Can a Smart Destination Like Tequila Be a 15-Minute City?

Smart destinations and the 15-minute city have many elements in common. If a tourist destination is in a city like Tequila, (where 15 minutes is the maximum distance where tourism moves and where most residents live), the concepts of the 15 Minute City can apply.

Carlos Moreno, its ideologist, expresses that the 15 Minute City "consists of creating a decentralized, polycentric and multiservice city model, in which citizens only have to travel for a quarter of an hour to satisfy their essential needs."

In this sense, Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris has carried out very concrete transformations; spaces such as schools and car parks have been reused; more accessible places for pedestrians and bicycles have been built; public buildings have been leased to small traders so that they have greater economic freedoms; and more bookshops, galleries and cafés have been created.

Moreno also says, "A sustainable city must be at the same time ecological, generate economic value and have a social impact. It is about creating a new urbanism based on time, which has an ecological, economic and social balance".

If we superimpose the ITD pillars of governance, technology, accessibility, innovation and sustainability on these concepts, we can see that they coincide with the 15 Minute City.

In turn, the ITDs are integrated into each city, which has a vocation and an associated strategy. To be a Smart Tourism Destination is to follow a methodology, not a city strategy, and the ITD enshrines that strategy by making essential issues tangible, especially in the territory where tourists move and residents do business and where government offices are located.

The ITD is, therefore, a support strategy in one of the most dynamic sectors of a city's economy, tourism, strengthening its vocation and giving it certainty.

But no one goes to a city because it is an ITD, but they stay because it is an ITD. A Smart Tourism Destination is a destination in which a specific territory is defined with a holistic conception in a city where tourists and residents coexist in an orderly environment, with the  management of governance, sustainability, accessibility and information for a complex, innovative society, seeking to impact the quality of life of the people. An ITD is therefore 80% non-technological intelligence and 20% technological intelligence.

Being in an orderly, safe, connected, accessible environment meets their requirements in terms of quality, coexistence, physical and emotional needs. Likewise, it must have a tourist product and services in line with their primary interest in visiting it and that will surprise them.

The local community benefits from increased economic revenue, a longer average stay of visitors, an accessible territory, connectivity, efficient services, new business models, better governance and mayors who are aware of the holistic management of their town/city. Likewise, for the information generated in the locality that makes lucid decisions at all levels. To the extent that actions of economic, social, environmental and institutional sustainability are generated, this results in an improvement for the entire community.

Destinations are dynamic, living organisms, where maturity and evolution are different, with different timing and time frames. Management can advance faster than infrastructure, technological obsolescence and economies of scale can delay or bring forward changes, and intelligence is the solution in a context of complexity.

What has Tequila achieved by being an ITD?

1. The Tequila Integral Development Council has become an effective tool for governance, not in the abstract but through projects and transparency.

2. Reasoning with a holistic logic.

3. Establishing sustainability is the master strategy.

4. The roles for the generation of public goods, CSR, private goods and coexistence are clear and work.

5. Having an intelligent information system and intelligence-led decision-making.

6. Seek competitiveness in all its aspects.

7. Extending the average stay of tourists.

8. To increase the hotel offer and the tourist product.

9. Boost the sophistication of Tequila's tourism sector.

Tequila can also be a 15 Minute City, provided it meets six key factors:

1. Decent accommodation with organic density.

2. Working conditions that break the dependency on long commutes with a lot of decentralization.

3. Access to local employment, local resources, short routes, everything that allows the regeneration of a multiservice economy of proximity.

4. Access to physical and mental health in a preventive way.

5. Enrich the spirit, education and civic culture  – everything that allows us to become aware of the importance of a better sociability.

6. Recreation in a climate-resilient public space.

In Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium occurs when all players choose the best response to the strategic choices of others at the same time; therefore, we should not discard city solutions. What we need to do is to form a conceptual and methodological system that promotes and is coherent with the master strategy.

We know that, beyond the models, the verification is that of the people – that social validation that addresses complex social challenges and allows us to endorse paths or abandon them.