Some meetings only happen in the margins of notebooks or over coffee in imaginary courtyards. Here, Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander—acutely absent yet deeply present—offer their insights on the emc2 project and its quest for the 15-minute city in suburban and periurban contexts. As if invited to the table, they respond with the voices we’ve come to recognize: Jacobs with her street-savvy pragmatism, Alexander with his quiet search for wholeness. The questions are ours. The answers… well, let’s just say they feel oddly real.

In a moment that felt like it belonged to someone else’s field notes, Lara Spieck, German intern on the emc2 Seclin case study, found herself sitting with Jane Jacobs on a quiet bench just off Seclin’s acting main street. Delivery trucks hummed by. People walked their dogs. Jane lit an imaginary cigarette, watching the corner bakery as a woman stepped out with a child and two croissants.

 

JANE JACOBS: Well, it’s no Greenwich Village. But there’s something here—small signs of life doing their best to hold the street together.
(She flicked her imaginary ash and glanced sideways.)
So, what are you doing here?

LARA: I’ve been working on the Seclin case for emc2, and… I keep wondering if we’re stretching the 15-minute city idea too far by bringing it to the suburbs.

JANE JACOBS: It’s only a contradiction if you take the 15-minute city as a fixed plan rather than a principle. Suburbs weren’t built for walking, true—but people still have needs, habits, instincts. The emc2 project is smart because it doesn’t try to retrofit suburbia with grand downtown-style squares. It looks at where people already walk—where services naturally collect—and asks: How can we make these places work better? That’s not theory. That’s good observation.

In places like Drap and Seclin, they’ve found these connector roads that act a bit like old main streets. There’s movement. Shops. Buses. Even people on bikes. These aren’t inventions—they’re survivors. The question isn’t how to invent new centers out of nothing. It’s how to recognize the life already there, and give it a boost.

LARA:  But if planners can’t dictate where the shops go, how can they make the 15-minute city happen?

JANE JACOBS: They can’t—and that’s exactly the point. You can’t just zone for mixed-use and expect magic. Shops don’t appear because there’s a box for them on the plan. They appear where the street itself invites presence—where people linger, see each other, feel comfortable. That’s why emc2’s focus on street-level affordances is so important. What is the sidewalk like? Is it shaded? Do the buildings have eyes on the street? Can people sit, cross, pause? Those little things are what make someone park the car and walk. Or better—what makes someone decide not to take the car at all.

Emc2 isn’t just about infrastructure. It’s about behavior, and how the public realm makes or breaks it. That’s why observation is key. The team is out there watching: where do people gather? Where do they avoid? And why? They’re not dreaming up a perfect city—they’re reading the real one.

LARA:  What about the fact that these case studies are spread across France, Austria, Italy, Sweden? How does that affect the model?

JANE JACOBS: That’s what makes it powerful. Cities aren’t abstract machines. They have history, fabric, customs. A small town in Provence is not a suburb outside Stockholm. The European context is full of inherited forms—compact villages, postwar housing estates, patchworks of old and new. Emc2 respects that. It doesn’t flatten everything into one model. It’s trying to build a toolkit that adapts.

The idea is simple: not every street needs to become a main street, but every place needs a place to go—a node of daily life within reach. If we can find where that life is already trying to happen, and nudge it with better sidewalks, street furniture, trees, lighting—then people will come. And stay. And walk.

 

One warm afternoon in Drap. Grégoire Picard—French intern for the EMC2 team—took a break from mapping street patterns and found himself deep in conversation with Christopher Alexander, who had apparently been watching the place all along. Birds called from the small canopy of trees in front of the city hall. The square was a bit too open to feel whole, but Alexander began, as always, from what was already there.

GREGOIRE: Professor Alexander, the emc2 project talks about making the 15-minute city work in low-density suburban areas. Isn’t that difficult to reconcile with your idea of organic wholeness?

CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: It’s not difficult. It’s essential. Suburbia is often thought of as broken or lost, but within every place there is a structure—sometimes dormant, sometimes fragmented—that can be healed. The emc2 project is doing something quite rare: it’s listening. It’s not starting from geometry or function, but from the real structure of living. That’s what matters.

In towns like Drap and Seclin, the team has discovered what I would call proto-centers—places that already act as hearts of life. They may not look like great civic spaces, but they gather people, activities, energy. The goal is not to impose a new form, but to make visible what is already latent. When nurtured, these places can unfold into a more complete field of centers—each alive, each connected.

GREGOIRE: But how do you know where to intervene? The suburbia is vast and scattered. What guides the transformation?

CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: We must begin by producing a pattern language for these suburban environments—a living grammar of recurring relationships that bring harmony. Emc2 is doing this: identifying the patterns that lead to lively main streets, inviting public spaces, humane pedestrian scales.

Just as in our Oregon Experiment, we need diagnostic maps. Not just diagrams, but maps that reveal precisely where life is trying to concentrate—where intersections carry weight, where pathways overlap, where built form supports engagement. Not every street will become a center. That’s not necessary. But each place can be part of a coherent whole if we understand its role. The street, the bench, the canopy of trees—all these are not just furnishings. They are acts of structure, helping people belong to their environment. When these elements are aligned with use and memory, they give rise to wholeness.

GREGOIRE:  And what about the European context? Does it shape the way the model works?

CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: Of course. The European city carries an ancient memory—of proximity, of slow rhythms, of placefulness. You cannot ignore that. The emc2 team, across France, Austria, Italy, and Sweden, understands this well. They are not applying a model. They are uncovering patterns within patterns, shaped by culture, history, and form.

The challenge is not to replicate but to resonate. In each context, we ask: what wants to happen here? What relationships need to be healed? What pattern is waiting to emerge?

That is how the suburban city, long treated as an afterthought, becomes again a place where people live fully, in rhythm with one another, and with the land.