Unless you live in a cave, no one is unaware that Manichaeism has slyly invaded all the recesses of public discourse. Every day brings its dose of false debates that exempt us from thinking. Conveniently, the positions fall into pre-established boxes, one favored without nuance, the other vilified without appeal. Exit dialogue, hello attacks ad hominem.
One of the last divisive subjects identified: the city of 15 minutes. Although this urban concept has flourished for a long time, its transformation into a dichotomy cut with a knife is barely emerging. Thus, the city of 15 minutes has lost all its complexities. It now boils down to an emotional battle in which the good rides a bicycle and the evil pickupor the opposite.
This situation, which is reminiscent of the paradigm of minimal groups, illustrates the extent to which the two factions find themselves trapped, eternally engaged in a sterile conflict. Needless to say, this tribalism greatly harms the advent of a mature and empathetic reflection on the essential question of mobility.
In order to avoid the pitfall of the city-region battle, let us point out from the outset that this is the city of 15 minutes. Citizens of the regions, be reassured: your pickups can sleep soundly.
However, the suburbs of the 45 minutes would benefit from starting a serious reflection. I know something about it, I grew up in Laval, Quebec’s jewel of automobile culture. To be precise: not the Laval of the 1950s with five children per bungalow and lively main streets, but the Laval of the 1990s, disfigured by the “bomb” of the “shopping centers” so hated by Dédé Fortin. The courageous mayor Boyer is now working to repair the urban mistakes of the past. It’s all to his credit.
The suburbs will certainly play a key role in the equation, because the formula “vertical development of central cities + urban sprawl” has reached its limits. On the one hand, city dwellers experience an understandable exasperation with regard to through traffic, which affects the tranquility and safety of their neighborhoods. On the other hand, commuters are doomed to squander the most precious resource there is, their time, in traffic.
Finally, faced with the sustained increase in the number and size of vehicles crisscrossing our streets, the biggest losers are undoubtedly children. Their independent mobility disappeared like snow in the sun, with all the consequences that we know for their mental and physical health.
Everyone would gain from the change if proximity became the keystone.
To achieve this, the workplace will be a key player. Admittedly, teleworking, an extremely rare positive legacy of the pandemic, is already helping to reduce travel. That said, we should all the same speed up the creation of employment and study centers outside mainland France. We also salute the proliferation of satellite campuses, which allows many young people to study without going into exile.
In addition, the negotiations that are beginning in health and which aim, among other things, to make the transfer of seniority of civil servants more flexible could also prove to be life-saving. After all, how many teachers, police officers or nurses travel ridiculous distances just to keep their benefits?
Finally, it might be time to dust off the idea outlined by Richard Bergeron of introducing positive discrimination in employment based on place of residence. The founder of Projet Montréal once deplored the fact that few municipal employees lived in the city and saw a triple advantage in hiring more residents: proximity, increased commitment and responsibility.
Unsurprisingly, municipalities will play a leading role in the march towards proximity. For example, by authorizing accessory housing units and intergenerational housing, cities reduce the distances between members of the same family and greatly facilitate the task of natural caregivers. Moreover, the fact of abolishing the minimum ratios of parking in the village cores allows a soft densification and a salutary development of the local trade.
The issue of CPEs and schools is also unavoidable. In an ideal world, children would live within walking distance of these facilities, and travel to them would be safe. On this subject, it is worth reiterating that the cities would gladly welcome the help of Quebec to quickly put in place the necessary developments. Then, remember that with regard to the granting of places in CPE, the withdrawal of the proximity criterion mentioned earlier this year would constitute a patent error.
In recent years, many cases of construction of schools and CPEs have plunged cities into controversy, due to a lack of social acceptability. To this end, Quebec should hear the appeal of the Plante administration, which is asking for a certain latitude in the application of construction standards in urban areas. This is true for Montreal, but it is just as true for all of the province’s urban areas.
Proximity should above all not embody a war on the car. Rather, it is a bulwark against the atomization and sedentarization that await us, a community catalyst that we desperately need.