The Covid lockdowns were particularly popular with people who like the idea of being able to control as much of other people’s lives as possible – and without their consent.
Some seem reluctant to let go, as has been evidenced in the English city of Oxford where green extremists have attempted to stop people using their cars.
Videos have been widely circulated on social media which appear to show high viz jacketed loons stopping traffic to demand to know where the driver of the vehicles are going. The climate change vigilantes have no authority to block traffic but the Labour controlled local council has begun to introduce Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN) and this provides the former with an excuse for their behaviour.
The Oxford traffic plan is part of a broader planning scheme to turn the city into a ‘15 minute city.’ That is based on the concept that every basic thing that a person might need should be available within walking distance of their home – thus supposedly eliminating the need to drive to the shops.
People may need to travel further for work and education and other reasons of course, which is where the whole concept becomes potentially problematic. Mostly because, as we discovered during the Covid Panic, once there are restrictions a person is obliged to prove why they felt they had cause to break those restrictions. And of course, they may then be subject to legal sanctions if they are found to be in breach of said restrictions.
What the green vigilantes in Oxford are doing is engaging in a trial run of sorts by demanding that drivers produce proof of why they are driving in an area in which they may not live, or why they claim they need to be driving outside of the area in which they live. So despite all the fluffy feel smiley faced blurbs, such a concept as a 15 minute city clearly does revolve around personal freedoms.
On the face of it, the notion that people might live in communities where they can walk safely to the shops is not a bad one. Nor is it a new one, as it was the norm in most urban ‘spaces’ and even any rural settlement in a country like Ireland long before it was adopted by those with a definite ideological agenda. That agenda is, in reality, more attuned to the needs of the Sacred Cow of “high mobility of capital and labour.”
It’s a corporate prospectus dressed up as “caring.”
Indeed, while Paris has been touted as a model for “what can be achieved” under the leadership of bien pensant liberals, historical and current evidence- including the map below – prove that Paris has always been a ’15 minute city.’ The map shows parts of the city where everyone lives within a five minute, never mind a 15 minute, walk of a bakery, newsagent or pharmacy.
A map of most European cities, including Dublin, Belfast, Cork, or Limerick would not look dissimilar I suspect. However, the interesting part is not the happily coloured blue and pink localities, but the overwhelmingly grey stretches of the periphery. These are the parts of suburban Paris including the infamous high rise, high crime, third world migrant dominated banlieue. The further north east you go, the less Paris resembles the Paris of the boulevards and literary cafés, and the more it looks like Algiers.
Dublin is only in the intermediate stages of this happy development, but the pattern is clear and as with all the other happy concepts that have been tried in other places, it is unlikely to end any better here than it has in other locations. Unless, of course, you happen to be a cool resident of one of the navy “urban villages” once they are shorn of the socio-economically-cleansed indigenous proletarians.
So, you can take it whatever way you wish that our own “planners” see Paris as the model to be followed. Yesterday, Rural Independent TD for Laois/Offaly Carol Nolan asked Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, whether “he or his Department have given any policy consideration or conducted any analysis on the concept of the ’15 Minute City’; if he supports the general policy principle behind the concept.”
O’Brien in his response specifically referred to the 15 minute city having been “championed” by the current Socialist Party Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. Hidalgo took less than 2% of the vote in last year’s presidential election and polled very poorly even in Paris so perhaps the concept is not as popular as her admirers seem to think.
Interestingly, O’Brien also said that the “15 minute” concept has already informed current developments including the Dublin Docklands, Ashtown/Pelletstown and Adamstown. As a nearby resident of Ashtown, I much preferred it before the high rises, which now include one currently under construction that will be around 20 storeys high. Adamstown is certainly the type of place that is conducive to ‘Walkability,” and the faster the better
None of the makey-up “urban villages” mentioned – Dublin Docklands indigenes are largely transplanted or being currently demonised having fallen down the intersectional list of the oppressed – have any sort of feel other than the sort of zones of anomie which the once largely forgotten Ivan Illich described as places to store people between visits to the supermarket.
What all of these 15 minute cities, and “new communities” are not, are the sort of “tools for conviviality” that might make places pleasant places to live.
Not to worry, however, as the Minister is about to publish a consultation document on the whole idea to which it will be possible for members of the public to submit proposals. If this is anything like the consultation and local authority oversight of the radical transformation of the lands between Finglas and Cabra, then good luck with that.
You might be better to buy a Lotto ticket and hope to win enough to escape into some part of Ireland that is still a comfortable distance from your immediate neighbours and a 15 minute walk is still a pleasure, rather than a potentially hazardous dash to a German supermarket/off licence.