For some reason there seems to be a lot of controversy about “fifteen-minute cities.” I really don’t
understand what the controversy is all about.
It just seems super convenient to me.
I can drive my wheelchair to anyplace I need to go in fifteen
minutes or less.
I used to live in Tucson, Arizona. It’s a nice place but everything, and I mean
everything is at least a half-hour drive away.
Forget walking, forget using your wheelchair, forget your mobility
scooter, you have to take the car…and if you don’t drive there’s the SunTrans, SunVan and other things but travel and wait time goes way up. Plus, you have to book a ride about a week in
advance. I have to confess, I have no
idea what I’m going to do in an hour, so knowing what I’m going to do in a week
seems like an impossible thing. I may
feel good when I book the ride and not good when it’s time to go.
But where I live, Taoyuan City, Taiwan, the city seems to be
built on the idea that convenience is important. Back when I was writing the original “Taiwan Adventure
Blog”, I made the comment that there didn’t seem to be any city planners. I was
wrong. The city seems to be planned
around convenience.
Within a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment there
are: five medical clinics (just on my
block, alone), a shopping mall with a Carrefour Supermarket, with a movie
theater, and lots of specialty shops, a large traditional market, two barbershops,
four real estate offices, three veterinarians, two mechanics, a whole bunch of
temples, and about a million different restaurants and lunchbox shops, and least
three city parks. There’s a bunch of
other stuff, too, that I can’t think of right now. (Maybe my brain is still a little messed up.)
Because of how close everything is, people have a tendency
to walk, or ride bicycles places. They have
an excellent system of bike rentals, where you can use your train card to rent
a bicycle and ride it to wherever you’re going and leave it at the closest
U-bike stand, then pick up another one for the trip back. The first half-hour is free. For a longer
trip, you can rent a Gogoro electric motorcycle in the same way. I have no idea what the cost is for that,
though.
I love the idea of this type of convenience so I can just go
do what I need to do or want to do. I should
mention that I’m especially lucky because I can be out in the rice fields and other
types of natural scenery in a matter of moments too.
好的，距離我上一次發文已經有一段時間了。
不，我沒有那麼懶，只是前陣子出了點健康狀況，讓我的大腦有點當機。
用羅德尼·丹傑菲爾德（台灣的朋友們可能要上網查一下他是誰）的一句話來說：「上個星期真是難熬，告訴你喔。喔，我現在沒事了，但上星期可真是夠嗆的。」
所以，我現在沒事了，這是我在那場「災難」之後的第一篇作品：《十四分半鐘城市》。
不知為何，「十五分鐘城市」這個概念好像引起了不少爭議。
我實在不太明白爭議在哪裡。
在我看來，這概念只是非常方便而已。
我幾乎可以在十五分鐘內，開著我的電動輪椅到任何我需要去的地方。
我以前住在美國亞利桑那州的土桑。那地方挺不錯的，但不管去哪裡——我是說任何地方——開車至少都要半小時。
別想用走的，別想用輪椅，也別想用代步車——一定得開車。
如果你不能開車，那就得搭 SunTrans 公車或其他交通工具，但那樣一來通勤和等車的時間就大大增加了。
而且，你通常得提前一個星期預約搭車。
老實說，我常常連一小時後要做什麼都不知道，要我提前一週決定行程簡直不可能。
有時候預約那天身體狀況很好，但真正要出門的時候就不一定了。
但我現在住的地方——台灣桃園市——整個城市似乎是以「便利」為核心來設計的。
當年我在寫原版《台灣冒險誌》（Taiwan Adventure Blog）的時候，還說過好像沒有城市規劃師。
我錯了。這座城市的確是以方便為出發點來規劃的。
從我住的地方出發，走路十五分鐘範圍內就有：
五間診所（光我這一條街上就有這麼多）、一座包含家樂福超市的購物中心，裡面還有電影院和各種特色商店、一個大型傳統市場、兩間理髮店、四家房仲公司、三間獸醫院、兩家汽車修理廠、好幾座廟，以及大約上百萬家不同的餐廳和便當店，還有至少三座市立公園。
還有其他很多地方我一時想不起來。（也許我的腦袋還沒完全恢復正常。）
因為所有地方都很近，所以人們傾向於步行或騎腳踏車出門。
這裡的公共腳踏車租借系統非常完善，只要用交通卡就能租車，騎到目的地後把車停在最近的 YouBike 站，再借另一輛回程。
前半小時是免費的。
如果想騎更遠，也可以用同樣的方式租借 Gogoro 電動機車，不過我就不知道費用了。
我真的很喜歡這種便利的生活方式，想出門就出門、想辦事就辦事。
更棒的是，我特別幸運——從我家出發，只要幾分鐘就能到稻田邊或親近大自然的地方。
