There seems to be an international revolt against the 15-Minute City. As I regard the 15-Minute City, or at least my version of it, as benign and positive for all, I write to defend it. But not to defend the inept and sometimes high-handed, even authoritarian way it has been introduced by many of its advocates across the globe.
That has been a disaster for what is, in its more moderate form, basically a good idea, reflecting traditional values around what makes a good place and a sustainable context in which humans can flourish in the city.
I stress immediately, for the avoidance of doubt, that I blame over zealous proponents of the 15-Minute City for this revolt far more than some cabal of “far right” and apparently “white supremacist” nutters sometimes depicted as being behind the current agitation.
In all honesty, there are vanishingly few of those in the city of Oxford in the UK or even Oxfordshire communities who have risen up to oppose the shire council’s attempt to introduce “15-Minute City” neighbourhoods and the city council’s “Low Traffic Neighbourhood” strategy.
It is mostly your average family member that has been involved in the demonstrations – from across the political spectrum of a profoundly un-extreme neck of the woods – not some local representatives of the Ku Klux Klan or branch of Marie Le Pen’s Front National.
And they have a point or two to make about how top down and un-consultative and at best badly communicated the process of community engagement has been – they may have been heard in that process but definitely not listened to – and how dismissive some councils and governments have been in responding to public concerns.
I add: some of the language used by academic or activist supporters of the 15-Minute City whether in Oxford or beyond has reflected the worst examples I’ve ever seen of elite snobbery and anger at the idea that the plebs – all “gammons and Karens” no doubt – may have their own ideas.
So although there are undoubtedly some involved in the campaigns who have extreme views and others who would oppose anything proposed by the council in their area, a fair-minded person would I think concede that even great policies, by being rushed into reality too soon and without proper discussion as to the whys and wherefores of such a significant reform, can justly be rejected. This is part of what has caused these protests and I have no doubt the public sector proposing this kind of radical change must learn from this woeful approach to implementation.
By the way, the fact that “globalist” groups such as the World Economic Forum, the tech billionaires and radical leftist city authorities such as the Paris Mayoralty, support the 15 Minute City concept simply does not help the cause. If I have a politics at all at the moment, I could be described as a “left populist” (though I prefer ‘Welsh Gaullist’ myself), and I am also suspicious of anything that comes out of the WEF and other globalist activists. If Davos Man wants something – he of “You will own nothing and be happy” fame – I almost always think twice before accepting it. It is always wise to take a long spoon with which to sup with the Devil after all.
And though I am a fan of much of what the Paris Mayor has been doing to improve the liveability of that city, sometimes proponents of even positive change can be their own worst enemies and by insisting over-much on ‘the best’ at all costs can become the ‘enemy of the good’. This is one of those occasions.
I didn’t see the trouble coming by the way . I have been a supporter of the “15 Minute City” (and its close relative , the “2 Minute City” of hyper local amenity and mix of uses) from when it emerged in various forms in Paris. The concept behind a 15-Minute city is pretty obvious: the idea that a town or city can be designed or retrofitted so that much of what you may need in your daily life is no more than 15 minutes’ walk or cycle away.
In other words, all your work, shopping, education, healthcare and leisure needs should be near where you live. The pandemic laid the ground for this idea – based as I say on good place-making principles – and reminded many of us of the positive side of having local, walkable/cyclable services and amenities. The only way was up, I thought.
But some radicals and car-haters (I’m no fan but live in a low density, quite hot, place with poor public transport and limited tree cover suppressing opportunities for walkability and cycling), probably with climate change as their main issue , have decided that the idea isn’t just to dramatically increase accessibility, local quality of life and opportunities for active transport and the health and well-being which comes from that: it is to reduce car usage.
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And this “attack on the car” and the insistence on bike lanes in contested and sometimes congested road space, feels part of an elite and indeed WEF attack – with popular fears enhanced by the very strong globalist/centralised state/tech alliance which emerged under Covid – on things favoured by, necessary to, ordinary people and their sense of autonomy.
The latter point is stressed in the work of American philosopher Matt Crawford who I respect and urge people to read. His defence of the car and resistance to future forms of mass transit – which are likely to come in the form of private/tech ownership of transport networks and vehicle fleets of EVs/ autonomous vehicles – has more resonance with decent suburbanites struggling to get to work and access jobs and amenities at this moment than “this medicine is good for you, trust me” commandments coming down from on high, however well meant.
The lesson? It’s the basic rule of successfully seeking and implementing fundamental shifts in anything but especially public policy. Be truthful about what you doing and why it’s necessary. Be evidenced based.
Don’t just pretend to ask people their views or suggestion for improvement: make real opportunities to have conversations across communities using physical and virtual platforms; take good ideas and reject bad ones transparently with reasons given and constantly refer back to communities and engage with them as projects develop and change; above all measure the real impact of projects and ensure honest feedback and powerful data about this so that the next project and process learns from the performance and experience of the project or initiative.
I add: the fact that all this is so rarely done in the design of public policy, infrastructure and development, is another reason why communities react badly to change. 15 minutes more spent on such stuff could have ensured a better reception for the 15-Minute City. I hope it’s not too late to learn this lesson for what is in principle the kind of city and town structure people mean when they think of what a “good place” is.
Policymakers need to learn from the past. Does anyone else remember the noble reasons for the Bijlmermeer in Amsterdam and how badly that turned out? It’s hard to trust governments and corporate leaders when they don’t deliver what they promise or abandon projects that are no longer profitable.
Thanks Tim. Well said. “Let’s not pretend” to consult, collaborate, listen to lived experience etc. In the past few months I’ve seen a 14-year Yazidi refugee boy shut down by his interlocutors because, asked his experience, he mentioned being bullied by Aboriginal class mates; a young woman (who will vote yes no matter) being put down simply for asking how voting for The Voice will work; and a consultation conducted on aged care in which the elderly participants could only answer the questions put when they wanted to talk about what really concerned them. We’ve really to think much more about power relationships when we elites seek to drive change – not least because we might find out why we need to modify our own views or approaches.
Thanks, Tim for your honesty. I have been involved in how long people take to get around in cities based on where they live and the modes available, since the 1980s. Its always around 1.1 hours travel time budget a day (half an hour for journey to work mostly) and has been the same through history. We created the terms automobile dependence to describe the past 70 years of urban fabric created around cars, transit city for the urban fabric around trams and trains built 1850 to 1940, and walking city for the fabric around walking as in all historic urban centres where you walk to most things in 30 minutes and 30 minutes back again.
To artificially suggest that you can make a 15 minute city to walk to everything in any of these urban fabrics is to not understand cities. The 15 minute city was only for a very few people living in historically dense walking cities like Paris where lots of local things could happen in that time, but even then it would be hard to apply to most people, especially for work.
It was totally naïve and without any understanding of how cities work. It is especially hard for people in automobile dependent urban fabric to be told that they will be controlled by some people and told that they will be unable to use their cars for many activities as they were creating a 15 minute city!
This is fundamentally not an equity issue or one of control by some big companies, it is simply not understanding cities other than trendy urban fabrics like central Paris and thinking it would apply equally everywhere else.
It certainly doesn’t work in the outer suburbs around Paris that are no different than much of the US and Australia. We have to find urban fabric changes that enable reduced car use, not arbitrary travel time targets imposed because they sound fashionably correct.
While the basic points are unarguable, there is another layer to this that the case of Oxford in particular demonstrates. It was actually the attempt to soften the impact of low traffic neighbourhoods on car drivers that fuelled the conspiracy theories. The council proposed to give local residents a limited number of passes to drive through the filters each year – a unique feature that as far as I know no other LTN or 15 minute city initiative has tried. it was this that triggered the rumour that people would be confined to their neighbourhoods – not the road closures themselves, which have been a common feature in British cities for decades. No doubt poor council comms didn’t help, nor did deliberate weaponisation by activists. There may not be many of these, but the reality of internet campaigns is that it doesn’t take many to get a conspiracy theory going. But these factors were also present at many other LTN cities: it was the passes that seemed to really trigger the opposition. Which suggests to me that ‘Galilee’s warning’ is in play: additional features designed to make a system safer can, by adding complexity, actually make it more vulnerable.
15 minutes cities, a goo d idea badly handled? Well yes and no. The concept was used as a excuse to allow developers to build high density dwellings without all the essential infrastructure. .