Posted on 06/12/2023 7:16:06 AM PDT by MtnClimber
A 15-minute neighborhood sounds like something out of a guidebook tour: how to see the highlights of Le Marais in Paris in 15 minutes or less. But it’s the newest flavor in urban planning: a city composed of small districts that include all the key services for residents within a short walk.
Though the concept, dubbed the “15-minute city,” is of recent vintage, it gained traction during the pandemic lockdowns, when advocates observed that the vast reduction in activity created more “human-centric” neighborhoods, with residents exploring their local streets and availing themselves of nearby services that they might once have ignored. “For the first time, people experienced the city without cars, and they understood we can live without cars and it’s better,” enthused David Belliard, deputy mayor of Paris, whose officials have promoted the idea.
Though the concept seems innocuous—who wouldn’t want everything you need nearby?—plans to adopt it have lately ignited street protests, press denunciations, and social-media warfare, especially in European cities. One spark has been a move by the city of Oxford in England to impose traffic restrictions, including closing off some neighborhoods to cars during the day, to encourage more biking and walking. Protesters hit the streets in February to fight the initiative, with signs reading “NO TO 15-MINUTE CITIES” and complaints that the traffic restrictions recalled the lockdowns. Marchers also objected to the traffic cameras being installed to scan license plates to see if a car had entered a no-go area—deeming it a troubling expansion of the surveillance state.
The local protests drew some notable outside reactions. Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson observed that, while walkable neighborhoods were “lovely,” he rejected the idea that “tyrannical bureaucrats” should decide where one should drive. The former head of the U.K. Independence Party, Nigel Farage, called the Oxford plan a preview of “climate change lockdowns.”
Advocates for the Oxford measures defended them as simple efforts to provide people with what they want nearby. One Guardian journalist described the 15-minute city as a “mundane theory of urbanism,” while others in the press were more combative, denouncing the protesters as “conspiracists” and “climate-change deniers.” A few American publications expressed outrage, too. USA Today even performed a “fact check,” quoting the originator of the 15-minute city idea, Sorbonne University professor Carlos Moreno, who insisted that it has nothing to do with climate-change lockdowns.
Reading these accounts, one would think that no one outside of right-wing conspiracy groups would find anything controversial about 15-minute cities. In fact, the idea has been criticized across the political spectrum—from left-leaning observers, who charge that it’s just a form of “champagne socialism,” to academics worried about the privacy issues involved in such micro-control of the design of every neighborhood. Harvard economist and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Edward Glaeser, for instance, describes the 15-minute city as “not really a city at all. It’s an enclave—a ghetto—a subdivision.” He added that the idea is a “dead-end which would stop cities from fulfilling their true roles as engines of opportunity” because in practice, it would undermine one of the chief benefits of urban living: connecting people. Urbanist Alain Bertaud has written that the 15-minute city is an idea of mayors who “pretend that a city is a complex object that must be designed in advance by brilliant specialists. They would then impose their design on the city’s inhabitants who lack vision and genius.” Bertaud notes that the 15-minute city would necessitate direct “government intervention in the job and retail market” to ensure that all services are available locally and to minimize the kind of commuting for work that people in Western societies engage in to expand their employment opportunities.
The winners in this new urbanism scheme, critics argue, would be wealthier neighborhoods, where services already exist because providers, like retailers, value these locations. By the same token, 15-minute cities might further segregate poorer neighborhoods, with commuting restrictions making it harder for people there to get ahead. In a working paper, MIT and Harvard researchers contend that “15-minute cities may . . . exacerbate the social isolation of marginalized communities.” France’s Chroniques d’architecture expresses the same concern, arguing that the urban plan behind the concept amounts to “refusing progress, refusing real living together, refusing sharing, refusing openness, refusing embellishment, refusing consumption.”...
As someone mentioned in another thread...The WHO Digital Passport will keep you in your 15-minute city.
the 15 minute city idiocy is a green, anti-suburb movement to get us herded into cities for easy control. While John F’ing Kerry will live in multiple mansions.
World Enslavement Forum is code for the New Nazi Party
Keep on trying until push comes to shove.
I will keep my 45 minute drive to a city
Cities are no longer needed (except for warehousing and control of the peasants). People should get out.
Get in your hovel and eat your porridge.
They(?) are going to implement this idea somewhere in the UK soon (Oxford?) IIRC. You will be ‘allowed’ out of your 15 minute area several times per year. WTAF? No suburban or urban living. Think multiple high rise apartment buildings.
That picture at the top , where are the young people ?
The whole plan now is to cover the turd sandwich of impoverishing workers down to 19th century levels with a green lettuce wrap. You will own nothing, and be ordered to celebrate greenness.
Will they increase Police forces by 1000 % to keep this going ?
DUH! Headlines first article later. As usual. 😂👍 Its about Oxford so at least I remembered that. DOH!
Uh, rural and sub urban. Need more coffee. Oh, and it is Monday. 😁
Because people do not like the idea of being locked up?
Seems like a lot if millennials (moronials?) don’t have a problem with this. But, they will eventually.
it’s not “...plans to adopt it...”
it’s plans to impose it....
The right thing to do is to eviscerate the 15-minute cancer where ever it manifests.
This is almost a necessary function of rising living standards. For all the flaws of urban living, there are beneficial economies of scale that come with some degree of population density. Medical services, fire protection, and even such things as clean water and sanitary sewer systems are rarely feasible in rural or semi-rural areas.
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