Building 15-Minute Communities

Report Summary: Building 15-Minute Communities: A Leadership Guide shares promising insights and strategies for leveraging infrastructure investments and real estate development to create walkable, transit-oriented, sustainable, and complete communities.

Fifteen-minute communities hold the promise of accelerating decarbonization, increasing affordability, reducing climate and health risks, and fostering social equity and inclusion. This walking-centered approach to city building lays the foundation for developing compact, mixed-use communities that can increase real estate value, create co-benefits with joint use and co-location, and generate new resources to invest in the community.

The report shares promising leadership strategies to

• Initiate joint infrastructure projects across 5 systems— environmental, community, mobility, energy and vision;
• Apply walkable, mixed-use decisions across 6 geographies— metro regions, downtowns, edge cities, suburban corridors, malls, exurbs;
• Lead effective partnerships to coordinate actions among government, real estate and nonprofit sectors.

Key Takeaways

Designed as a tool to prompt conversations about 15-minute communities, the report includes community-scale illustrations backed by actionable decisions that can be taken at different stages of development. It includes:

“Five Forces for Change”—presenting a five-forces model for deploying whole-government initiatives, historic levels of infrastructure funding, and real estate opportunities that, combined with leadership actions, can achieve better results faster:

• Align leadership actions with innovative initiatives–implement 30x30 Conservation by expanding parks and open space, Justice40 Initiative by filling transit and service gaps, Healthy People 2030 by building healthy communities, and 50 Percent Decarbonization by 2030 by reducing vehicle miles travelled (VMT), parking, waste and make low carbon decisions.
  
  
• Combine actions to streamline infrastructure delivery–using the Infrastructure Invest and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding structure to create multifunction districts for metro regions and 15-minute communities (1/2 miles or 800m walk), form joint-ventures and community partnerships, fund projects end-to-end, and combine related infrastructure to streamline delivery.
  
  
• Combine actions to make infrastructure multifunctional–better coordinate community infrastructure and build walkable facilities for joint use, ensure mobility infrastructure is reliable and accessible, provides seamless transit and active mobility services, enhance synergies among environmental and energy infrastructure and align decisions for multifunctional infrastructure through oversight by congressional communities.
  
  
• Apply walkable catchment decisions to build 15-Minute communities across 6 geographies–
  • Decarbonize metro regions with a network of 15-minute communities;
  • Diversify CBDs to create decarbonized, affordable, live-in downtowns;
  • Humanize edge cities, making them heat-proof communities, friendly to people of all ages;
  • Densify suburban corridors, making them walkable, mixed-use, innovation districts;
  • Transform malls into transit- and trail-oriented, mixed-use communities;
  • Activate exurbs as working landscapes of agrihoods and nature-based solutions.
    
    
• Combine actions to bring infrastructure to life – apply human-centered lens and group related infrastructure systems into “one” infrastructure:
  • One vision infrastructure in digital regional and community-scale three-dimensional models for integrating multijurisdictional planning and development, infrastructure upgrades, phasing coordination, and community improvement;
  • One environmental infrastructure to combine open space, flood and drought protection, environmental restoration, stormwater, utilities, and water supply in one urban sponge;
  • One community infrastructure to co-locate education, social, health, recreation, and cultural facilities, plus services in a community hub;
  • One energy infrastructure to combine the energy grid, renewable energy, carbon removal, and waste management (such as an automated waste collection system) in the same district; and
  • One mobility infrastructure to combine regional, rapid, and local transit, micro-mobility, trails, broadband, and accessibility improvements into a one-trip experience.

“Leadership Strategies”—highlighting the importance of effective partnerships to coordinate actions across government, real estate and nonprofit sectors. The section first examines broader metro regions and then five geographic types, explored shared challenges and real estate opportunities, and offers leadership strategies that can be employed to transform metro regions into networks of 15-minute communities.

Each section provides a focus for leaders to set agendas, ask critical questions, seize opportunities, and shape outcomes.

Conclusion

Automobile-centric habits, single-use culture, and siloed ways of working have cost us unrecoverable time, adverse health effects, and dollars that can be wisely redeployed to reshape our world for the next 100 years. Fifteen-minute communities can reshape the future by aligning community and environmental outcomes with cross-sector leadership strategies. Leaders should take advantage of this once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild the infrastructure of our world into 15-minute walkable, complete, and transit-oriented communities:

To sustain this transformation, leaders need to shift from operating in a box to creating teams in all settings. Committing to follow-through can sustain leadership courage, build momentum, and expand the global movement to build 15-minute communities.

• TOD to TOC: Shift from building buildings to building communities.
• Automobile-centric to people-centric: Make walking and cycling the top choices.
• Gray to green: Replace gray infrastructure like parking lots with parks and regional greenways.
• Mega-facility to local facility: Plan facilities with walkable catchment (15 minutes).
• Two-dimensional decisions to three-dimensional decisions: Create joint use by sharing space and sharing time. Make multijurisdictional decisions instead of single jurisdictional ones.
• Planning for “just in time” to planning for “just in case”: Make proactive decisions.

To sustain this transformation, leaders need to shift from operating in a box to creating teams in all settings. Committing to follow-through can sustain leadership courage, build momentum, and expand the global movement to build 15-minute communities.

To learn more about the ULI Curtis Infrastructure Initiative, visit uli.org/infrastructure.