Shrink the City: The 15-Minute Urban Experiment and the Cities of the Future

A revolutionary solution for taking back our time and making our communities more sustainable, briefly explained through the places that have tested its principles

Cities define the lives of all those who call them home: where they go, how they get there, how they spend their time. But what if we built our cities differently? What if we traveled differently? What if we could get a cashback on time and use it to live in a new way?

In this fascinating, meticulously researched and reported, and readily accessible book, longtime Financial Times journalist Natalie Whittle looks at metropolises all over the world to interrogate the notion of the 15-minute city, defined as a city that is designed so that everyone who lives there can reach everything they need within 15 minutes on foot or by bike. Whittle helps us to understand its pros, its cons, and its potential to revolutionize modern living. With global warming reaching a crisis point and the post-pandemic world bringing a previously unimaginable decline in commuting, Whittle's timely book serves as a call to reflect on the "hows" and "whys" of our daily travel.

Building her study by carefully considering how we use space and time, Whittle traverses both, collecting models from ancient Athens to modern Paris and New York that demonstrate how one idea could change our daily lives--and the world--for good.