Paranoid meme3/30/2023 Last week in Westminster the Conservative MP for the Don Valley, Nick Fletcher, launched a tirade against the concept: “Will the leader of the house please set aside time for a debate on the international socialist concept of so-called 15-minute cities and 20-minute neighbourhoods?” he asked, “Sheffield is already on this journey, and I do not want Doncaster, which also has a Labour-run socialist council, to do the same.” This means “changing our relationship with time, essentially time relating to mobility,” says Moreno.įast-forward to today and all hell is breaking loose as the spiralling conspiracism of the far-right meets the paranoid fever dream of the anti-vaxx movement. The Ville Du Quart D’Heure concept is based on Moreno’s idea of “chrono-urbanism,” or having leisure, work, and shopping close to home. This, Hidalgo argues, would reduce pollution and stress, creating socially and economically mixed districts to improve overall quality of life for residents and visitors. The ideas have been embraced by Hidalgo who wants to encourage more self-sufficient communities within each arrondissement of the French capital, with grocery shops, parks, cafes, sports facilities, health centres, schools and even workplaces just a walk or bike ride away.Ĭalled the “ ville du quart d’heure” – the quarter-hour city – the aim is to offer the people of Paris what they need on or near their doorstep to ensure an “ecological transformation” of the capital into a collection of neighbourhoods. We know it is better for people to work near to where they live, and if they can go shopping nearby and have the leisure and services they need around them too, it allows them to have a more tranquil existence.” To do this he argues: “We need to reinvent the idea of urban proximity. The inspiration behind the 15-minute city idea is the Professor Carlos Moreno, from la Sorbonne who believes the “core of human activity” in cities must move away from oil-era priorities of roads and car ownership. In a world where we work less and travel less and pollute less, it would mean that we have most of our basic needs for work, education, leisure, sport, entertainment localised. We noticed that over in Paris the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has made phasing out vehicles and creating a “15-minute city” a key pillar of her offering at the launch of her re-election campaign. What would that look like? Paul Palmer from the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh – showed dramatic reductions in the emissions of Nitrogen Dioxide due the reduction of traffic in the lockdown. We looked at it back in 2020 (when it was the 15 Minute City) after a report by Dr Douglas Finch & Prof. The 20 Minute City – the idea that you should have access to most of the things you need within a short walk – was one of the (possible) benefits to come out of the whole lockdown experience. First up, the backlash against the 15 minute city. Welcome to the Twilight Zone, our new series looking at the wonderful world of conspiracy, the (almost always) far-right world of populist paranoia.
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