One of the most annoying aspects of the COVID-19 event was the daily exhortations by self-proclaimed experts, especially those housed in medical schools..They insisted the were right about everything. Any dissent from their fearful narrative was the product of a conspiracy theory. If they were in fact experts, they would have known the evidence regarding the effectiveness of face masks or vaxxing children, for instance, was highly contested among real scientists. The implication seems clear enough: either they were lying, or they were ignoramuses. That's the main reason why the opinions of media-authorized experts have become so discredited..At the University of Calgary, the experts recently returned to centre stage, now promoting the 15-minute city..Here is Gavin McCormack, from the med school, explaining what the 15-minute city is: “It’s living in a neighbourhood that is walkable or bikeable, where you can easily access everything you need living your daily life.”.Walk, ride a bike, or maybe take public transit. Just don’t drive..McCormack went out of his way to explain the 15-minute city had nothing to do with a war on cars. Nor was it a mode of social engineering. On the contrary, we're already victims of social engineering because of cars!.“The fact that you don’t think there's any other option than using your motor vehicle isn’t random; there’s a reason for that, and your preference for driving your vehicle has been shaped by policies, and design, and culture. The 15-minute city will fix all that.".Already he revealed the major assumption of all planners: human beings are incapable of free choice. And yet, most of us choose to drive because we like to drive. It has nothing to do with being “shaped” by anything. The day you get your driver’s licence is a day of liberation..Not surprisingly, med school planners were joined by planners from the planning school — or rather from the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape (SAPL). The academic unit evolved from the faculty of Environmental Design, “which was founded on a radical ideological premise of interdisciplinary cross-scalar environmental design.”.Years ago, I found this description puzzling. I thought the environment was precisely what was not designed..Silly me. For planners, everything is designed — another reason for ignoring human freedom. This explains why today SAPL is devoted to tackling the “climate crisis” along with “social injustice” by engaging in “design thinking.”.It turns out climate and injustice are “grounded in the built environment.” Who knew? Some of us thought that injustice was part of the human condition and the alleged climate crisis was a bogus moral panic..But if these grave matters are grounded in the built environment and the built environment can be unbuilt, then the solution is in sight. This explains why one of the prominent SAPL faculty, Francisco Uribe, explained staying put inside the perimeter of the 15-minute city will ensure “environmental sustainability” and a “much smaller carbon footprint.”.He also explained the 15-minute city was derived from the “neighbourhood unit” concept of the 1930s. All that’s involved, therefore, is “trying to bring back a type of community that existed long ago,” when small towns grew “organically” from a commercial core..As a mere matter of fact, the notion of a “neighbourhood unity” was devised by Clarence Perry in the late nineteenth century, not the 1930s. Moreover, neighbourhood planning was central to debates among planners for well over a century. The unresolved conflict was over whether proximity of services or mobility in the urban landscape is more important. The 15-minute city planners favour proximity; citizens favour mobility..The conflict was highlighted by the Mayor of Calgary, Jyoti Gondek, in her remarks to the SAPL last week. She confessed she “loved” the project. “But,” she added, “my community associations won’t like it.”.What to do? Well, stop being a “chickenpants” and impose it anyway. The poor saps who have the misfortune to live in Edmonton are already saddled with a scheme called District Planning, which would implement a long-term project that Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said would create a “community of communities," — small towns in our big city.”.In both places, elected politicians came down on the side of the non-elected experts. Ever wonder why?.Readers of the Western Standard already noted the views of citizens who prefer liberty to being nudged or compelled to behave the way experts want. Former Ontario MPP Randy Hillier compared 15-minute cities to his chicken coop where the chickens “own nothing and are completely happy,” just like the World Economic Forum promised. Everything is provided for free..Cory Morgan made the same commonsense arguments made a century ago against Clarence Perry’s “neighbourhood units.” They fracture existing cities unnecessarily; there are no big-box stores, which means higher prices; they don’t work in cities that have winters (as Mayor Sohi may have forgotten). Worst of all for the planners, citizens are likely to refuse to live in them — as Mayor Gondek feared..One other problem, which was a major lesson of the COVID-19 experience: crises are seen by politicians as a way to increase their power by increasing surveillance of citizens..In the UK, Oxford, one of its intellectual capitals, and Canterbury, one of its spiritual capitals, are leading the way to become 15-minute cities, now called “low-traffic neighbourhoods.” One of the surveillance systems in place includes licence-plate scanners to identify intruders. It would be a simple matter to add some facial-recognition software. This is why a 15-year-old Oxford girl explained 15-minute neighbourhoods would “soon become digital ID facial recognition zones.” She also explained such surveillance did not mean safety. Cameras don’t deter attacks; they just record them. .For critics of the 15-minute city, the whole idea reminds them, with good reason, of the experts’ advocacy of COVID-scare lockdowns..No, no, says Uribe: “this is ridiculous, … a baseless conspiracy theory intentionally crafted to enrage and manipulate people. They are spreading misinformation” and “delaying important design decisions.” In fact, these are not conspiracy theories but technical options never addressed by the 15-minute advocates. And they wonder why no one trusts them? We’ve seen this movie before. During the COVID event..The endpoint can easily be anticipated: the alleged conspiracy theorist must be silenced because, Uribe says, “we cannot afford to continue growing the way we are.” Moreover, it’s “going to get worse if we continue to do it this way.”.To which there is an obvious and fatal objection: how can he possibly know the future? Well, if one has no understanding of human freedom, all one can do is project existing behaviour into the future with the expectation that he and his fellow planners can control it..Take it easy Gavin; settle down Francisco. If things can’t go on this way, they won’t. But its not your job to tell the rest of us how to live.
