Plans to make Westport Ireland’s First 15-Minute Town

A NEW initiative has been started in Westport with the aim of future-proofing the town as a healthy, sustainable and vibrant place to live.

15-Minute Westport, which was established earlier this year as an SEAI Sustainable Energy Community, is calling for the town to adopt a similar planning strategy to the 15-Minute City concept made famous by Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

The concept puts liveability at the heart of town planning, with an overarching aim that everyone’s daily needs, such as work, food and recreation, should be within a 15-minute journey of their home.

The idea focuses on enabling sustainable travel, so that most 15-minute journeys can be completed on foot or by bicycle.

The concept has made waves since forming a core aspect of Mayor Hidalgo’s re-election campaign in 2020 - one which she won comfortably having transformed Paris’ transport strategy in her first term as Mayor.

The 15-Minute Westport movement was formed by a diverse group of local people with a common interest in putting well-being at the heart of local development. The history of the group can be traced back to early 2020, where several members met at a series of climate action awareness workshops hosted by Mayo County Council and the Climate Action Regional Office.

“The workshops sparked some great ideas for us about different ways in which Westport can adapt to meet the challenges presented by climate change,” says Feena Kirrkamm, a local resident and member of 15-Minute Westport. “A group of us decided to focus on how we could enable more people to choose sustainable transport modes for their day-to-day journeys.

“We really want Westport to be a healthy town. The 15-Minute City concept puts an emphasis on quality of life, by giving people back time in their daily lives and creating an urban environment which is healthy and attractive, and a pleasure to spend time in.”

While sustainable transport is high on the group’s agenda, it also wants Westport’s streets to become a more welcoming, people-friendly environment which enables people to spend more time in the town. This could include simple changes such as widening footpaths and providing more public seating and more public toilets.

One of 15-Minute Westport’s more immediate concerns is about how the town will adapt to accommodate outdoor seating and dining during what’s expected to be a busy tourism season in 2021. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has recently spoken about the need for local councils to support plans for an outdoor summer.

“Westport’s hospitality industry has been decimated by the pandemic, and we don’t expect indoor dining to return until the second half of the year at the earliest,” says Kieran Ryan, another member of the group. “It is vital that we start planning now for a spring and summer of outdoor dining, and how we can adapt Westport’s streets to accommodate this.”

Last year saw many towns and cities around Ireland convert their streets into outdoor dining areas. Princes Street in Cork made headlines when it was turned into a dining street and immediately became a magnet for both locals and tourists. In other places such as Blackrock in Dublin, on-street parking spaces have been transformed to provide outdoor seating and additional space for pedestrians.

Facilitating outdoor dining can have additional spillover effects such as creating wider footpaths for pedestrians, buggies and wheelchair users and enhancing the social fabric of the town by creating additional meeting spaces.

“We should at the very least attempt a trial of an outdoor dining street to see how it would work,” says Ryan. “A weekend trial of outdoor dining could easily be achieved using temporary measures, and then let’s see what the feedback is like from the public. There is nothing to lose in trying it out.”

15-Minute Westport is looking for more people to get involved and to share their ideas for a healthy, sustainable and vibrant Westport. They can be found on Twitter and Instagram @15MinWestport.