The concept of 15-minute cities has been making news as authoritarian-minded city planners and urbanists push the plan in the developed world..The notion of 15-minute cities isn’t new and ideologically driven bureaucrats and politicians have been trying to implement this sort of thing for decades. With the World Economic Forum now promoting the concept, people have been sounding the alarm bells on it and they should..No, we won’t see walled, World War II era Warsaw-style ghettos being erected in cities as some alarmists have been claiming. Existing neighborhoods won’t be bulldozed to create packed, roadless communities either. The 15-minute city plans are more subtle and will be typically implemented incrementally. Cities embracing the plan will cause significant economic and social damage as they try to create impossible urban utopias and adherents to the ideology will become ever more forceful as citizens reject the plans..So, what are these 15-minute cities anyway?.A 15-minute city is a planned community where any and all services can be reached through walking or bicycling within 15 minutes or less. A simple and nice sounding concept on the surface for those who don’t like the idea of traveling and who are in good enough shape to get around. They are a pipe-dream utopia for people who think humanity will evolve into a world of densely packed communities run under a socialist system of course. Food and energy will be produced through nothing but renewable means and organic production..The problem is the whole concept is a pile of unworkable, idealistic hogwash. Particularly in North America..To make a 15-minute city viable, the urban density has to be far higher than nearly any city in North America. Having employment, schools, groceries, entertainment, and government services all available within a 15-minute walk or bicycle ride means packing a whole lot of people into a small area to sustain those services. While proponents like to point to some trendy communities in cities that are packed with restaurants, stores and services within walking distance, these communities also have very expensive real estate and the small, specialty stores and services charge high prices to maintain themselves..The rising cost of living is challenging for people already. Big-box stores help keep necessities affordable for people. Love or hate retailers like Wal-mart, Superstore and Home Depot, it can’t be denied they keep prices low due to their size and taking advantage of economies of scale. How many of those big-box stores would it take to be within a 15-minute walk or bike ride in every part if a city?.Likewise, government services can’t be everywhere. Government services are expensive and inefficient enough as it is. How many passport offices will we need?.Proponents like to point to cities such as Paris, Shanghai and New York as examples to follow. All of those are already high-density environments and the cost of living in New York is outrageous..Then there is climate reality. Most North American cities have six-month winters where walking and bicycling can be uncomfortable if not impossible. Density zealots ignore that reality..The biggest obstacle for those who want to see 15-minute cities is consumer mobility. People just don’t want to live in them. Especially after a pandemic that drove people into working from home and living in the suburbs. When cities start densifying inner city neighbourhoods, citizens who can afford to flee head to the suburbs. .That’s what drives the authoritarian streak among urban density ideologues.."If people don’t want to live in high density ghettos, then they need to be encouraged!" they say..That encouragement comes in the form of taxing, penalizing and demonizing people living in suburbs and driving autos. Zoning laws force new and existing developments to densify while only certain types of businesses are approved to open shop. Progressive cities are pursuing charters and legislation to reach out and force density standards on neighboring communities. They won’t literally block people from leaving, but want to create a regulatory form of an iron-curtain to try and stem the flow..If every community is hampered and miserable with urban density regulations, people won't have anywhere to flee to..The goal of 15-minute cities isn’t to make the world a greener place or to pursue some kind of societal equity. The goal is control..A prime enemy for authoritarian urban planners is the personal automobile. It empowers individuals and allows them to escape urban living. Residents locked into high density communities and dependent on public transit are under the thumb of the state. It's easy to control people when you control their ability to move. That is why 15-minute cities hold such appeal for the authoritarians with the WEF..Just think of how effective a social credit policy of citizen control could be if citizens were completely dependent on the state for movement?.Cashless, car-less and living in a crammed enclave, citizens would truly live by the whim of the state..A nightmare for free thinking individuals, but a wet-dream for elitist authoritarians who envision themselves at the top of the pile..Of course, as with every socialist’s paradise, the political elites won’t live among the masses in those ghettos. We need only look to how things turned out in the Soviet Union to see how that all irons out. The high ranking bureaucrats escaped to private dachas on the periphery of their cities while citizens were crammed into ugly rows of block housing. .The 15-minute cities will fail, but the ideologues pushing those concepts could push us all to the brink of bankruptcy trying to make them work. The only question is how far will we let them go before we push back? How long will we keep electing progressive adherents to the WEF agenda to positions of municipal leadership?.Yesterday’s conspiracies keep turning into today’s realities..We can’t bury our heads in the sand on what the push for 15-minute cities is all about.
