If you’ve ever spent half your day crawling along Winnie Mandela Drive or the M1, you’ve probably wondered: Is this really how city life is supposed to work? As Joburg shifts towards hybrid work and suburban hubs start buzzing like mini city centres, we might finally be heading towards something better: the rise of the 15-minute city.
The idea, popularised by French urbanist Carlos Moreno, is simple: everything you need (work, food, fitness, childcare, errands, downtime) should be within a 15-minute walk of home. Paris made it famous. But Joburg, with its scattered nodes and endless commute culture, might be the city that needs it most.
Paul Keursten, CEO of Workshop17, puts it bluntly, “We burn hours in gridlock commutes to sit in offices in congested business districts, trading time, well-being, and productivity in the process.”
Hybrid work cracked open the door to a different way of living, one where your office isn’t a destination, but part of the rhythm of your day. And Jozi’s neighbourhoods are responding. Rosebank, Linden, Melrose Arch, Dunkeld, Bryanston, Fourways, and Hyde Park are evolving into micro-cities where you can grab coffee, work, train, shop, run errands, and meet friends without crossing half the province. Co-working spaces in these areas aren’t just offices, they’re anchors for a more liveable lifestyle.
As Keursten explains, “The 15-Minute City proposes distributing the infrastructure of daily life more evenly across urban areas, creating multiple centres of activity rather than forcing everything through a single bottleneck.”
And when work moves closer to where people actually live, everything shifts. Gym sessions sneak into lunch breaks. Parents pop home between meetings. Cafés fill up mid-morning. Padel courts and parks get busier. Restaurants suddenly have weekday traffic again.
It’s not just convenient, it’s culture-changing.
Keursten adds, “Bringing professional amenities closer to where people live isn’t a compromise – it’s an improvement.”
The result? More time, less traffic, richer neighbourhood life, and a city that feels more connected and more human.
Joburg won’t become Paris (we like our city just as it is), but the 15-minute lifestyle is already taking root, one co-working hub, one corner café, and one reclaimed hour at a time.
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