As is typical with most ideas promoted by the UN – it doesn’t sound all that horrible in isolation. I mean, who doesn’t want to be able to walk to get their groceries or to the local community centre for a cookout? In fact, some of you may already be living in areas with everything within 15 minutes of your home. Then what’s the problem, you might ask?
Well, when you look beyond the buzzwords you begin to see that, much like smart cities, 15-minute cities have the potential to be used as a way to limit freedom of movement, freedom of speech and privacy. Many people have also come to fear that concepts like smart cities and 15-minute cities are really about socially engineering people to stop driving their own private vehicles – all in the name of the climate, of course. Look no further than a brand new book by Carlos Moreno, which claims to offer “techniques to change the habits of automobile-dependent city residents”. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
Moreno has been successful in pushing his idea into the mainstream, with Paris, France first adopting the idea in 2020. But it wasn’t until late 2022 and early 2023 that resistance to 15-minute cities became a public issue. In February 2023, an estimated 2,000 demonstrators gathered in central Oxford, England for a protest against the creation of what is known as a low-traffic neighbourhood, or LTN.
To implement the LTN, Oxford officials voted to introduce six “traffic filters” which are intended to limit the use of cars in residential areas of the city during certain hours. Automatic License Plate Reader (“ALPR”) cameras will scan license plates to fine drivers from outside the county of Oxfordshire who enter these areas during high-traffic times.
Of course, the media has done their best to label the opponents of 15-minute cities as “far right” conspiracy theorists. However, due to the pushback from residents and international attention, the Oxford council recently voted to remove mentions of “15-minute cities” from their city planning documents. While the council voted to remove the phrase from their documents, they made it clear that they still plan to continue their vision of a walkable city with limits on private vehicles. Louise Upton, the cabinet member for planning at Oxford City Council told The Times that removing the phrase would make “no noticeable difference to our plans"...<<<Read More>>>...