network of experts, is published by Editions de l’Observatoire (currently available in French only).
Over the course of this 179 page essay, Moreno casts an expert eye over the urban and territorial world of the Anthropocene period, and explains the key issues and transformations accelerated by the process of urbanisation and “metropolisation”, at a time when life on our planet is at threat from climate change, human activity, and new forms of disease.
The author, who coined the globally recognised concept of the “15 minute city”, suggests solutions for tackling the environment, economic and social challenges facing cities in the future.
A scientist and expert in urban matters, Carlos Moreno invites the reader to consider our relationship with the spaces we inhabit our idea of “useful time”. In his vision of a polycentric city, the six essential social functions – life, work, food, medical treatment, education, and personal development – must be available within a 15 minute radius.
Moreno, who has kick-started a crucially important global debate in this time of worldwide health crisis, analyses the complex, living laboratory that is the city, a place where our contradictions are laid bare, and changes in the way we live are tested and experimented. Cities are home not only to the majority of the world’s population, but also to the biggest issues facing the development of humankind, whether cultural, environmental, technological, or economic. Urban territories are now in the grip of the challenges of the century, and urgently need to reinvent themselves.
With his systematic analysis of the city, Carlos Moreno looks at what can be done to ensure a better way of life, and identifies the issues posed by the rapid pace of change driven by urbanisation and “metropolisation”.
