The View
The 15-minute city might be one of the smartest, kindest and healthiest ideas in human history. So why are certain people so terrified of it?
AS CAPTAIN MAINWARING might have demanded: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Except apparently, it’s a war on motorists. Well, now you come to mention it, no, I hadn’t picked up on that actually, as I make my way through city streets choked with exhaust fumes, along pavements strewn and blocked with badly parked Range Rovers, and as I see yet another glossy, aspirational ad for a gas-guzzling extravagance. To be honest with you, if there really was a war on cars, I’d be very tempted to join up, even if only in the catering corps. Although this is a magazine for walkers, I fear the above sentiments will annoy some, so let me clarify. Of course, I understand that, to a degree, modern life would be unliveable – or at least, less convenient – without the internal combustion engine. I’m not a supporter of the tactics of Just Stop Oil, however pressing and serious the issues they highlight, chiefly because, like the brilliant Swedish environmentalist Andreas Malm, I believe that it inconveniences powerless working-class citizens rather than the profits of the global oil companies. But is there really, as the Prime Minister has suggested, a war on motorists? As a walker, I have to doubt it. From the Peasants’ Revolt to the Kinder Trespass, walking in this country has always been an innately political act, asserting the right of the free individual to go where they please, within reason. So how have we ended up in such a weird, dislocated, exasperating world where the motorist needs to be protected above all else? A world where such a clearly brilliant idea as the 15-minute city has become the target of smears, not just by the tinfoilhatted fringe but by mainstream politicians?
The 15-minute city is a concept proposed by the urbanist Carlos Moreno that suggests city dwellers should be able to access essential functions like healthcare, education and entertainment within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from home without using a car.
Yet this most sensible and progressive idea has come under attack by conspiracy theorists who claim (without a shred of evidence) that it’s a tactic of the, ahem, ‘deep state’ designed to oppress the populace (see also mobile phone masts and Covid jabs). Quite how it is going to do this is not really explained. But then science and logic are never the strong suits in these debates.
None of the criticisms is remotely accurate. Fifteen-minute cities are an idea, not a set of rules. Sympathetic councils have no special powers to restrict people’s freedom of movement. The idea is to reduce car traffic (call me sinister, but I think that’s a good thing) but they do not prevent people from using other forms of transport. Barcelona, Paris and Utrecht are adopting the concept, and UK
