The Five Minute City

Abstract

Communication and transportation have been the driving forces of city territory expansion. The history of cities has a stark difference between pre and post-vehicular expansion. Studies have shown that people historically are willing to travel up to 30 minutes to get to their destination; the ground covered is relative to the mode of transportation. Where the walking man covers about 3 miles (5km) in 30 minutes, the driving man can cover anywhere from 24-35 miles. This mode of transportation creates an urban territory that expands beyond pedestrian reach. In the United States, this phenomenon has escalated with freeways and highways. The strategy has become to work toward getting from A to B in the fastest way possible rather than bringing A and B closer together. This is evident in the urban sprawl patterns of cities, with a single node for vast territories. “Moses created a city for vehicles and not people, putting high-speed traffic corridors straight through formerly bustling areas of commerce, recreation, and residences.” (Christina H. Fuller and Doug Brugge, 2020). On the other hand, strategies like Paris’ 15-minute city and Ethiopia's Harrar Jugol formed based on a city for pedestrians and showed more human-scale development of cities. Modern-day city design has put the vehicle at the forefront. Inevitably disrupting the walking man territory “new highways were built through old neighborhoods to connect urban areas by car” (Christina H. Fuller and Doug Brugge, 2020). This thesis seeks to study what a modern-day city would look like if it were designed for pedestrians instead of vehicles. It aims to use a cross-cultural examination of urbanism by comparing two cities, Minneapolis and Addis Ababa, and exploring how land use and transportation can create the five-minute city. Keywords: Urban sprawl, transportation, car-centric, communication, 5-minute city