Good Evening All,
A 15-Minute City is a 2016 concept closely tied to Smart Cities and is being introduced to cities in western countries, including the U.S., as Smart Planning. 15-Minute Cities are further along than readers might suspect and have wide support from mayors. The real purpose is control of residents. This is the subject of tonight’s newsletter.
15 Minute Cities,
Creeping Totalitarianism
I’ll bet many readers haven’t heard of 15-Minute Cities. 15-Minute Cities are a spinoff of mixed-use developments and smart cities. The concept for 15-Minute Cities is that all essential needs are located within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from residents in the community. The objective is to reduce CO2 by restricting driving. Several 15-Minute Districts have already been built within existing cities. The appeal to residents is that essentials such as grocery, entertainment, urgent care centers, schools, recreation space, and more are readily available within the community. There is also a closeness between residents. Sounds idyllic.
15-Minute Cities were first imagined in 2016 by Carlos Moreno, a Scientific director of the Chair “Entrepreneurship, Territory Innovation“, (CETI), Panthéon Sorbonne University – Paris, France. Moreno is also tied to the concept and development of Smart Cities. The CETI website lists the Environmental Defense Fund as a partner among other left leaning organizations. The EDF website states that it does not accept corporate donations, but it does work with the following partners:
The University of Oxford is of interest to this article but notice the relationship with China. 15-Minute Cities are being mandated in Oxford and Canterbury, UK An article posted by the Telegraph.co.uk, describes how 15-Minute Cities will reestablish feudalism. From the article,
In the 11th century, when Oxford University was founded, the King recorded his control of land and people in the Domesday Book, a catalogue of feudal authority. Under that serfdom, a man couldn’t simply travel to another place without the permission of his lords and masters. Now Oxford’s 21st century city fathers want to reintroduce these controls in the form of a concept known as the “15- minute city”.
The 15-minute city sounds lovely in theory; a place where you can find all the goods, services and amenities you need within a gentle quarter of an hour’s walk. It’s the brainchild of Paris-based academic Carlos Moreno, who sees cities not as places made by the choices of citizens but as complex systems to be managed with “smart” technology. And Moreno wants urban planners to manage the city’s inhabitants as well. His ideal relies on a set of controls and limits imposed, in true feudal style,
on residents.In Oxford, and in a similar scheme in Canterbury, councils will require residents to have a permit to work elsewhere in the city and will limit the number of times they can drive across the boundary of their allocated 15-minute zone. If you don’t comply, the city’s automatic number-plate recognition systems will allow the council to levy a £70 fine.
The scheme won’t affect Duncan Enright, the Oxfordshire councillor leading its introduction, since he doesn’t live in Oxford, but he helpfully explains that it is about “those essential needs, the bottle of milk, pharmacy, GP, schools which you need to have” and that it is all part of the council’s plans for net zero. Or to put it another way, you’ll need a permit to visit your mum a few streets away and can only do this twice a week.
The stated purpose of the Oxford and Canterbury schemes – reducing congestion in their city centres – hides an authoritarianism commonplace in contemporary urban planning.
These modern urbanists believe it is a terrible thing for people to enjoy the flexibility, comfort and efficiency of affordable private transport. Despite the forced shift to electric vehicles and the elimination of fumes and carbon emissions, green planners still want to ban the car.
The 15-minute city seeks to limit the freedom and choice people get from driving, in the name of the environment. Moreno has even spoken of exploiting the pandemic to impose his ideas. “Were it not for Covid-19,” he said in a recent interview, “I think that the conditions for deploying the 15-minute city concept would have been very hard to instigate.”
The 15-minute city aims for a radical remake, not of the city, but of daily life. In what we could call neo-feudalism, urban planners see citizens as counters to be moved about within smart cities; peons not people. They seek to reduce the choices available to residents – making their lives worse, not better.
For the grander and wealthier parts of a city, places that already have that vegan cafe or awardwinning deli, the impact of a 15-minute cordon around your life may be tolerable. But poorer people in a place without these amenities – where the only shop is an overpriced convenience store without fresh fruit and vegetables – will suffer greatly for such policies.
The 15-minute city isn’t merely anti-car and anti-choice, it echoes the social controls and limits of communist China. This might be fine for Oxford’s guilty rich but for ordinary workers, already struggling with housing costs in one of Britain’s least affordable places, the 15-minute city will only make life more limited, more expensive and less free.
15-Minute Cities are also bad for business, employees and customers. 15-Minute Cities will limit the talent pool and subsequently the earnings potential of employees. With restricted competition service will become marginal while prices rise.
The U.S. has 15-Minute Cities in the planning stage under a concept referred to as Smart Planning. Who approves or performs Smart Planning to ensure all residents have access to similar quality essential services? The city council? Who could trust the councils in these cities?
An article posted in the OxfordMail.co.uk, states, Duncan Enright, Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for travel and development strategy, explained the authority’s traffic filter proposals in an interview in The Sunday Times. Mr Enright said: “It is about making sure you have the community centre which has all of those essential needs, the bottle of milk, pharmacy, GP, schools which you need to have a 15-minute neighbourhood.” The aim is to reduce traffic in the city centre and make city living more pleasant. People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week. A maximum of three permits a household will be allowed where there are several adults with cars registered to the address. Buses, coaches, taxis, delivery vans, HGVs, motorbikes and bikes are exempt and there are exceptions for blue badge holders and people with caring responsibilities.
Oxford council members received threats after the announcement and posted a notice explaining what the mandate will and won’t do. The notice states there will be no physical barriers but…. Oxfordshire County Council, supported by Oxford City Council, is proposing to install traffic filters as a trial on six roads in Oxford. The trial is currently planned to begin in 2024. The traffic filters are not physical barriers of any kind and will not be physical road closures. They are simply traffic cameras that can read number plates. If a vehicle passes through the filter at certain times of the day, the camera will read the number plate and (if you do not have an exemption or a residents’ permit) you will receive a fine in the post. Residents living in the rest of Oxfordshire will be able to apply for a permit to drive through the filter on up to 25 days a year.
The notice continues with this doublespeak regarding available services. Will Oxford residents be confined to their local area? No. The misinformation online has linked the traffic filters to the 15-minute neighbourhoods proposal in the City Council’s Local Plan 2040, suggesting that the traffic filters will be used to confine people to their local area. This is not true. The 15-minute neighbourhoods proposal aims to ensure that every resident has all the essentials (shops, healthcare, parks) within a 15-minute walk of their home. They aim to support and add services, not restrict them.
If the concept of 15-Minute Cities is widely adopted by Western Countries’ major cities it will be a certainty that entire populations of people will be locked down for any manner of reasons, including climate emergencies. This September 2022, article posted on Bloomberg.com indicates the 15-Minute Cities concept is being widely applauded by urban mayors. From the article, The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a network of about 100 global mayors that focuses on climate change and sustainability, is partnering with alternative asset manager Nordic Real Estate Partners (NREP) to bring one of the buzziest concepts in urban planning — the “15-minute city” — to life in a handful of locations globally. The public-private partnership will start with at least five pilot cities, which have yet to be announced, according to a press conference Wednesday at the Earthshot Summit in New York City, which was co-sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
It won’t take long before barriers are erected around 15-Mile City districts, and the Western world adopts China’s Covid-19 lockdown policies for a man-made climate change emergency.
