15 Minute Cities – Long Read

I love a conspiracy theory. Think about the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot. People go ‘hunting’ these mystical beings. The Roswell alien landings. Did we land on the moon or was it all filmed on a Hollywood soundstage? We did land on the moon. Because think about the amount of people who would have to keep quiet if it was filmed in Hollywood. That bubble would have been burst ages ago. I used to think conspiracy theories were fun, harmless and a way for humans in general to stretch our critical thinking in a fun way. That was until I started to listen to podcasts on conspiracy theories and noticed a very dark and nasty underbelly to these fantastical stories.

Maybe I’ll go into that in another post, but this week I want to talk about 15 minute cities and why our Prime Minister seems to be perpetuating the conspiracy theory around this idea. Essentially 15 minute cities is an idea or a theory whereby all the services we need as humans are within a 15 minute walk or bike ride. It’s city planning, ensuring you have access to shops, a doctor, the post office, a pub, public transport that can link you to the main lines. Sounds pretty sweet right. You get a high quality neighbourhood on your doorstep. I thought about it a bit to highlight an example and for local fans, I stumbled onto Long Buckby, a large village in Northamptonshire. It’s a 15 minute city. You can walk from the edge to the centre in 15 minutes, it has shops, a doctor’s surgery, a post office, pubs, takeaways, a bus route, a train line, parks and sports facilities. Everything is contained in this one area that you need for the day to day. Now when you want or need to go somewhere else, it has a train line and access to two main roads.

The conspiracy theory around 15 minute cities is that they’re socialist and once a ‘city’ has all the amenities the big bad government thinks that it deserves, they’ll never let the people who live there out again. A nebulous power will contain them as if the majority of us don’t have cars or means to leave. Bizarre. It’s about the convenience of having good public services and shops and cutting down on using your car so much. Oooooo there I go, someone just had an aneurism. How dare I tell them to stop using their car so much! Well I haven’t and neither do 15 minute cities. But it’s nice isn’t it when you can pop down the shops if you need to without using your car. And no one is telling you that you can’t, even if the shops are only round the corner.

You see the government managed to scrape a by-election win by 500 votes in Uxbridge and South Ruislip because of some poor messaging from the Labour party and the Mayor of London around the new ultra low emission zone (ULEZ). The Tories essentially scared people into thinking they would all be affected even though most cars are ULEZ compliant and there was a handy vehicle scrappage scheme which was extended without the help of the government. Also never mind that Boris Johnson was the first to announce ULEZ when he was Mayor and Grant Shapps (or is it Michael Green this week) made introducing it a pledge Sadiq Khan had to make to ensure funding for TfL during Covid.

And Rishi Sunak believes that poking at conspiracy theories around motoring will be enough to wind people up and get them scared into thinking that everyone will be locked into their immediate locale some time in the future by scary government officials. It’s not going to happen. These knobheads seem to love taking something which is a good idea, amenities on your doorstep and giving it an authoritarian slant and scaring people. 15 minute cities is not a war on the motorist, it’s a way to use your car a little less, thereby saving you some money and helping the environment a little, whilst having amenities a little closer. Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives need to grow up and start talking about things that will actually help everyone and stop trying to scare the general populous. And this will happen more often. The Tories don’t talk about things to unite people, they talk about things to divide people. So if you find yourself getting wound up by what a Tory politician has said, stop, drop and roll. Ask yourself who are they asking you to be afraid of, or what they are asking you to be afraid of. Then assess whether you should be afraid. And then get wound up if you want to or not. But don’t let them lead you to fear without thinking for yourself.