Last month, I attended a conference in Monterey, CA where I had the opportunity to hear Carlos Moreno speak. Born in Yunja, Colombia, Moreno is an urbanist and professor at Sorbonne Université in Paris. Among academics and city planners, he is best known for his work on the 15-Minute City, a term he coined at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference.

As an idea, the 15-Minute City is a pretty simple. It is an urban planning concept which advocates that most (if not all) of the amenities that you need for daily living (education, healthcare, work, leisure, entertainment etc.) should be accessible within 15 minutes using active modes of transport, i.e., walking or cycling. This is not necessarily a new concept.. As early as the late19th and early 20th centuries the idea of socially cohesive neighborhoods with a sense of community and amenities such as parks, schools, libraries, and public baths were being discussed.

The 15-Minute City emerged as a response to our excessive use of the automobile. The dominance of the automobile travel in the United States is reflected in data reported by The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). This survey showed that, in 2022, the average shopping trip was 5.6 miles, the average trip for childcare was 6.5 miles and the average trip to participate in a religious activity was 8.9 miles. In contrast, data presented by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that “residents of the median US neighborhood only take 12.1% of their trips to basic amenities within a 15-minute walking radius.”

Key planning concepts underlying the 15-Minute city include neighborhoods, accessibility, walkability, and land use mix. In a paper published in 2023 in the journal Sustainable Cities and Society, Efthymis Papadopoulos and his colleagues suggest that the 15-Minute City bringsthe idea of living locally at the forefront of city planning”. The benefits of living locally include a lower carbon footprint, healthier residents, and stronger community bonds.

Strong community bonds exist in the 15-Minute City because neighbors have more face-to-face interaction with each other. These interactions occur as people go about their daily living. And the interactions that people in a neighborhood have with each other do not need to be intense or long lasting in nature. Indeed in a 2014 paper published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Gillian Sandstom and Elizabeth Dunn showed that a brief exchange with a coffee shop barista (having a short conversation) enhances an individual’s happiness and sense of belonging. People living in amenity rich neighborhoods have a larger number of face-to-face interactions with other residents, exhibit higher levels of interpersonal trust, are less likely to experience social isolation and loneliness, are more willing to help their neighbors, and generally feel better about their community than people living in lower amenity neighborhoods. As noted by the aforementioned Papadopoulos and his colleagues, the15-Minute City begins to “address the problem of alienation and disengagement between the citizens”.

As I listened to Carlos Moreno speak I thought about craft breweries and the role they might play in the 15-Minute City. As myself and others have argued before, craft breweries function as neighborhood gathering spots (aka Third Places) in cities, large and small, across the United States.

Coined by the urban Sociologist Ray Oldenburg, the term Third Place refers to places outside of home or work, where people congregate and interact. Writing for Brookings Institution, Stuart Butler and Carmen Diaz (2016) note that Third Places are “locations where we exchange ideas, have a good time, and build relationships”. Others have referred to them as the “Living Room of Society” and “Centers of Community” respectively.

Some observers suggest that craft breweries are a new genre of Third Place on the American landscape. These include George Homewood, Norfolk, Virginia’s director of planning and community development, who argues that craft breweries are “gathering places that are in many ways replacing things like libraries and recreation centers within a neighborhood”, while Jim Morrison, writing for The Smithsonian Magazine, describes craft breweries as “the evening analog to the third place of the morning coffeehouse.” Furthermore, many craft breweries are child and dog friendly, offering families a place where they can gather, interact, and relax. As such, they have an important role to play in the 15-Minute City.

One advantage that craft breweries have over many other Third Places (libraries, coffee shops, farmers markets etc.) is that they serve alcohol. As a stimulant, alcohol releases endorphins in our brains, allowing us to relax and be more amenable to interpersonal interactions. Research by the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has demonstrated that people who have a pub (he did his research in England) they they frequent on a regular basis “tend to be more socially engaged, feel more contented and are more likely to trust other members of their community than those who do not drink at all”. 

The concept of the 15-Minute City got me thinking about breweries in my neighborhood. While 85% of Americans of legal drinking age live within ten miles of a craft brewery, I have no idea how many live within a 15-minute walk or bike ride of a craft brewery. The brewery closest to my house is a 23 minute walk or a seven-minute bike ride. There is a second (newly opened) that is a 13-minute bike ride. I guess I could always invest in a bicycle.

Further Reading:

Jeffres, Leo W., Cheryl C. Bracken, Guowei Jian, and Mary F. Casey. 2009. The impact of Third Places on community quality of life. Applied Research Quality Life, Volume 4, Issue 4, pp. 333–345.

Papadopoulod, Efthymis, Alexandros Sdoukopoulos, and Ioannis Politis. 2023. Measuring compliance with the 15-minute city concept: State-of-the-art, major components and further requirements. Sustainable Cities and Society, Volume 99.

Sandstrom, Gillian M. and Elizabeth W. Dunn. 2014. Is efficiency overrated?: Minimal social interactions lead to belonging and positive affect. Social Psychological and Personality Science, Volume 5, Issue 4, pp. 437-442.