Can we live without cars?

Last summer, as I joined millions of viewers each day in watching the Olympics, I noticed that the commentators frequently mentioned Paris’s push to become a 15-minute city. The concept is quite simple: All of life’s necessities can be found within a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit ride from each person’s residence.

Carlos Moreno, who grew up in rural Colombia and now teaches at IAE Paris Sorbonne Business School, coined the term “15-minute city” (ville du quart d’heure) at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and he has championed it ever since. I submit his new book on the concept as required reading for anyone interested in the flourishing possibility of churches and urban transformation. After all, what is a 15-minute city other than the ancient Christian concept of a parish? Or even the ancient Jewish tradition of a “sabbath day’s journey”?

Moreno’s genius is not in showing how the trinity of concrete, cars, and oil has ruined the planet but in showing how this trinity has ruined our concept of time. Concrete, cars, and oil have funded an urban life cycle in which we do not work near where we live, we do not know our neighbors, and we are driven by a frenetic pace of life. As Moreno puts it,