It’s been a while gestating but I’m feeling ready to release this now - a proposal for a 15-minute island.
The principle is that each Parish has it’s own village, and each village contains a proportion of the whole population based on the land area of the Parish. The coloured zones are the Parish centres, where people live, work and play, with all the amenities they need on a daily basis within a 15-minute walk.
Between the villages are a network of bus and delivery routes, with pedestrian and cycle routes shown as dashed green connections. Each village is reachable from the others within 15 minutes by bus, and each stretch between villages is no more than a 15 minute bicycle ride.
Island-wide functions, such as hospital, principle industries, leisure facilities are distributed between the villages, giving each village an identity and draw for the rest of the island.
The space allocated on the plan for each village is sufficient for the population to be housed and supported, leaving all the rest of the space between and around villages for agricultural production and outdoor leisure - look at all that space!
This is presented as an ‘end-goal’ model for the island, one that might form a future destination, something to be worked towards. Of course, it would take a great deal of change, over many decades, but without a goal what are we working towards, and how do we manage the changing landscape of the island?
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