For Paris From Pune: Notes For A 15-Minute City
One rainy afternoon, while sitting in my in-laws’ house in Pune, I was reading about efforts to redesign urban areas in the city of Paris.. The redesign aims to transform Paris into a 15 minute city. That means a city in which almost all residents’ needs can be met within 15 minutes distance from their homes, be that on foot, by bike, or with public transit. The primary objective of the 15-minute concept is to reduce the city’s carbon emissions in order to combat climate change.
Watching the rain fade away from the window, I pondered over the carbon emissions in the city of my current residence, in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have to get in my car and drive to fulfill pretty much every need. Sometimes, even to enjoy a nice walk, I need to drive somewhere :).
Later, I stepped out to run some errands, still thinking about the carbon emissions from Paris and Silicon Valley. Walking down the street, I had a sudden epiphany: a real 15 minute city was right in front of me.
I saw a line of shops of various sizes, all doing brisk business. Along with a hospital, and a bank, there were hundreds of mom and pop stores that served every conceivable need. Tea stalls, pharmacies, grocery shops, clothing stores, jewellery dealers, restaurants, a farmer’s market, beauty salons, an auto workshop, a cobbler, photo studios, book stores with stationary and art supplies, a diary, bakeries.. Pretty much everything that is needed in daily life!!
These shops and their services were an ever-present part of my childhood. I had forgotten their ubiquity after moving to the West. Finding myself again in their midst, I had a second realization: Besides being in a 15 minute city, I was witnessing long standing traditions of sustainability and circular economy.
- The 15 minute city: Most conceivable modern needs, facilities, amenities, and services easily accessible within 15 of walking distance. Often, multiple offerings such that the consumer is spoilt for choice. If something is unavailable, then at least a couple of bus stops are within reach, or a friendly auto rickshaw pulls up with the wave of a hand.
- Highly efficient utilization of space: Visualize the area between the aisles of shampoos in a US supermarket (or simply see the image below, if you don’t want to tax your imagination :).
Now can you visualize an entire grocery store (selling everything from soaps to oils and food grains, including fresh produce) fitting in that area? We have a real image for that too! — A “kirana dukan” or grocery shop in India.
3. Packaging on demand, reusable packaging, and ban on single use plastic: In these grocery stores one can buy a few hundred grams of rice or even a few hundred kilograms of food grains, lentils, and sugar. Traditionally a few grams of grains would be packed in old newspapers, a few kilograms in cloth bags brought by the customers, and a few hundred kilograms in jute bags — which is the principle of reduce, reuse, recycle in action. In the past decade, usage of single-use plastic bags for packing was on the rise, but those were banned in 2018.
4. Repair services: “Buy It For Life” has been a strong mindset in India across the generations. Often items are handed down from parents or grandparents and reused by children. While this is no longer prevalent to the extent that it used to be, there is still the expectation that most things can and should be repaired. Tossing out working or partially broken items is rare. And so within 15 minutes of walking distance, there exist repair services for everything from buildings, electrical and electronic devices, clothing, furniture, vehicles, or even utensils.
The singular exceptions to this are roads.. You’d be hard pressed to find roads that don’t need repair, or services to repair them ;-) ). Often, there are repair persons available on call who will come to your house with their tools for repairing your things.
5. Collection, segregation, and reuse of waste: Among the many paradoxes in India, this is one of the more interesting ones. While plastic litter is one of the most common sights in Indian cities, some reports suggest that about 60% of the plastic waste is recycled. (For reference, the plastic recycling rate in France is about 24% and in the USA it is about 9%.). Even more remarkably, waste is not segregated in India when it is collected. Rather, it is done via an informal chain of workers from ragpickers to “bhangarwalas” — people who collect recyclable waste from your house and pay you money for it. They then collect and segregate the waste, which is sent to processing plants, perhaps with some more intermediaries along the way
END NOTE: These observations are not intended to proclaim any sort of superiority of the East over the West, nor are they dismissive of the genuine efforts to save and rebuild our environment. Rather, they highlight that uncompromising yet sustainable, local lifestyles still exist in some parts of the world; that progress does not necessarily have to manifest as destructive over-consumption patterns. Perhaps what is working in Pune could be further improved and implemented in Paris, after adjustment for local circumstances? And if Pune and Paris can do it, then maybe.. just maybe.. someday the Bay Area will discover it anew and roll it out, of course as an original invention, with great fanfare, for the rest of the world to adulate and copy? ;-)
