The push for 15-minute cities is now a rallying cry for far-right conspiracists

2023-03-10T18:48:00-05:00

Never before has a mundane theory of urbanism been such a lightning rod for outrage [...] Some online forums have claimed that the 15-minute city represents the first step towards an inevitable Hunger Games society, in which residents will not be allowed to leave their prescribed areas. They see it not as a route to a low-traffic, low-carbon future, but as the beginning of a slippery slope to living in an open-air prison.

The man widely credited with developing the “15-minute city” concept, Colombian-born French academic Carlos Moreno, is the most likely source for paranoia owing to his radical left-wing identity. Though, as Wainwright points out, the idea dates to the 1920s, many conspiracists view its adaptation by cities like Brussels and Paris as tied to the “Trojan horse” that was the pandemic.

Thousands attended a rally against Oxford’s forthcoming plan last month, decrying the city’s embrace of the idea as one entiwned with Stalinism and surveillance culture. Oxford will indeed levy fines on motorists, but the plan’s core, according to Wainwright and Moreno, is more democratic than the extant circulation strategies far-right misinformation campaigns are seeking tacitly to uphold.

"Today 80 percent of urban mobility is forced, because people have to get up early and commute to school, to workplaces that are far from their homes," he told Politico recently. "In a city of proximity in which ser...

Archinect - News

The push for 15-minute cities is now a rallying cry for far-right conspiracists