To paraphrase Karl Marx, the workers of the world are uniting. Everyone asks them for change, and in the face of a shortage of personnel, office workers achieve it. Today, the trend, perhaps even the new fad, that all HR departments in companies are pursuing is “let’s make the lives of employees better.” And what happens is business and shopping center cities in the form in which it is planned for the future and, probably, in some places has already been implemented, is more like one small suburb.

Manhattan’s declining income is the final bell signaling the end of downtown, an area intertwined with business office buildings. The city, as a large settlement, is less than 10,000 years old, and its characteristic features have always been the concentration of the population, wide trade and its development. Its development will continue. It is estimated that by 2050 almost 2/3 of the world’s population will live in urban centers. At the moment, however, it completely changes what we understand by the city, what is planned for the future within the city. Instead of the spectacular skyscrapers that were the model of the previous era, now the blueprint for the future is the 15-minute city as envisioned by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and is starting to set the pattern for cities around the world. . That is, a city in which it will be possible to overcome distances to work or anywhere else, having walked 15 minutes. Some cities are even setting themselves even more ambitious targets for even shorter periods of time. Seoul, for example, is aiming for a 10-minute city.

These types of plans are based on the fact that it is possible to create cities that offer everything the city has to offer, offices, businesses, public services, shops, within walking distance or cycling. At worst, with public transport, to wean people off cars, to solve the problem of climate change. Of course, not everyone likes this model. In Oxford, for example, all sorts of conspiracy theories are circulating because the city plans to impose restrictions on the movement of personal vehicles. The tensions and divisions are such that the issue has aroused worldwide interest.

The goal now is a city where it will be possible to cover distances on foot in 15 minutes – Paris, Seoul and Riyadh are on the way.

However, one can see the impact of the 15-minute urban plan on both provincial cities and suburbs, and above all in the increasingly frequent appearance of another type of “urban center”, which will be “mixed use”: i.e. in the central areas of the city there will be combined businesses and residential buildings, as well as free public space. This new perception of cities, which is beginning to spread, is aimed at embodying a new ideal, which is a good combination of life and work. In Saudi Arabia, Riyadh’s downtown development plan is essentially based on the construction of buildings that will simultaneously house businesses, residences and tourist facilities. And in Lithuania, a group of architects signed a contract for a development of 24,000 sq.m. in the commercial center of Vilnius, the capital of the country, which will include offices, residences and businesses together.

As Gideon Haig points out in his book Requiem for the Office, it’s about the comfort of being able to work in a residential environment and as close to where you live as possible. He points out that the White House, 10 Downing Street and the Elysee Palace, as well as many other presidential or prime ministerial residences in different countries, are based on the same consideration: they combine the offices of the government apparatus with the residences of its high-ranking officials.