15-Minute Cities Are Climate Lockdowns

NGOs vilified the developed way of life, fossil fuels, use of cars, and our mobility

ICLEI, an NGO headquartered initially in Germany (now has 20 offices around the world, including New York), sent activists to board meetings and presented regional plans and local plans with new designs for communities, without the input of the local communities affected.

People were busy, so they thought other community members voted for the mixed-use development plans to fight the imaginary global warming and therefore it had to be good. Who would not want green spaces, bike lanes, and endless parks?

NGOs vilified the developed way of life, fossil fuels, use of cars, and our mobility. But the goal turned out to be a lot more than just the greening of the planet, reducing pollution, and undependable green energy, it was about total control of every facet of human activity, the carbon footprint taxation, and the CO2 capture. The climate change industry was born when the global warming narrative proved to be just a scam.

U.N. and its affiliated green NGOs introduced five-minute walk or bike to work/school, commuting by train, mixed-use high raise tiny apartments without parking garages and businesses on the first floor to save the planet from global warming Armageddon.

WEF --“Biggest urban ideas to emerge from the pandemic, the 15-minute city or 15-minute neighborhood”

Young and gentrified urban neighborhoods welcomed the plan, bike lanes were introduced everywhere with very few users. But the rest of America was not so sold on the idea because Americans live in a vast country, and they love the freedom of the road.

The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset pushed the idea of living in an expanded 15-minute neighborhood with amenities to satisfy most urbanites. They won’t call it a climate lockdown, or an expensive concentration of apartment dwellers who cannot leave their area and intrude on other areas without a penalty. Those are details that are not specifically addressed. If they did, few would love the idea.

The WEF is introducing it as the “biggest urban ideas to emerge from the pandemic, the 15-minute city or 15-minute neighborhood,” imagined by the Colombian-French urbanist Carlos Moreno, the son of a Colombian farmer, now a professor in France. Moreno was a member of the left-wing M-19 movement when he fled Colombia at the age of 20. He is an advisor to the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, a Spanish-French politician who is a member of the Socialist Party.

In 2020 Moreno published two articles “Urban life and proximity at the time of Covid-19” in Editions de l’Observatoire, and “Droit de Cite, de la ville-monde a la ville du quart d’heure” (Freedom of the city, from the world city to the city of the quarter of an hour), in Editions de l’Observatoire.

Having lived under communism for twenty years, I understand the limitations of city travel, of village travel, and the limited travel

Moreno’s idea is that everything you need to live, i.e., shops, schools, work, doctor’s offices, parks, libraries, restaurants, and everything else that makes life worth living is located within “a short 15-minute walk or bike ride from home.” The neighborhood zone becomes an ‘isochrone.’

What is an isochrone (iso=same, chrone=time)? Isochrones are maps that show the areas you can reach within a travel time limit. The only difference between a forced camp and these zones is the fact that camps had tall walls and locked gates, but the 15-minute neighborhood zone has electronic gates and cameras that take your picture and fine you later.

Having lived under communism for twenty years, I understand the limitations of city travel, of village travel, and the limited travel radius within and without the city or village that we were allowed by the government and by our own facility to travel, given the limited modes of transportation at our disposal, walking, bike, train, or buses vis-à-vis our limited means to buy ticket prices or monthly subsidized passes. Permission had to be sought to move from place to place if a person stayed more than a week in a relative’s home. And nobody could move from any village to the nearest city without government permission.

One must parcel the 15-minute city into small spaces. Who needs so much space? Who needs a car and parking spaces? You can’t find what you need in the 15-minute neighborhood? Too bad, you can only leave your zone so many times a year without having to pay a fine. There will be e-gates that will monitor your cars if you leave and there will be facial recognition software taking your picture as you drive away to see your sister who happens to live in the next parceled zone, both controlled by e-gates.

It is a climate lockdown and the excuse is CO2, the gas of plant life

Fifteen-minute cities or neighborhoods to save the planet from climate change Armageddon? It is a climate lockdown and the excuse is CO2, the gas of plant life. Ask Katie Hopkins.

The city of Oxford, she said, will be divided into six parts. “You will only have the freedom to operate in the part that you live in.” If you want to go out of your zone, you will have to go out on an approved route on the outside of the city to re-enter another section of the city.” You will not be allowed to cross other zones. If you do, electronic gates and facial recognition will know that you have crossed an unauthorized zone. You can apply for permission to visit another zone, but you will only be allowed to do this 100 times per year. The Oxford Council passed this monstrosity, and it will be implemented within two years. The fine for going over the allowed visits on your pass is £100, $122.43. 

The half-baked idea of 15-minute cities was sold because cars pollute, you must hunt for a parking space, CO2 is bad for the planet even though it is the gas of plant life and without it, we can’t grow much food nor get oxygen from CO2-absorbing trees that produce oxygen.

Melbourne already jumped on the wagon with 800-meter radius communities.

Portland’s Climate Action Plan “calls for more vibrant neighborhood in which 90% of the resident can walk or bike to fulfill their daily needs.”

What a kumbaya these 15-minutes of freedom cities/neighborhoods will be! 

People already know what a mess Portland is in, yet they are proposing to spend $750 million on a climate action plan.

Paris, with its mayor Anne Hidalgo and her advisor Carlos Moreno, has been pushing the idea since 2020 – promote active mobility instead of cars. Car speed is 30 km/hr., cars are banned along the Seine one Sunday each month, and bike lanes will be installed on every street by 2024.

What a kumbaya these 15-minutes of freedom cities/neighborhoods will be! Mixed-used developments, no parking, no cars, residences (notice how they don’t call them apartments or homes), schools, shops, doctors, restaurants stand side by side in “diverse neighborhoods.” The new model for the larger city has “devolved into small, repeating parts.”

But America is a “suburban nation” and WEF recognizes that the concept is not a good fit. Perhaps Manhattan or Brooklyn, parts of Boston and Cambridge, but the rest of America can only have the 15-minute city by car. The 15-minute city meets human needs but leaves desires wanting | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

What about the non-affluent neighborhoods where theft and crime are rampant, where businesses are closing shops and leaving? Where do they fit in the new grand scheme of reengineering humanity?

What about small towns spread out and villages? How are they going to parcel them out? And who is policing the comings and goings of residents and administering fines? And how is every ‘climate lockdown zone’ going to acquire doctors, hospitals, clinics, cinemas, museums, theatres, operas, universities, schools?