It’s a global climate solution — if it can get past conspiracy theories and NIMBYs

in NPR By Julia Simon

PARIS — In the 11th arrondissement, a middle-to-working class neighborhood in the east of Paris, if you walk out your front door, you can arrive at a preschool in one minute. A bookstore in three minutes. A cheese store in four minutes. Baguette for that cheese? Bakery’s across the street.

Grocery store and pharmacy, five minutes. Parks, restaurants, metro stops, a hospital: all within a 15-minute walk. I know this because I used to live there, on a tiny cobblestone street with buildings covered in vines.

This is a 15-minute city, says Carlos Moreno, a professor at University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, who met me on the banks of the Seine River. Moreno says that in a 15-minute city, a person can access key things in their life — work, food, schools and recreation — within a short walk, bike, or transit ride of their home.  FOR MORE