More Affordable for the Planet, Too

Last week I heard the term “15-minute city” for the first time.

In the 15-minute city, people can walk or bike to everything they need within 15 minutes: stores, schools, workplaces, parks, and restaurants. Originator Carlos Moreno focused on city neighborhoods (he lives in Paris), but the 15-minute city applies to towns and suburbs too.

I learned about the concept in a webinar called “Housing Policy Is Climate Policy” from Joanna Gubman, environmental director of YIMBY Action and executive director of Urban Environmentalists. Gubman explained that the most effective way for people living in the exurbs to reduce their carbon footprint was to move to inner-ring suburbs or towns and cities. She said people should be able to easily access the things they need (home, food, school, work, fresh air) without using a car.

Which people?

All people.

Housing affordability is powerfully connected to the 15-minute city. Partly this is because the framework aims to transform the whole way we live on this planet. Dan Luscher, the creator of 15minutecity.com, calls it a “North Star” idea, acknowledging that most existing 15-minute communities (like the Noe Valley in San Francisco where he lives) are currently unaffordable for most people. “Walkable and bikeable neighborhoods need to be…accessible financially, not just physically,” he writes.

There is lots of overlap between the actions we need to take to make places where people don’t need cars in order to live there and the actions we need to take to create housing that people don’t need to be millionaires to call home.

The Many Benefits of Density

Toward the beginning of the webinar, Gubman shared a list of changes that would make housing policy more environmentally friendly. But Gubman's list would also have another positive result: her recommendations would also make housing more affordable. They are:

· Permit taller buildings and more homes per building (“upzoning”)—especially in high-opportunity, exclusionary neighborhoods in climate-resilient locations.

· Permit small lots and let people build on their whole lot.

· Don’t mandate off-street car parking for new housing units (because it significantly raises the cost of building them).

· Allow a mix of residential and commercial space in buildings.

· Allow small multifamily housing everywhere (triplexes, quadplexes, and the like are often known as housing’s “missing middle”).

· Increase tenant protections, too.

Image courtesy of YIMBY Action network

If we make neighborhoods a little bit more dense, and we make our communities more compact and walkable, more of us can take advantage of their offerings.

Legalized density can look different in different communities. In a city, or near a transit hub, it might make sense to allow buildings many stories high. In single-family neighborhoods, it might make sense to legalize accessory dwelling units (a.k.a. ADUs, in-law suites, garage apartments, etc.) or to permit some triplexes or quadplexes. “A mix of residential and commercial” might look like a small shop attached to a home (“accessory commercial unit”) or like a row of street-level stores with apartments upstairs.

Any of those ideas—ADUs, multifamily housing, mixed-use housing—probably means adding more smaller homes in among larger, existing ones. In any given location, a smaller home should be less expensive to buy or rent than a larger home, and it’s likely to use less electricity, gas, and water too.

Denser neighborhoods near amenities mean that people may not need a car to get to school or shopping. Because VMT—vehicle miles traveled—is a major contributor to climate change, this is good for the environment. (If you want to explore your personal carbon footprint, UC Berkeley’s CoolClimate Network has a handy calculator.)

And because cars and gas and insurance are expensive, living near jobs (or public transit) can save people a lot of money.

But my very favorite thing about the presentation was the way Gubman talked about density as vibrancy. Some people worry that more homes in their neighborhood will bring too much traffic or noise, or will make room for residents they consider undesirable. (Historically this has often been a coded way to talk about race or class.)

But what Gubman says is: “More neighbors are a delight.”

Swarthmore Is Already a 15-Minute Town

One of the things many of us who live in Swarthmore love about the borough is that it comes pretty close to being a 15-minute town. I live all the way at its southern edge, but I can walk to shops, restaurants, parks, the library, the school my children attended when they were young, and the commuter train, which I took into Philadelphia for the five years I worked in the city.

Of course, one of the reasons housing has gotten so expensive in Swarthmore is that other people would like to live in a town like this too. That’s why it’s so important to think about how to keep Swarthmore accessible to people other than the very affluent, and to make sure a wide range of people can afford to live here.

Another great thing about Swarthmore is that it’s full of passionate environmentalists. We have an active Environmental Advisory Council, and organizations like aFewSteps.org and Friends of Little Crum Creek Park do important work to keep our planet and our town livable. Meanwhile, Swarthmore College is making strides to fulfill its pledge of reaching carbon neutrality by 2035.

I’d like to think we could one day have as many groups and citizens working to solve the affordability crisis as we do taking on the climate crisis.

The good news is that these two major endeavors have so much synergy.

As people focused on the environment and those focused on affordability look for places to work together, we should be able to both get more done and find more community. These days, I’m increasingly aware how much the solace and pleasure of community will give us the strength for the work we need to do.

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