Living in a 15-Minute Neighborhood is Pretty Cool, Actually

Cleveland's near west side isn't perfect by bike with kids, but it's not half bad either

Saturday I didn’t do much. It was sort of a lazy day for us.

In the morning, my son had “basketball camp” at a nearby high school, about a mile from my house. We always ride our bikes.

It’s not a bad bike ride from where I live in “Detroit Shoreway” to the next neighborhood over, “Ohio City,” where the camp was. My son LOVES basketball and I feel lucky there is an outlet for him that’s that close. I don’t have my own car, and I suppose if I really had to I would drive all over the place for him to play his sport, but I’m glad I don’t have to.

My neighborhood isn’t exactly a 15-minute neighborhood, I guess. This is, for some reason, controversial, I have never quite understood it. But the basic idea is that in a 15 minute neighborhood, you’re able to get almost everything you need within a 15 minute walk.

But my neighborhood is maybe a 20-minute one, or pretty close. For me to sort of meet my needs, meet a lot of my kids’ needs, is sorta manageable by bike or foot most days.

As I’m going about my day, sometimes, I’m kinda blown away by how well it works. This is just really rare in the U.S., or where we have them they’re often absurdly expensive.

Cleveland isn’t Seattle or Brooklyn in both the price and convenience sense. But I have, I think, a pretty high quality of life compared to a lot of moms that have to do more kid-schlepping by car. Same goes for my kids.

For example, the basketball camp was two hours long. So I dropped him off and headed just a tiny bit further to the West Side Market. The West Side Market is an amazing local food seller.

I stopped to get some food for the week. Usually my husband does the grocery shopping at a regular grocery store. But we were having a weird week so I said I’d just pick up a few things.

Outside the West Side Market, because it was Saturday, there was a little outdoor market, where a bunch of “artisans” were selling things like candles and earrings and little stuffed animals. I stopped because — what the hell, I wasn’t in a rush. I ended up really liking some of the stuff and spent a few dollars on a hand carved wooden spoon and a tiny candle. I figure, might as well support these local small businesses instead of buying that stuff at Target or whatever. It wasn’t any more expensive in this case anyway.

That’s how I feel about shopping at the West Side Market as well. Usually the food is a little better. And we have so little retail in Cleveland, more and more I have been trying to support these local businesses when it makes sense.

After that, I went back to the basketball camp to watch him play for a little while. While I was watching, I ran into a friend from the neighborhood. Her daughter was playing. I hadn’t had much chance to talk to her before and she’s really smart and impressive. We exchanged numbers with sort of vague talk about hanging out. I’m always running into people I know, keeping a small circle. That’s probably sorta normal wherever you live but IDK.

We rode home after that. Like I said, it was a lazy day and my husband and I always end up having to spend a big portion of the weekend just cleaning the house and taking care of things. Walking the dog, etc.

The kids just kind of watch tv, or go play with their friends from around the neighborhood. I can’t remember which one they were doing. I think, my daughter found some friends to play with but my son did not that day.

Sometimes I shoot hoops with him a little. Or just kinda nap. I can’t remember which. He didn’t really want to go somewhere, like the Zoo. The kids kinda like to stick close to home.

I’m sorta in this constant cooking/cleaning mode when I’m home. When I get home from the West Side Market, I always have some good ingredients to work with. I bought some Concord grapes that I think were grown nearby, and they were so sweet I could not believe it. I don’t know why I never grew up eating them even though they are grown around here. One of those weird commercial biases against local produce I guess.

I bummed around the house doing that kind of stuff for hours. And the neighbor kids are running in and out of the house with my kids. Around 8 — later than we would have liked — a group of them and my daughter showed up and announced they wanted to do an outdoor movie. (My husband had bought a projector and offered to set it up earlier that day.)

One of the neighbor families dropped off three kids and a fourth one from another family was there. We sat in the backyard and watched Hocus Pocus, the original one.

This is not something that required a lot of pre-planning for us. The kids are a handful though. And the equipment. But we do that a lot where we just hang with a few people who live right nearby.

That week, there were two nights where I hung out with adult friends from the neighborhood and either I just walked there or vice versa.

When I need to, I can usually just take the family car, especially on nights and weekends. But that Saturday I didn’t drive a car at all.

It’s pretty typical for me not to drive in a regular day. It was beautiful September weather, so it was great to be outside. (There are times, especially in the dead of winter, when biking around Cleveland is not so pleasant admittedly.)

The day before, I biked my kids to school. Then hopped on the bike trail to go to work. My work is just a couple neighborhoods over and in a walkable neighborhood also. From there I can walk to a bunch of places to get lunch and also the place I get my haircut.

I’ve got a lot of balls in the air as a working mom, and this kinda stuff really helps me. Sometimes it’s hard for me to find the time to get my haircut. At my work, also, there’s a gym in the basement of the building. So if the weather is crappy and I don’t get to bike, it makes it easy to squeeze in a workout. I think it really benefits my health, the extra physical activity I’m able to squeeze in.

I’ve been bouncing around my neighborhood on the west side of Cleveland this way for years. I used to walk my kids a half mile to daycare, and just a block or two to the pediatrician (as far as 15-minute neighborhoods goes, in theory anyway, this is sorta living the dream). It takes a little bit of thick skin, and determination to pull this off where I live, because sometimes drivers or jerks or the kinds of stores and services we have in Cleveland are not ideal.

We don’t have a full service grocery store in the neighborhood. We do have little boutiques that are good for gifts, but if I need something really practical, sometimes it’s a challenge. My husband does a lot of the shopping and he does a lot of it in the suburbs by car.

Even so, at this point, it’d be hard for me to give this up. When I visit my parents in the suburbs, the inability to just sneak out and get a little treat or something is weird to me. Without those bike trips, it just feels like something is missing.

I don’t know if a post like this can convince anyone and maybe we just like arguing about 15-minute cities for argument’s sake. A cultural wedge. But the promise is there. It’s a shame it’s not more broadly accessible. But I think we are making baby steps in that direction, here and there anyway.