Opinion: ’15-minute’ neighborhoods, parking minimums and flood control money
I just read an excellent paper called “The Questionable Economics of the 15-Minute City” by Rachel Meltzer, a professor of planning and urban economics at Harvard. To quote her, “The economics of the 15-minute city don’t really work.” Her analysis points out that any kind of establishment, whether it is a supermarket or an urgent care clinic, has fixed costs. So, the “catchment area” needs to be big enough to have enough customers to cover those costs. Also, many stores have become bigger and contain a wider variety of goods than 20 or 50 years ago. Thus, any given area is now served by fewer stores with more goods per store. Looking at Boulder, we see these economics at work. For example, we have about 10 grocery stores, and over the last years, we’ve had two supermarkets close and a couple of new ones open, that I can think of. And they are mostly distributed geographically. So, even with all the planned growth in East Bo...