The ‘15-minute city’ or ‘Ville du quart d’heure’ is an urban planning concept that puts people and their habits in the centre of planning processes. Developed by French-Colombian scientist Carlos Moreno, four key characteristics describe the 15-minute city: proximity in form of closeness, density, diversity, and ubiquity. The plan was presented by Mayor Anne Hidalgo in 2020 for Paris. The aim is to design cities in a way that gives people access to essential urban services within a 15-minute radius. The main goal is not to increase mobility but to improve connectivity and access.
(accessed online at https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/publications/social-infrastructure-international-comparative-review/)
But when rural pastoralists decrease herd mobility and improve connectivity and access to stationary stall feeding, feedlots, transported water, and livestock transactions, they are said to be acting quite unlike their urban counterparts. Cities remain cities even when changing, but pastoralist areas are depastoralizing because they cannot increase herd mobility and must instead improve connectivity and access to water, grazing and livestock transactions.
As if a chief feature of cities is that they are already depastoralized?
