Media ramp up ‘conspiracy theory’ campaign for 15-minute cities

Mainstream news outlets last week intensified their coordinated campaign to label opposition to 15-minute cities a “conspiracy theory”.

A 15-minute city is divided into neighborhoods where all essential services required for daily living can be found within a 15-minute radius. The stated goal is that residents should have no reason to travel more than a 15-minute walk, thereby eliminating driving and carbon emissions.

The concept is already being tried by the city of Oxford, which will restrict residents from driving beyond their own community centers. The new system will involve six “traffic filters” — busy stretches of road that filter one neighborhood into another. From 7 AM to 7 PM seven days a week, private vehicles that are caught driving past their own neighborhoods for “non-essential needs” will be subject to a £70 ($84) fine. Private drivers who wish to travel through the traffic filters may apply for a permit for up to 100 days a year, which averages out to about two days per week. In a household that has multiple vehicles, a maximum of three permits will be allowed. 

The cities of Edmonton, Ontario, and Cleveland are planning to implement similar plans.

The 15-minute city concept has thus been described as a “climate lockdown” or “green ghetto” and has been the subject of mass protests in Oxford.

Since the protests last week which saw five people arrested, mainstream media outlets have ramped up their campaign to add such resistance to its growing list of “conspiracy theories”.

“How ‘15-minute cities’ turned into an international conspiracy theory,” read a CNN headline published Monday. The article mocked those who accuse Oxford of trying “to control people’s movement in the name of climate action” even though this is precisely what Oxford has promised to do.

“What is a 15-minute city? The eco concept that has been jumped on by conspiracy theorists,” wrote Euronews.

“Tackling the 15-minute cities conspiracy means fixing inequality,” headlined an article from The Guardian Sunday.

“What is the '15-minute city' conspiracy theory?” asked ABC News.

“No, 15-Minute Cities Aren’t a Threat to Civil Liberties,” wrote Bloomberg Monday, going on to call any pushback on the concept “an urban-planning alt-right conspiracy theory”.

Media outlets have also begun shaming public figures who oppose 15-minute cities.

“TV star Kate Langbroek under fire for touting '15-minute city' conspiracy as she bizarrely aligns the theory to Galileo being jailed for saying the world was round,” read a Daily Mail headline Thursday.

“Conservative UK MP ridiculed for wild 15-minute city conspiracy theory comment,” wrote the NZ Herald, slamming MP Nick Fletcher for calling 15-minute cities “socialist” and saying they “will cost us our personal freedom”.

Media outlets are joined by powerful elite organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF), who have thrown their considerable weight behind 15-minute cities. The WEF says that “[a]s climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical.”

Fifteen-minute cities are only possible now because of COVID-19, which prepared society with lockdowns.

“But with COVID-19 and its variants keeping everyone home (or closer to home than usual), the 15-minute city went from a ‘nice-to-have’ to a rallying cry,” says the WEF on its website. “Meeting all of one’s needs within a walking, biking or transit distance was suddenly a matter of life and death. The pandemic created an urgency around equitable urbanism that sidelined arguments about bike lanes and other ‘amenities’ that have roiled communities for years.”