If you live in LA, you need the 15 minute city aesthetic

Traffic is everything is Los Angeles - what if you only had to ever travel 15 minutes?

Photo by Sebastian Enrique on Unsplash

Traffic is significant enough in Los Angeles that it shapes where you make your friends and the type of people you surround yourself with. There are some psychos, like me, who will drive an hour to go hang out with someone on the other side of town. Even then, they won’t do that every week, much less everyday.

Unaware friend: “Hey wanna grab drinks in Santa Monica?”

You: “I’m in Pasadena.”

There’s a reason why interactions like these are funny - and don’t happen often. If you live in Los Angeles long enough, you figure out how bad traffic is in the first month of living here. Then you realize this is old news to everyone else and that they’ve configured their lives accordingly.

I came across the idea of a 15 minute city aesthetic in a Bloomberg article. You and I are getting so lonely that boomer public policy officials are starting to notice. They’re reimagining how they build city infrastructure so people have more proximity to one another.

That said, a few challenges exist. Public transportation takes longer than a waiting for a walk-in table at Pijja Palace - so that’s not the solution. Screen time also keeps people to themselves and isolated. Tie both these factors with disgusting traffic and you have yourself a recipe for lonely people. Welp.

But imagine this: you live within a 15 minute drive of great restaurants, hospitals, libraries, gas stations, grocery store, gym, tailor, cobbler, thrift store, coffee shop - and, oh yeah, all your friends were also within 15 minutes of you.

I’d wager most people in Los Angeles try to live like this already. City planners are just trying to help more people do what people are already doing.

Anyway, check out the article. Tell me if you think it’s crazy or not. Better yet, tell me how many psychos you know that frequently drive an hour to hang out with friends (or if that’s you). Carry on and, for the love of the environment, try to drive less out there.