The 15-Minute City was conceived as a new urban planning model in 2016 by French-Colombian city planner Carlos Moreno. Advocating for people-centered urban environments, Moreno drew inspiration from Jane Jacobs’ 1961 but still quite relevant book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she proposed an urban design theory where cities act as living beings and ecosystems. She emphasized the importance of mixed-use neighborhoods, vibrant street life, local economies, and community-based planning to create safe, diverse, and thriving urban environments.

Moreno’s model gained steam when Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo adapted it into a “living smart city” plan that she coined the “Ville du quart d’heure” — the 15-minute city. Regardless of the various merits, distractions, controversies, or contradictions of a 15-, 10-, or 5-minute city, the key takeaway is that density matters, and that globally, we need to start thinking more about how much both density and vibrancy inform healthy cities.

These two factors — density and vibrancy — really do matter to our overall health as a global society. In the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, recently declared loneliness and isolation a public health crisis, due in part to the consequences of the pandemic.

“The pandemic has had a number of invisible costs in our country, and the increase in loneliness, the increase in mental health strain, these are part of those costs,” Murthy said at Fortune’s 2023 Brainstorm Health Conference in Marina del Ray, California.

“The harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished,” Murthy’s public health advisory reads. “We are called to build a movement to mend the social fabric of our nation…each of us can start now, in our own lives, by strengthening our connections and relationships.”

Located just 20 meters from and physically connected to the sensory overload that is La Boqueria — the historic public market with roots dating all the way back to the 13th century — we find my newly purchased Barcelona atelier, or taller in proper Catalonian. This tiny flat is my 34-square-meter multi-purpose urban experiment in the notion that size does matter, but perhaps not in the way one might think. During my experience purchasing the flat in the summer of 2023, the American in me would often wrestle with what 34 or 60 square meters might actually mean, were I to purchase and live in such a small space. My ex-wife and I once owned a successful 4,200 square-foot bed and breakfast in Knoxville, Tennessee, and my last renovation before moving abroad in 2020 was a large mid-century rancher on 3/4 of a remote wooded acre in the heart of suburbia — which kind of means nowhere, in terms of urban accessibility. Would I go insane in such a small space in the center of a foreign city, or could I actually live and breathe here? Would I become lonely, or would I feel more or less connected to my community?

As we U.S. American gringos often compute the size of things in comparison to football stadiums, Olympic-sized swimming pools, elephants, or the number of cylinders on a Chevrolet, I held a lingering suspicion that anything less than those old American dreams of a Tesla Cybertruck in the driveway of a three-story house with a massive backyard in which to steer my John Deere riding lawn tractor might just make me seem like a simpering fool to those back in the old country, the USSA — the United States of Semi-Awareness.

So for my non-metric American compadres, 34 square meters equals 365.9 square feet. I liked rounding up, as 366 is also apropos to 2024, which happens to be a leap year. With each square of my flat representing a day of the year, I could confidently joke that I live my life one day — and one square foot — at a time.

Let’s begin with a quick tour of this tiny space: the architectural crown jewel of this compact flat in the mid-19th-century building I now call home is a traditional Catalan barrel vault ceiling. Its wooden beams and curvaceous brick arches float gracefully overhead amid twinkling, energy-efficient lighting. The ceiling is a constant reminder that while my linguistic skills may be flat, my living situation is anything but. This stunning architectural marvel looks down upon a curious mix of the modern and the traditional: bamboo floors that whisper underfoot, a sleek kitchen that could grace the cover of “Tiny Homes for the Terminally Hip,” and a writer’s desk so disproportionately and counterintuitively massive, it just happens to work beautifully in the space, and serves as a monument to my literary ambitions (or perhaps delusions).

The apartment has one well-proportioned bedroom with a queen-sized bed and built-in storage, and a lovely full bathroom off of the small entryway. The kitchen is well-equipped, with modernist grey cabinetry, solid surface countertops, a convection oven, a dishwasher, and a washing machine. There’s a lovely kitchen window, although I have to rotate the faucet downward in order to open it. Floor-to-ceiling walnut French doors open to a small balcony overlooking my pedestrian-only street, Carrer de les Cabres — the Street of the Goats.

I paid in the low 200s for the fully furnished apartment, but in the first few months, I quickly upgraded the furniture, keeping the small black leather pullout sofa for guests but pretty much replacing everything else. I did dream of a massive leather Chesterfield sofa, but I just didn’t have room for it. It’s funny, because I was 19, I lived briefly in the large Victorian apartment of my late great-uncle John Alan Maxwell, the 20th-century American illustrator, in the Tree Streets historic district of Johnson City, Tennessee. Only a short time after his death in 1984, I spent the summer of ’86 lounging on his wine-colored leather Chesterfield sofa, smoking his omnipresent pipe, and drinking the remains of his stores of whiskey. I finally moved out, but not until after I had consumed all of his booze.

Despite 24 years of marriage and countless American fixer-uppers we restored or renovated, I never managed to get that leather Chesterfield sofa of my own, nor get the memory of it out of my head. However, my taller de Barcelona now features a post-modern, small-space reinterpretation of my uncle’s old American dream. Instead of a reproduction of his massive sofa, I purchased instead a thick tiger maple “minimal boho” desk, essentially an extensible dining table, and surrounded it with four grey and brown leather chairs, their high tufted backs distinctly Chesterfield in their nature. This, to me, was urban winning: items carefully selected, precious, and few but curated for just such a small space. This was making it my home — not someone else’s dream.

Drawing inspiration from architect Gary Chang’s Domestic Transformer apartment in Hong Kong, which I had seen on Apple TV, I recognized early the benefits of modularity and flexibility in such a small space. This setup allowed me to extend the table when needed and, by gathering some adjacent coffee tables that also serve triple-duty as stools for the dining room and the porch, comfortably host dinners for as many as eight people. Each morning, I can collapse the table back into its much smaller desk form for long spans of creative writing. When the table shrinks, I can pull out the small leather sofa for overnight guests, converting the space to two bedrooms.

The desk and the chairs, however, are the center of my home, a rectilinear round table for the knights of procrastination, debate, and the sudden burst of creativity. Often adorned with fresh flowers from one of the stalls only a block away on La Rambla, it is here where friends, artists, writers, and co-conspirators gather, sharing ideas and wine, the latter often more freely than the former. The balcony, though modest, offers a front-row seat to the ever-unfolding drama of La Boqueria below. From my high vantage point, the market is not just a place for procuring edibles but a center stage for witnessing the human condition in all its glorious variety.

Living in quarters so close to the vibrant electricity of two of Barcelona’s most iconic districts — Gothica and El Raval — has turned my life into an ongoing sitcom where the city itself is the protagonist. The daily opera of vendors setting up shop and waiters moving chairs and tables from their cavernous restaurants to their positions on the wide and verdant Rambla amuses me. So do the tourists navigating the serpentine maze of the Ciutat Vella with their oft-vacant blend of awe and confusion as locals expertly weave through the crowds as if performing a well-rehearsed dance.

My mornings, too, are a comedic ballet, often beginning with a pilgrimage to La Boqueria. Navigating this market is an exercise in human pinball, ricocheting off of tourists mesmerized by Iberian hams while locals fiercely guard their secret spots. I attempt to blend in, armed with my rudimentary language skills and a smile so wide it borders on maniacal. I procure my coffee, an ensaïmada, a Spanish-style croissant, and some bottles of wine, each transaction a blend of charades and hopeful guessing, often leaving vendors amused and myself slightly more caffeinated.

Now, as someone who considers “exercise” to be the strenuous journey from bed to coffee machine each morning, the idea of a truly walkable city greatly appeals to me. Committed to immersing myself in this compact lifestyle, I specifically chose La Rambla as my starting line — a boulevard so famous for pickpockets that you would think they were a listed tourist attraction. Here, though, I found the streets to be quite safe if you were not a fool, careless with your bags or your phone.

A fundamental of the 5-Minute City rule is that fresh produce should be a mere 400 meters from my doorstep. Beyond the lavish offerings of the Boqueria, I often found nestled between souvenir shops selling “I ❤ BCN” thongs and touristic cafés, a large number of quaint shops and bodegas, almost hidden in plain sight from the tourists, which sell affordable locally fresh produce, cheese, ham, sheets, towels, lamps, cleaning supplies, and yes of course, wine. There are also seven ferreterias, or hardware stores, within a short radius of my place that sell paint, plumbing and electrical supplies, ladders, tools, and, yes, the all-important picture hooks. Basically, everything I needed to fix and furnish my flat was truly less than 5 minutes away in my city of the future.

Beyond the shops, department stores, and, of course, the museums and tourist attractions, there are also many galleries, hat shops, knife stores, pastisserias, gelato stands, barber shops, and tattoo parlors at my disposal. One of my favorite traditions is to stroll through the open-air artist market near the Basilica de Santa Maria del Pi on weekends when artists flock there to sell their works. The expansive world of this city has indeed become my 5-minute oyster.

Many days, I would reserve time for some intellectual escapades at La Central del Raval, a bookstore that has made its home in a breathtaking old monastery. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill bookstore; it’s a sanctuary for bibliophiles, with towering shelves of books nestled among ancient stone walls and serene green spaces where you can dive into your latest literary find. It’s a place where history, literature, and nature embrace, offering a tranquil escape from the city’s frenetic pace.

Cultural immersion often finds me at Plaça del Reial, the very heart of the Ciutat Vella, attempting to absorb centuries of history through osmosis. Here I listen to street musicians or chat with friends while sipping a cafe con leche as I thumb through Catalonian books, trying to grasp the historical significance of the stones underneath my feet. In truth, I am often just as concerned about finding a café with a restroom than in uncovering the secrets of medieval Catalonia.

When I require peace from the tourists, and perhaps a slice of greenery not overrun by selfie sticks, I frequently venture to the Mossèn Costa i Llobera Gardens at the foot of Montjuic. This hidden gem, with its array of prickly residents, mirrors my own attempts to acclimate — slightly out of place, but striving to thrive. Amidst cacti that seem as bewildered by their surroundings as I am by mine, I find a kinship with these spiky expatriates.

Nighttime escapades inevitably lead to Bar Marsella, an establishment that’s whispered Hemingway’s name so often that it’s practically a liturgy. Sipping absinthe in a setting that suggests time travel might indeed be possible, I strike up conversations with fellow wanderers. Each encounter is a reminder that, while my Catalan or Spanish often falters, the universal language of laughter needs no translation. When I am not at Bar Marsella or downing a bittersweet Negroni at London Bar, another iconic if slightly touristic writer’s haven and a place of pilgrimage for the likes of Dalí, Picasso, and Hemingway, there is always Betty Ford’s dive bar in the nightlife district of Carrer de Joaquín Costa. Betty’s is far enough from the tourists and just dodgy enough, like me, to feel at home. Their curry is spicy, the B-movie nights are a blast, and the Alhambra Reserva is only €3.50.

Here, the city, and not just my tiny, 365-square-foot urban universe, is my home. Because I truly live in the expanse of the city, I can make every item and every inch of my flat find a greater story, a purpose. The space constraints have taught me the fine art of curation — what earns a place in my life, and what, like excess words in a draft, must be edited out. It’s a daily exercise in minimalism, not just of belongings but of being. Here, in the shadow of the Gothic Quarter, life is stripped down to its essence, and I am constantly reminded of the beauty of simplicity. I cherish my German language poster of Fritz Lang’s 1927 cinematic oeuvre, Metropolis, along with a theatrical poster of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and the obligatory print of Salvador Dalí, with his iconic quote, “I don’t do drugs: I am the drugs.” Jo també, Senyor Dalí. Me too.

Living just a block from the cacophony and charm of La Rambla, I’ve embraced the absurdity and beauty of my utterly surreal new life. Each day is a lesson in humility, a testament to the unexpected joys of getting lost, both literally and metaphorically, in a city that dances to its own rhythm.

Barcelona, with its blend of Gothic gravitas and El Raval’s riotous color, has become more than just a backdrop to my expat follies and adventures; it’s a character in its own right, indulging my missteps with a patient chuckle. As I navigate this life, a stone’s throw from La Rambla’s endless theater, I’ve come to cherish the romantic comedy of errors that is my new, wonderfully Catalonian experience.

The nearest beach, the Playa de la Barceloneta, is a short, 15-minute stroll with friends. Weekend writer’s groups in nearby bars and cafes offer frequent inspiration, and then there are the English language stand-up comedy nights at such memorable venues as The Comedy Clubhouse, the Blacklab Taproom, or Imprfcto Poblenou. I have never felt lonely here, nor do I feel disconnected, despite my lack of fluency in either Catalan or Spanish. With such open mic comedy themes as Space Cowboy, Mid-Week Crisis, Nonsense Pudding, and Coffee con Comedy, I fit right in, and the humor and the friendships are profound and meaningful to me. I just have to make the effort to get out of my small space and into the rest of my home: that is, the city itself.

This close-knit existence, where my world is as wide as my windows and as deep as my desk, has become a canvas for a life less ordinary. It’s a place where laughter echoes off ancient walls, where friendships are forged over shared meals so close to their source that you can still hear the market’s din, and where inspiration is as plentiful as the olives and oranges just a stone’s throw away.

On this expansive, urban stage that merely begins with my own 34 square meters, each day is a comedic new episode, each urban challenge a punchline waiting to be delivered. And as I navigate the quirks and charms of expat life in Barcelona, one thing is abundantly clear: in this city, and in this apartment, the best things truly do come in small, hilariously packed packages.