Episode 32: Professor Carlos Moreno on the 15-Minute City, Jane Jacobs, topophilia, zombie geeks and the Ancient Greek view of time

The Life Well Lived Podcast with Shane Breslin

This is Episode 32 of the Life Well Lived Podcast.
Most of the episodes of this podcast so far have been broadly about self-awareness, self-exploration and self-improvement.
A big part of the motivation for the show is to offer help or guidance for individuals to explore and express their individuality, so that they can live each day in a way that’s aligned and purposeful, which over time can add up to a fulfilled and happy life.

There is a meme that goes around the Internet and it says:
“Happiness is an inside job.”

The way we think about things has an outsized impact on our happiness both in the micro moment and in the macro long-term too.
But equally, there is lots about living a happy life that is outside our own individual control.
So this podcast will include some more episodes and interviews about bigger issues affecting humanity as a whole, such as universal basic income, agriculture and food sources, and the biggest issue of them all, climate change.
This episode of the podcast is the first step in that direction.
My guest in this episode is Professor Carlos Moreno.
Carlos is a professor in IT at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France. He was born in Colombia and moved to France when he was 20, and for the past four decades he has been leading research that is certain to deliver tangible benefits for people all over the world in the years and decades to come. A key specialism for Prof Moreno is intelligent control of complex systems, and to that end he has dedicated much of his work towards the concept of Living Cities or Smart Cities, and in recent years has developed the concept of “the 15-minute city”, which he speaks about at length in this episode.
As a result of his work in research and education, Prof Moreno was awarded the rank of Chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honour in Paris, one of France’s highest accolades, in 2010

One final thing to note before the interview.
Prof Moreno is from Colombia and has lived in France for approximately 40 years. English is perhaps his third or fourth language, and while he is fluent and delivers some exceptional answers here, if you have any problems understanding his accent, I have made this full podcast available as a written transcription too.
To access that free download,visit www.shanebreslin.com/32 where you will find a PDF download. I promise you that it will add greatly to the enjoyment and learning you will get from this episode.

In this show, we discuss:

• The concept of the 15-Minute City
• American Jane Jacobs and living cities
• Edgar Morin and theories of complexity
• The South American writers and the theory of "topophilia", or the love of place
• The rise of the "zombie geek" and technology-driven disconnection of people and place
• Why it's so important to get this right, in the context of wider social unrest during the Covid-19 pandemic
• Some examples of cities around the world which are making great progress in their approach to urban planning