Douglas Farrow, an ethics professor at McGill University, is adamantly opposed to the 15-minute city concept..The idea was first unveiled by Columbian-born urbanist professor Carlos Moreno in 2015 at the COP21 conference. The City of Oxford, UK has embraced the concept where amenities are available to all by walking or bicycling within 15 minutes. In 2024, Oxford will be split into nine zones where people will only be allowed to drive to 100 times per year and fined for excessive visits..In an interview with Western Standard, Farrow said little would stop Oxford from lowering allowed trips in future years. He calls such restrictions “totalitarian.” .“When you have young children, you say you have to stay within earshot so we can call you home. We don't set boundaries for adults,” Farrow said..“So what comes next? We will now put up fences around your communities…[like] those invisible fences that keep the dogs in.”.The professor said he believes the concept has other undesirable consequences..“It's going to lead to expropriation of property. It's going to lead to higher taxes, because they have to do this reduplication [of amenities in each district]. That in turn is going to produce more jobs, perhaps, but it will produce also more emissions, which is their reason supposedly for doing it..“Instead of having one arena that two or three communities can use, what? You're going to have three arenas? How is that going to help you with your so-called environmental goals?”.The ethicist, who joined the faculty of McGill in 1998, believes climate change and the pandemic are Trojan horses used to justify controls. He says in both cases, responses were far more effective at creating control than addressing their supposed reasons for implementation..“These plans are very problematic. Is it an accident they're being pushed forward so quickly and so vociferously and in such a heavy-handed fashion hard on the heels of the obedience training of the pandemic lockdowns, which were a frightfully bad idea and hurt lots and lots of people? I don't think it's a coincidence, no,” Farrow said..“The climate change scam, and that's what it is, is ideationally and politically and practically linked with what went on during the pandemic.”.Proponents of the 15-minute concept say they are building community, but Farrow asks what kind..“You will not be the kind of community that can feed and clothe yourselves. You will not be a community with political authority over your own lives, or economic power over your own life. You will be a community entirely dependent.”.Farrow, who writes on Substack, was asked if he believes 15-minute city boosters are truly wholehearted or whether they recognize some truth in their critics’ suspicions..“Some of them … are probably proceeding with it quite cynically because it serves other agendas. The whole climate change movement is caught up in the service of different agendas, and one of them is to take away rights from the people… And they're not thinking in themselves as reducing or even eliminating threats to the natural environment; they're thinking in terms of reducing or eliminating political threats, people with the customs of freedom..“[O]ther people … are just on the verge of madness. That is, they're not thinking clearly at all, and … they see it or feel it as something that makes them important, that gives them a leadership role and even a parental, a patriarchal role.”.Ultimately, Farrow says motivations that include “the reduction or elimination of political freedoms” are the only ones that make sense..“I'm, of course, fully against them. But I can understand why people would behave this way if that was their goal.“Then it becomes a matter of who gets exceptions, who gets permission not only to move, but to build, to have monopolies, as there's a whole lot of political maneuvering and economic maneuvering going on with this just as there has been with the pandemic.”.Farrow said anyone who believes in freedom needs to get in front of the 15-minute city push and stop it..“In some places, it has been stopped in its tracks by the pushback. South end in the UK, for example, started a push back with one woman saying, 'Hey, wait a minute, what is this?' And a movement grew around that, and the council completely backed away from it,” Farrow said..“It's up to us to balance our lives, ourselves, and some of us don't do a very good job of it. But what I don't want to see happen is other people deciding for us the balance of days we leave our neighbourhood, for goodness' sake.”
