Having everything at your fingertips sounds great, in theory.
Having everything at your fingertips sounds great, in theory.
B ehold, the “15-minute city.”
At the most recent C40 World Mayors Summit last fall, it’s all people could talk about. “There may be fewer cars, more nature, more healthy air, more education, more sanitation. Citizens support this because with less pollution people live better,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo declared. All seemed to marvel at the model devised by French-Colombian expert Carlos Moreno. The idea is that city-dwellers should have access to their work, shopping, health, education, and leisure destinations in less than a 15-minute walk or bike ride.
You may be familiar with the name Carlos Moreno. In 2020, while ordinary citizens were struggling to survive the pandemic and eager to escape the lockdowns imposed by politicians, Moreno was presenting his climate-alarmism initiative “Countdown” alongside Antonio Guterres, Pope Francis (God forgive him), Al Gore, Ursula von der Leyen, Jane Fonda, and other renowned storytellers. Their proposal for cities was, of course, the FMC.
The purpose of the FMC is to reduce emissions, save the planet, and all that, although the idea’s promoters prefer to say simply that it improves quality of life and health. In fact, Hidalgo, the same mayor who participates in campaigns against the bullying of fat people, claims that one of the great virtues of FMC is that it contributes to ending obesity. Today, in the aftermath of pandemic lockdowns, the C40 coalition of mayors has judged citizens sufficiently mature and obedient enough to swallow the FMC model, as evidenced by recommendations in the “Mayors’ Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery.”
But this utopian vision comes with downsides that deserve considerably more attention. For one, it turns out the best way to implement such a plan is to discourage cars because there is no better way to convince the average person to cycle or walk to work. As a matter of policy, European cities are doing this by pedestrianizing large areas, taking initial steps to ban certain types of vehicles, or imposing heavy tolls for driving in city centers.
On February 5, Le Parisien revealed that Paris is losing its inhabitants: “In ten years, 123,000 people have fled the capital.” As the conservative newspaper Boulevard Voltaire points out, “life there has become a nightmare of rats, crazy immigration, insecurity, neighborhood robberies, filth and bike lanes.” The departures are part of a long-running trend fueled by the high cost of living and other factors, but also come as Paris prepares to ban car traffic from the city center starting next year. There’s little reason to think this will reverse the exodus.
Still, let’s assume that many citizens might be in favor of having everything at their fingertips; I would be in favor too provided that it includes tobacco and beer dispensers. To achieve an FMC, public administrations must push private companies to set up shop where their urban planning determines. And the further the state gets its hands into the private sector, be it by paying or coercing, the bigger the setback for the free market; the consequences can be read in any serious history book that you won’t find in state schools.
The FMC also envisions that neighborhoods will dedicate former offices to community co-working spaces, where teleworkers from different companies can gather to put in their hours just a few meters from home. It must be really exciting to exchange emails with the sales manager of your real-estate agency, or with the psychologist giving online therapy via Skype next to you, while another guy makes loaves of bread on the desk opposite you, frowning as he tries to jam them through the modem toward the bakery. It’s as scary as John Lennon’s “Imagine” coming true.
In the end, the FMC also seeks to revive that old neighborhood pride, turning it into an identity as strong as a national one. It is paradoxical that the same people who support globalism are the promoters of such neighborhood pride. Moreno himself has pushed back on the criticism of his campaign, reportedly describing as “lies” the more conspiratorial notions that government planners would lock people in their neighborhoods or restrict movement and monitor residents. It is possible that Moreno is sincere, but it is also reasonable to assume that the politicians who must implement his plan would feel quite comfortable imposing restrictions on citizens, as they demonstrated in the pandemic.
Even without any of that, turning cities into dozens of small, self-contained ecosystems would only worsen our own epidemic of alienation and make us even more insular in our habits. Most of us hate driving in city traffic, but there is a societal value in having to hop in the car a couple times a week to go run an errand, or more often than that to go to work. Mingling with others in your city — or, gasp, outside of it — enriches you and increases your sense of belonging. It expands your world. And, besides, some of us just like to drive, to give full throttle before the stoplight closes and curse each other in traffic jams as a form of release; why do they always come after us? Why don’t they tax those who de-stress by going to Pilates?
But this brings us to the so-called 2030 agenda. The mobility restrictions that were imposed during the pandemic were an experiment in social engineering that is now being applied by the proponents of so-called “sustainable cities and communities,” according to goal No. 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals.
And call me paranoid, but I don’t trust that the technocrats devising these systems will resist the urge to go Big Brother. A few weeks ago, I experienced how several European cities already require you to have a personal digital ID in order to open the lid of the garbage container. Granted, I wasn’t trying to get rid of a corpse, but I was quite uncomfortable with the fact that the dumpster records my act of waste disposal. I suspect the idea is to fine you if you throw a tuna can in the organic garbage bin.
Be that as it may, today, walking through the center of old European capitals reveals what FMC supporters do not want to admit: that, without the car-commuter traffic and the pull of people from other neighborhoods, the old city centers have become impoverished, stores have had to close, residents have left, and the extreme loneliness of their streets has turned them into a hotbed of crime.
Like any utopia, the FMC could only work by giving too much power to the government. Those opposed could move to the countryside, yes, but why should we have to give up the city centers, buildings, monuments, and avenues that were once the cradle of Western civilization, and the hope that their old glory might one day return?