Why fifteen

15Dolcevita is named for two fifteens. The first is our street number, twice over: Via Verdi 15, where the first three suites open, and Piazza Garibaldi 15, where our office will be and where “Si rende noto” posts its artists' posters. The second is Carlos Moreno's quarter hour.

The fifteen-minute city

In 2015, at the Paris climate conference, the urbanist Carlos Moreno gave a name to a simple idea: a city where everything you need is a quarter of an hour away on foot or by bike. He called it la ville du quart d'heure, the fifteen-minute city, and in 2021 he received the Obel Award for the concept. In Paris, Anne Hidalgo made it the centre of her urban policy.

For cities built around the car it is a new idea. For Manduria, in Salento, Puglia, it is not.

His book

• 
  The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our PlanetJohn Wiley & Sons, 2024. Foreword by Jan Gehl, afterword by Martha Thorne.On Amazon

Manduria already is one

From the square: the pharmacy three minutes away, the Chiesa Matrice four, the baker five, the school six, the station nine, the hospital eleven. All six of the functions Moreno asks a city for sit inside the quarter hour, and they still do at the pace of an eighty-year-old.

normal paceup to the pace of an eighty-year-old

1. Via Verdi 15living · 140 m2′
2. UniCredit, Piazza Garibaldi 16working · 61 m1′
3. Bar Martileisure · 56 m1′
4. Farmacia Menzahealthcare · 190 m3′
5. Chiesa Matriceleisure · 270 m4′ / 5′
6. Panificio Comescommerce · 400 m5′ / 7′
7. Scuola Prudenzanoeducation · 400 m6′ / 7′
8. Sergi Bricocommerce · 650 m9′ / 11′
9. Crai extracommerce · 700 m10′ / 12′
10. Ospedale Giannuzzihealthcare · 800 m11′ / 13′
11. Eurospin, Corso Romacommerce · 1.0 km15′ / 17′

051015 minutes

The old town was not designed for fifteen minutes. It was built before the car, when a town had to fit inside the distance a person covers on foot. That measure is still here, in the alleys.

Every minute measured one by one, with the method and the comparison with the car: manduriashire.it/location

What difference it makes

At forty-five a house on the edge of town is a step up: the garage, somewhere to put the car, dry walls. At eighty it is a different thing. Without the car even the shopping becomes hard, and nobody notices any more whether you are there.

In the old town people walk, because the baker is at the end of the street. And the neighbours see who goes past. Nobody has to organise it.

The other fifteens

The fifteenth is a feast day: Ferragosto on 15 August; the Chinese mid-autumn festival, on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month; Tu B'Av, the fifteenth of Av, when the daughters of Jerusalem danced in white in the vineyards; Shichi-go-san, on 15 November, when children in Japan are given the thousand-year candy. And in the Neapolitan smorfia, 15 is 'o guaglione, the boy.

Home, the quarter hour, feasting, youth, years well lived. That is why 15Dolcevita.

• The press room
• The station and the rebuilt line
• The open letter to the town (in Italian)

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