The Patriot Post® · The 15-Minute City
Fifteen-minute cities, or FMCs, are the latest fetish of the leftist elite, though in a way we can understand the appeal. The infrastructure planners see this innovation as a way to recreate the old-timey neighborhood where everyone knew their neighbors and everything they needed was within walking distance.
Naturally, this means an FMC is only going to be about a mile and a half wide. The 15 minutes is figured by the distance it takes to walk from one side of town to the other. This idea was the brainchild of Carlos Moreno, a professor of business working in Paris, France. He started developing this idea in 2010, and many places around the globe latched on to it as a way to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It would be a reset of sorts whereby communities could reorganize and become less fast-paced than the typical urban sprawl.
One can understand the motivation perfectly. We want people to have easy access to the essential goods and services they need like schools, doctors’ offices, their jobs, and community events. It would ideally reduce car dependency and encourage healthier lifestyles.
Mayors in the United States are very interested in creating these types of cities. In a different time and era, this sort of city might be welcomed. However, since the pandemic — and even since Donald Trump’s election in 2016 — there is a recognition amongst the American people that the elite and the people who are run the government hold the populace at large with a great deal of contempt.
As a former mayor of Lake Elsinore, California, put it, “This haughty reality-shifting attitude somehow pervades the elites despite the deserved devastation of the public’s trust in its institutions in the wake of the pandemic, the response to which involved lies, half-truths, spin, lies, mistakes, lies, the threat of force, lies, the threat of unemployment, the ordered home confinement, the mass destruction of small businesses, and lies.”
The mask is off with the government nanny state, and the American people are highly suspicious of ideas like FMCs. The smaller cities would be easier for a larger government to control. These cities may well be the testing grounds for other “environmentally friendly” boondoggles.
It should be noted here that whenever choices are made in the name of environmentalism and preventing climate change, the cost is human lives, livelihoods, and quality of life. FMCs would supposedly make implementing a surveillance state much easier, and surveillance is a big part of these sorts of cities. If you don’t conform to the rules, you will be fined. CO2 emissions will be tied to a social credit score. The smaller cities will be subject to woke ideas like equity. Forced homogeny and diversity are probably going to be another stipulation. Each FMC must be the same.
People have every right to be suspicious toward and even heavily opposed to the implementation of such cities. This idea, seemingly harmless and even convenient at first glance, was adopted by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. This creepy group of shadowy global elitists led by the eccentric Schwab openly wants to run the world.
There is a scene in Madeleine L'Engle’s children’s book A Wrinkle in Time in which the main characters have to go into Camazotz, a city taken over by the force of evil called “it.” As they walk along the streets, they are presented with a scene of a neighborhood where all the children are called out to do their playtime. They bounce the ball at the same time, they skip rope at the same time, and all their “playing” is dictated by the rhythm of “it.” The one kid resisting the rhythm was dragged off for painful reeducation.
This picture of Camazotz is an extreme example, but knowing the minds behind 15-minute cities, are Americans not justified in worrying about a similar sort of dictatorial outcome? Conforming to the powers in charge for the sake of “green” cities seems like a trap.
In the United States, two cities in particular have been selected as the testing ground for other future American FMCs: Cleveland, Ohio, and Chattanooga, Tennessee.