Cleveland’s 15-minute city journey
Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood at night | Dan Luscher
There’s almost nothing I love more than exploring cities. I thoroughly enjoyed being a flâneur in Cleveland this past January despite cold, drizzly conditions. I spent two days wandering neighborhoods as varied as Ohio City, Detroit Shoreway, Tremont, University Circle, and Hough, mostly on foot but occasionally hopping on a Greater Cleveland RTA bus. I experienced first hand the varied geography and architecture of Cleveland’s neighborhoods and streetscapes, as well as its City Beautiful-inspired downtown.
The rich tapestry of Cleveland’s older buildings — large and small, opulent and modest — was evident. So too was evidence of depopulation and decline. The city’s warehouse district between downtown and the Cuyahoga River is pockmarked with large areas of surface parking, and the downtown streets above the underground Tower City mall were mostly empty on the January weekdays that I visited. (That may say more about the anti-urbanism of underground shopping centers than it does about Cleveland’s downtown recovery.)
Since 1950, the city of Cleveland has lost 60% of its population to the suburbs and to the larger western migration of America’s populace. Its 360,000 people are spread over 78 square miles, giving Cleveland a population density that is on par with Detroit and Las Vegas. In recent decades, a few neighborhoods like Ohio City and Tremont have experienced a resurgence, but conditions vary widely from place to place. Cleveland is a deeply unequal city; by one measure it has the 9th highest income inequality of any U.S. city.
Cleveland’s 15-minute city aspirations
But change is afoot. Cleveland’s civic leaders have embarked on what is perhaps the most organized, government-led effort in the United States to use 15-minute-city principles to create a more vibrant and equitable city bustling with thriving, walkable neighborhoods.
Cleveland’s 15-minute city work had its origins in 2020. As Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s reelection campaign sparked global interest in the 15-minute city concept, two planners in Cleveland’s planning department — Matthew Moss and Dro Sohrabian — decided that it would be interesting to analyze how many Clevelanders enjoyed 15-minute convenience: easy access to grocery stores, cafés, schools, etc. They found many neighborhoods in which residents could meet most of their needs within a 15-minute walk or bike, but that access was very uneven across the city.
This informal effort within the planning department was turbocharged by the arrival of an energetic new mayor. In January 2022, 36-year-old Justin Bibb took office as the 2nd-youngest mayor in Cleveland’s history after winning a decisive 62% of the vote. He was already keenly interested in the 15-minute city framing, and in April 2022 during his first State of the City address, Bibb announced that Cleveland would work “towards being the first city in North America to implement a 15-minute city planning framework, where people…are at the center of urban revitalization.”
A 15-minute city access map from “Cleveland’s 15-Minute City Planning Introduction” | Cleveland City Planning
The planning department then set to work to create a detailed picture of Cleveland’s current state — not just on basic access to amenities, but on the quality of that access. The result can be seen in the wonderful but drily titled “Cleveland’s 15-Minute City Planning Introduction,” which is chock full of detailed maps and well-crafted explanatory text. It is a tour de force and one of my favorite ArcGIS StoryMaps of all time [1].
Cleveland’s planners found that although many neighborhoods had great access to amenities, the quality of those amenities — or the quality of the journey to get to them — varied greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood. A 15-minute walk on a crumbing sidewalk to a liquor store is not really “access.”
A home in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood | Dan Luscher
The next step was to steer civic investment towards neighborhoods with poor access to amenities, and to remove outdated zoning and parking rules that made it difficult or even impossible to create walkable neighborhoods. In a steady sequence of policy wins:
In June 2022, Cleveland’s City Council passed a Complete and Green Streets Ordinance to make sure road projects expand opportunities for walking, biking, and transit.
In August 2023, the City Council passed legislation that removes parking requirements near frequent transit and encourages transit-oriented development along those transit corridors through a point system.
And in March 2024, the city’s Planning Commission recommended the adoption of a Form-Based Code in three pilot neighborhoods. This new code — which as of this writing remains under consideration by Cleveland’s 17-member City Council — would enable denser mixed-use development near shops and transit corridors. The Form-Based Code effort — catchily dubbed “The Land Code” — began during the prior mayor’s administration and has been slow to generate political consensus, much like zoning reforms in other cities.
Form-Based Code for Cleveland’s Detroit Shoreway neighborhood | Cleveland City Planning
During my January visit to Cleveland, I met with Matthew Moss, Cleveland City Planning’s Manager of Strategic Initiatives and one of the two planners whose 2020 mapping exercise planted the seed for Cleveland’s 15-minute city program. We met at a café just outside The Arcade, a gorgeous 1890 building that epitomizes the city’s rich architectural heritage.
33-year-old Moss came to Cleveland for college, earning degrees from Case Western and Cleveland State, and has been with Cleveland’s planning department since 2018. Well-versed in current planning strategies to create thriving, inclusive, walkable neighborhoods, and enthusiastic about Cleveland’s potential, Moss has become the face of Cleveland’s planning reform efforts and is quoted in seemingly every news article about Cleveland’s 15-minute city efforts.
Predictably, Moss’s visibility has made him somewhat of a flash point. A resident of Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood characterized Moss as “pretentious.” He has caught the attention of ill-humored Saturday Night Live alum Rob Schneider and other 15-minute city conspiracy theorists.
But during our meeting, Moss struck me as the best kind of city planner: energetic, creative, and thoroughly committed to improving his city. In short, Moss is the kind of bureaucrat cities need driving their transformation efforts from within government.
West 9th Street in Cleveland’s warehouse district | Dan Luscher
Doing it right
Remaking a city is an enormous undertaking involving participants from many different domains, from community leaders to small business owners and much more. But given the crucial role of government in setting policy and directing funding, there is no substitute for having strong and effective city government leadership through:
Unwavering commitment from the top, as Mayor Bibb has shown by making the 15-minute city a central theme in his administration; and
Diligent work from creative, committed, and entrepreneurial staffers in city planning and other departments.
It also helps enormously if a city has “good bones” — a physical legacy of good architecture and creative, compelling neighborhoods. Cleveland definitely has this, as I saw in January.
And Cleveland has followed a excellent playbook by:
Creating a strong evidence base; it’s critical to thoroughly assess a city’s current state and ground its transformation efforts in data.
Executing a clear and comprehensive policy program, from complete streets to parking reforms.
Incorporating complementary initiatives that its civic leaders were already pursuing, like the Form-Based Code efforts. Crafting a 15-minute city strategy does not require starting from scratch.
Justin Bibb’s Cleveland is leveraging the 15-minute city concept in the best way: as a framing device to clearly communicate to the public a vision for what a city can and should be, and a container into which you can fit a multitude of great ideas to make cities more inclusive, inviting and joyful.
Cleveland faces a long road in creating a more equitable, walkable city. But with a long history of fierce civic pride and can-do spirit, strong leadership from Mayor Bibb, and creative and energetic city staff like Matthew Moss, Cleveland is unquestionably a city to watch and to learn from.
[1] This StoryMap also articulates why the 15-minute city framing is a useful way to integrate lots of good ideas: "The 15-minute city planning framework aggregates many of the city's past and current goals such as climate action, equitable land use policies, and healthy neighborhoods for all into a comprehensive and understandable strategy to provide quality neighborhoods for Clevelanders." [Emphasis added.]