The Sunday Story: A 15-minute climate solution attracts conspiracies

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NPR

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4.5 • 52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

15-minute cities are an urban planning idea growing in popularity. The idea is that you can get to the key places in your life - think work, education, food, recreation - in a 15-minute walk, bike or transit ride. Now mayors from Paris to Cleveland are looking to use them to reduce planet-heating car pollution and improve quality of life.

But they face obstacles - from NIMBYs, to public schools, to death threats for urban planners and politicians. Reporter Julia Simon talks about her months-long reporting on a climate solution that has become a lightning rod for conspiracy theories. This reporting is a part of NPR's climate week.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, it's the Sunday story from up first on my Shirasco.
0:04.0	As you know, NPR has been following this breaking news story out of Israel and Gaza.
0:09.5	We'll continue to cover that story on your local NPR stations,
0:13.6	and you can visit npr.org slash midi's updates for more.
0:19.1	But today, we also are going to bring you this very fascinating story on another topic.
0:26.0	It has some very surprising twists.
0:29.3	Julia Simon is NPR's Climate Solutions reporter.
0:34.0	So Julia, I hear you've been reporting on an idea that's been taking hold around the world.
0:39.5	Yeah, I travel to two very different cities for this story.
0:43.8	Okay, so where are we starting here?
0:46.2	We start in the neighborhood where I used to live in Paris.
0:50.6	Here's some tape from when I was there.
0:52.8	So I am on my old Parisian street.
0:56.8	A little cobblestone passage with vines covering the buildings.
1:01.8	And I tried an experiment with my stopwatch.
1:05.5	Okay, were you going for a run or something?
1:08.9	No, no, not that, but stick with me.
1:12.8	I'm going to start my stopwatch and see where I can go by foot in 15 minutes.
1:19.2	Let's go.
1:19.9	I'll see.
1:22.4	In one minute, I made it to the called maternel, a preschool.
1:32.5	I made it to a bookstore in three minutes.
	...

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