In this episode, we'll explore the concept of a 15-minute city: a vision where everything you need for a fulfilling life is just a short walk or bike ride away.
It might seem like a utopian urban idea, but we'll learn how and why the British government has turned against it.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the concept of a 15-minute city.
[00:00:26] It is both new and old, simple and complicated, a simpler and better way of living, or, if you ask the British government, perhaps a precursor of a dystopian future.
[00:00:39] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:44] Let me start this episode by asking you a question: what makes the perfect place to live?
[00:00:51] It's a question that people have no doubt been asking themselves for as long as time, well before the profession of “urban planner” was invented.
[00:01:01] And of course, one person’s perfect place will be different to another person’s perfect place.
[00:01:08] You might dream of living on the top of a Scottish mountain, isolated from the world, with only sheep and highland cows for company, while I might dream of being in the pumping heart of the city, the noise and smells from nearby bars and cafes coming in through my window and filling me with a sense of activity.
[00:01:28] I imagine that both of our perfect places to live fall somewhere in between those extremes, and perhaps we are both lucky enough to have some agency, some decision-making power, over where we decide to live.
[00:01:44] In the UK, like in many countries, both extremes exist, and, like in most countries, the percentage of the population that lives in cities and towns has changed over the years, as have the structure and layout of towns and cities.
[00:02:00] Before trains and cars, towns and cities needed to be walkable, and most people rarely left their neighbourhoods because they didn’t have the means.
[00:02:10] What’s more, everything they needed was within a short walking distance.
[00:02:16] Of course, this is far from some urban utopia. The reality of this was, if we're talking about Victorian London, working from dawn to dusk, 6 or 7 days a week under terrible conditions, only to return to a cramped damp room that you shared with a dozen other people. It was about as far from a utopia as you could imagine.
[00:02:41] Moving into the 19th century, as rail networks were laid, and public transport meant that people didn’t have to live within walking distance of their place of work, those who were able to seized the opportunity to move out of the crowded city centres, out of cities like London and Manchester.
[00:03:00] They could live in bigger houses, perhaps even with a garden, they could breathe fresh air and hear the birds sing, while still being able to travel to their place of work in the city every day.
[00:03:12] And as private car ownership became more widespread, the nature of smaller towns and cities in Britain changed too. People now didn’t need to live close to a railway station, they could live anywhere, and they could drive into the town or city to work every day.
[00:03:31] The result was a large change in the structure of towns and cities in the UK. The centre of many smaller towns and cities in the country became places where people came to work and shop, but not places where people tended to live.
[00:03:48] Pedestrians became second class citizens, schools and public amenities replaced by car parks.
[00:03:56] And this was a self-perpetuating cycle: as people moved out of city centres and they became more car dependent, city centres became less attractive places to live, therefore more people moved out, their houses were replaced by shops and offices, and the cycle continued.
[00:04:14] And moving towards the present day, British town and city centres, especially their shops in them, faced two large threats.
[00:04:24] Firstly, out of town shopping centres, the large retail parks where people could go to buy everything from food to clothing to TVs, often with a wider choice than would be available in the town centres.
[00:04:38] And secondly, online shopping, where you have all the choice in the world, and you can get anything delivered to your doorstep, often at a lower cost than you would find at a shop. So, people simply didn’t need to go into town and city centres nearly as much.
[00:04:55] The result of this is that many British town centres are, if we have to be brutally honest, quite miserable places, stripped of character and now with deserted shops and offices.
[00:05:10] If you've been to the centre of London or Oxford or Edinburgh or York you might be thinking “what’s he saying, they’re lovely”, but you probably haven’t been to places like Portsmouth, Slough or Swansea, smaller cities that have suffered from these urban planning decisions.
[00:05:28] Now, of course, there are other factors at play, including a faltering economy, decades of cuts by a Tory government, and so on, but when we talk about city centres specifically, this background helps us understand why some of these areas are how they are.
[00:05:46] But there is a plan to rejuvenate British urban environments.
[00:05:52] It's called the 15-minute city, and it's something you may well have heard about, as it is not a British plan at all.
[00:06:01] The concept came to prominence during the 2020 successful reelection campaign of the Parisian mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
[00:06:10] And the idea of a 15-minute city is a simple one.
[00:06:15] Everyone living in a city should have everything they need to live a happy, healthy life, within 15 minutes, either by foot, on a bike or on public transport.
[00:06:27] To break it down, residents should be able to fulfil six core functions within 15 minutes: living, working, commerce, healthcare, education and entertainment.
[00:06:42] The results, according to the main proponents of the 15-minute city, will be wide-ranging.
[00:06:48] It will lead to an improvement in air quality, as more people will choose to walk, cycle or take public transportation rather than travel by private car.
[00:06:58] It will also lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions, doing a bit to curb global warming.
[00:07:04] It will lead to better social connections, as people will exist in neighbourhoods rather than huge, soulless cities where they go from one place to another in a car.
[00:07:15] It will lead to productivity increases, as people will waste less time travelling. After all, everything will be less than 15 minutes away.
[00:07:25] It will improve people’s health, as walking or going on a bike, and even fresh air for that matter, this is better than sitting in a car.
[00:07:34] And perhaps on a harder to measure level, people will be happier. After all, the prospect of getting into a car, sitting in a traffic jam and then navigating an underground car park isn’t a pleasurable one for most people, and the idea of not doing that, well it would make people happier.
[00:07:55] Now, as you heard a few minutes ago, this 15-minute city plan was a large part of the Parisian mayor’s reelection campaign, and it worked, or at least she was reelected.
[00:08:08] Perhaps it is no surprise that Paris was the one of the first major Western cities to implement this plan, as it already kind of is a 15-minute city.
[00:08:18] If you have been to Paris, you will know that the city centre is a vibrant place, with everything you might possibly want or need within 15 minutes, often much less.
[00:08:30] Of course, the further out of the centre you get, the less this is the case, but the majority of Parisians live with this reality, and so being sold on the prospect of intensifying this, improving green spaces, increasing bike lanes and so on, presumably this wasn’t a particularly difficult one.
[00:08:51] And something that gave Hidalgo, the newly reelected mayor of Paris, an unexpected opportunity to fasttrack her 15-minute city plan was the COVID pandemic.
[00:09:02] As the city centre emptied, roads were converted to bicycle lanes, parking spaces to playgrounds and so on. The idea was to reduce the attractiveness of driving, and therefore increase the attractiveness of walking, cycling or taking public transport.
[00:09:20] And although the mayor has her fair share of critics, people who complain about her anti-car policies, initial results suggest that the plan is popular with Parisians.
[00:09:31] And other cities are following suit, they are following the example of Paris.
[00:09:38] From Milan to Cagliari, Cleveland to Utrect, mayors and urban planners are looking to this 15-minute city concept for inspiration.
[00:09:48] And this brings us to the UK.
[00:09:52] In British cities, many local councils have proposed ideas that are based on this 15-minute city concept.
[00:10:01] Some have slightly different names, such as “20 minute neighbourhood”, but the concept is similar: make cities more liveable, and improve access for pedestrians and cyclists.
[00:10:15] As you might expect, it is quite a popular one, with a recent survey suggesting that 62% of British people support it.
[00:10:25] And several British towns and cities have started to implement it.
[00:10:30] Oxford is one of the best-known.
[00:10:32] Much of the city centre has become completely pedestrianised, and if you want to travel from the north to the south of the city, you can walk or you can cycle through it.
[00:10:43] But if you want to go by car, you have to drive north, get on a motorway and drive all the way around the side of the city, and even if you take your car, it is difficult and expensive to find parking, and the speed limit in the city has been reduced to 32 kilometres per hour in most places, so it is quicker, cheaper and more convenient for most people to walk or cycle.
[00:11:12] Of course, Oxford is not alone, and it is not the first city to implement these kinds of anti-car measures.
[00:11:19] London, as you may know, has had a similar policy to discourage the use of private cars in the centre for over 20 years.
[00:11:28] There is a large area of the city centre of London that is under what’s called the “Congestion Charge Zone”, which cars have to pay a fee to enter.
[00:11:37] It started off relatively small, £5 a day when it was first introduced in 2003, but it is now £15, which is almost €20. And if you want to park in central London, it can cost over £50 a day, so taking your car into the centre of the city for the day can easily end up costing you more than €80.
[00:12:01] Now broadly, the British government has been supportive of these kinds of local initiatives proposed and then implemented by local authorities. Good stuff, the government says, well done on making our towns and cities more liveable places.
[00:12:17] And as I’m sure is the case also in your country, in the UK the central and local government do not always agree on everything, but this seemed to be an area in which there was broad consensus, the government was supportive of the 15-minute city initiatives that were taking place throughout the UK.
[00:12:36] However, last year, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, changed his mind.
[00:12:42] He lashed out at local councils for their anti-car policies, and he specifically took aim at the 15-minute city concept.
[00:12:53] In September of 2023, he unveiled a new policy that backs motorists, it supports car drivers, promising to do everything he could to stop policies that would restrict or discourage car use.
[00:13:09] The transport secretary went one step further, saying that he was “calling time on the misuse of so-called 15-minute cities”, and another minister went on the BBC saying that “people are concerned about their civil liberties”.
[00:13:25] Clearly, there was an orchestrated government plan to criticise the 15-minute city concept.
[00:13:32] But why?
[00:13:34] It was a curious decision, given that surveys suggest the concept is popular with British people, but pundits and commentators have suggested that it is a last ditch attempt to win over some voters ahead of what is likely to be a very difficult election in 2024.
[00:13:52] Sunak knows that cars are particularly important for many Tory voters, or Conservative Party voters, and he was trying to align himself with them on this car-centric policy.
[00:14:06] But even so, it seemed strange.
[00:14:09] The votes the Conservative party need to win in the upcoming election are not from the now dwindling number of people who have always voted Conservative; the votes they need are from people who think the Conservative Party doesn’t represent them.
[00:14:23] According to some pundits, there is something more sinister about this decision, this decision to turn against the 15-minute city.
[00:14:32] See, one thing that kept on being repeated by British ministers was “people are concerned”, “we’ve seen it on social media and on forums”.
[00:14:42] If most surveys were suggesting that it was not an issue for regular British people, why were British politicians suggesting that it was?
[00:14:52] Well, according to some commentators, this is a so-called “wedge issue”, something that the Conservatives can use as a way to get people thinking about a subject that they had never really considered before.
[00:15:06] See, this seemingly harmless 15-minute city plan has become the target for conspiracy theories.
[00:15:14] Starting last year, there were reports and posts on forums that the 15-minute city concept is part of a global initiative to restrict movement, and the first step in a dystopian future where people literally cannot leave their local neighbourhoods.
[00:15:31] According to some conspiracy theorists, the COVID-19 pandemic was the first step by global elites to get people used to the idea of lockdowns, so that climate emergencies can be declared and people are banned from using cars or travelling more than 15 minutes from their homes.
[00:15:50] And while you might think that these ideas would be ideas confined to Facebook posts by your crazy cousin or uncle, these ideas are now being repeated by the British government.
[00:16:02] To quote the British transport secretary, “What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate, is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and that they police it all with CCTV.”
[00:16:18] End quote.
[00:16:20] Here you have the British Minister for Transport saying that the local authorities will be deciding how often people can go to the shops and policing this with CCTV.
[00:16:31] To underline, this has never been a part of the 15-minute city project, at least in its original form; there is no plan to decide how often someone can go to the shops or to use CCTV to punish people who break restrictions, but various UK government ministers are pushing the theory that there will be, and if the Labour party is voted into power, this will be the reality that Brits face.
[00:16:59] You might be familiar with the expression “clutching at straws”, which means trying to do anything, no matter how small and pointless, to get out of a situation.
[00:17:10] And this is what many commentators are saying the Tory party is doing by turning on 15-minute cities - it is trying to sow the seed of doubt in voters’ minds, getting people to think that there could be some sinister plan and that only the Tory party will be able to save the people of Britain from it; if the Labour party wins, it's game over.
[00:17:31] Now, I use the term “sow a seed of doubt”, because you might be listening to this and perhaps my words might have sown a seed of doubt in your mind.
[00:17:42] After all, what if there were a global conspiracy to restrict people’s movement, and the 15-minute city plan was just the beginning?
[00:17:50] What if there were some secret master plan to constrict people to their neighbourhoods?
[00:17:56] Clearly, for some people it is a seductive theory, and the fact that there is no evidence for it hasn’t stopped people from believing it.
[00:18:06] So, to wrap things up, the idea of the 15 minute city is a powerful one, a return to the neighbourhood community feel of yesteryear, but with the advancements of modern technology.
[00:18:19] Understandably, it is a popular idea in the UK, despite the British government’s unexpected criticism of it.
[00:18:27] As it stands, cities across the UK, and in every corner of the world, are looking at the concept and seeing what elements of it can be incorporated into their towns and cities.
[00:18:40] Is this part of some huge global conspiracy?
[00:18:44] Who knows, but if there is some huge secret global masterplan to make cities more liveable, green and friendly, then I, for one, am happy to say count me in.
[00:18:57] OK then, that is it for today's episode on 15 minute cities.
[00:19:02] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:19:05] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:09] Is there much talk of 15 minute cities in your country? Do you live in a town or city that has implemented some “15 minute city” policies?
[00:19:17] How has this changed the city, and what do you think of it?
[00:19:21] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:25] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:33] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:38] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the concept of a 15-minute city.
[00:00:26] It is both new and old, simple and complicated, a simpler and better way of living, or, if you ask the British government, perhaps a precursor of a dystopian future.
[00:00:39] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:44] Let me start this episode by asking you a question: what makes the perfect place to live?
[00:00:51] It's a question that people have no doubt been asking themselves for as long as time, well before the profession of “urban planner” was invented.
[00:01:01] And of course, one person’s perfect place will be different to another person’s perfect place.
[00:01:08] You might dream of living on the top of a Scottish mountain, isolated from the world, with only sheep and highland cows for company, while I might dream of being in the pumping heart of the city, the noise and smells from nearby bars and cafes coming in through my window and filling me with a sense of activity.
[00:01:28] I imagine that both of our perfect places to live fall somewhere in between those extremes, and perhaps we are both lucky enough to have some agency, some decision-making power, over where we decide to live.
[00:01:44] In the UK, like in many countries, both extremes exist, and, like in most countries, the percentage of the population that lives in cities and towns has changed over the years, as have the structure and layout of towns and cities.
[00:02:00] Before trains and cars, towns and cities needed to be walkable, and most people rarely left their neighbourhoods because they didn’t have the means.
[00:02:10] What’s more, everything they needed was within a short walking distance.
[00:02:16] Of course, this is far from some urban utopia. The reality of this was, if we're talking about Victorian London, working from dawn to dusk, 6 or 7 days a week under terrible conditions, only to return to a cramped damp room that you shared with a dozen other people. It was about as far from a utopia as you could imagine.
[00:02:41] Moving into the 19th century, as rail networks were laid, and public transport meant that people didn’t have to live within walking distance of their place of work, those who were able to seized the opportunity to move out of the crowded city centres, out of cities like London and Manchester.
[00:03:00] They could live in bigger houses, perhaps even with a garden, they could breathe fresh air and hear the birds sing, while still being able to travel to their place of work in the city every day.
[00:03:12] And as private car ownership became more widespread, the nature of smaller towns and cities in Britain changed too. People now didn’t need to live close to a railway station, they could live anywhere, and they could drive into the town or city to work every day.
[00:03:31] The result was a large change in the structure of towns and cities in the UK. The centre of many smaller towns and cities in the country became places where people came to work and shop, but not places where people tended to live.
[00:03:48] Pedestrians became second class citizens, schools and public amenities replaced by car parks.
[00:03:56] And this was a self-perpetuating cycle: as people moved out of city centres and they became more car dependent, city centres became less attractive places to live, therefore more people moved out, their houses were replaced by shops and offices, and the cycle continued.
[00:04:14] And moving towards the present day, British town and city centres, especially their shops in them, faced two large threats.
[00:04:24] Firstly, out of town shopping centres, the large retail parks where people could go to buy everything from food to clothing to TVs, often with a wider choice than would be available in the town centres.
[00:04:38] And secondly, online shopping, where you have all the choice in the world, and you can get anything delivered to your doorstep, often at a lower cost than you would find at a shop. So, people simply didn’t need to go into town and city centres nearly as much.
[00:04:55] The result of this is that many British town centres are, if we have to be brutally honest, quite miserable places, stripped of character and now with deserted shops and offices.
[00:05:10] If you've been to the centre of London or Oxford or Edinburgh or York you might be thinking “what’s he saying, they’re lovely”, but you probably haven’t been to places like Portsmouth, Slough or Swansea, smaller cities that have suffered from these urban planning decisions.
[00:05:28] Now, of course, there are other factors at play, including a faltering economy, decades of cuts by a Tory government, and so on, but when we talk about city centres specifically, this background helps us understand why some of these areas are how they are.
[00:05:46] But there is a plan to rejuvenate British urban environments.
[00:05:52] It's called the 15-minute city, and it's something you may well have heard about, as it is not a British plan at all.
[00:06:01] The concept came to prominence during the 2020 successful reelection campaign of the Parisian mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
[00:06:10] And the idea of a 15-minute city is a simple one.
[00:06:15] Everyone living in a city should have everything they need to live a happy, healthy life, within 15 minutes, either by foot, on a bike or on public transport.
[00:06:27] To break it down, residents should be able to fulfil six core functions within 15 minutes: living, working, commerce, healthcare, education and entertainment.
[00:06:42] The results, according to the main proponents of the 15-minute city, will be wide-ranging.
[00:06:48] It will lead to an improvement in air quality, as more people will choose to walk, cycle or take public transportation rather than travel by private car.
[00:06:58] It will also lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions, doing a bit to curb global warming.
[00:07:04] It will lead to better social connections, as people will exist in neighbourhoods rather than huge, soulless cities where they go from one place to another in a car.
[00:07:15] It will lead to productivity increases, as people will waste less time travelling. After all, everything will be less than 15 minutes away.
[00:07:25] It will improve people’s health, as walking or going on a bike, and even fresh air for that matter, this is better than sitting in a car.
[00:07:34] And perhaps on a harder to measure level, people will be happier. After all, the prospect of getting into a car, sitting in a traffic jam and then navigating an underground car park isn’t a pleasurable one for most people, and the idea of not doing that, well it would make people happier.
[00:07:55] Now, as you heard a few minutes ago, this 15-minute city plan was a large part of the Parisian mayor’s reelection campaign, and it worked, or at least she was reelected.
[00:08:08] Perhaps it is no surprise that Paris was the one of the first major Western cities to implement this plan, as it already kind of is a 15-minute city.
[00:08:18] If you have been to Paris, you will know that the city centre is a vibrant place, with everything you might possibly want or need within 15 minutes, often much less.
[00:08:30] Of course, the further out of the centre you get, the less this is the case, but the majority of Parisians live with this reality, and so being sold on the prospect of intensifying this, improving green spaces, increasing bike lanes and so on, presumably this wasn’t a particularly difficult one.
[00:08:51] And something that gave Hidalgo, the newly reelected mayor of Paris, an unexpected opportunity to fasttrack her 15-minute city plan was the COVID pandemic.
[00:09:02] As the city centre emptied, roads were converted to bicycle lanes, parking spaces to playgrounds and so on. The idea was to reduce the attractiveness of driving, and therefore increase the attractiveness of walking, cycling or taking public transport.
[00:09:20] And although the mayor has her fair share of critics, people who complain about her anti-car policies, initial results suggest that the plan is popular with Parisians.
[00:09:31] And other cities are following suit, they are following the example of Paris.
[00:09:38] From Milan to Cagliari, Cleveland to Utrect, mayors and urban planners are looking to this 15-minute city concept for inspiration.
[00:09:48] And this brings us to the UK.
[00:09:52] In British cities, many local councils have proposed ideas that are based on this 15-minute city concept.
[00:10:01] Some have slightly different names, such as “20 minute neighbourhood”, but the concept is similar: make cities more liveable, and improve access for pedestrians and cyclists.
[00:10:15] As you might expect, it is quite a popular one, with a recent survey suggesting that 62% of British people support it.
[00:10:25] And several British towns and cities have started to implement it.
[00:10:30] Oxford is one of the best-known.
[00:10:32] Much of the city centre has become completely pedestrianised, and if you want to travel from the north to the south of the city, you can walk or you can cycle through it.
[00:10:43] But if you want to go by car, you have to drive north, get on a motorway and drive all the way around the side of the city, and even if you take your car, it is difficult and expensive to find parking, and the speed limit in the city has been reduced to 32 kilometres per hour in most places, so it is quicker, cheaper and more convenient for most people to walk or cycle.
[00:11:12] Of course, Oxford is not alone, and it is not the first city to implement these kinds of anti-car measures.
[00:11:19] London, as you may know, has had a similar policy to discourage the use of private cars in the centre for over 20 years.
[00:11:28] There is a large area of the city centre of London that is under what’s called the “Congestion Charge Zone”, which cars have to pay a fee to enter.
[00:11:37] It started off relatively small, £5 a day when it was first introduced in 2003, but it is now £15, which is almost €20. And if you want to park in central London, it can cost over £50 a day, so taking your car into the centre of the city for the day can easily end up costing you more than €80.
[00:12:01] Now broadly, the British government has been supportive of these kinds of local initiatives proposed and then implemented by local authorities. Good stuff, the government says, well done on making our towns and cities more liveable places.
[00:12:17] And as I’m sure is the case also in your country, in the UK the central and local government do not always agree on everything, but this seemed to be an area in which there was broad consensus, the government was supportive of the 15-minute city initiatives that were taking place throughout the UK.
[00:12:36] However, last year, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, changed his mind.
[00:12:42] He lashed out at local councils for their anti-car policies, and he specifically took aim at the 15-minute city concept.
[00:12:53] In September of 2023, he unveiled a new policy that backs motorists, it supports car drivers, promising to do everything he could to stop policies that would restrict or discourage car use.
[00:13:09] The transport secretary went one step further, saying that he was “calling time on the misuse of so-called 15-minute cities”, and another minister went on the BBC saying that “people are concerned about their civil liberties”.
[00:13:25] Clearly, there was an orchestrated government plan to criticise the 15-minute city concept.
[00:13:32] But why?
[00:13:34] It was a curious decision, given that surveys suggest the concept is popular with British people, but pundits and commentators have suggested that it is a last ditch attempt to win over some voters ahead of what is likely to be a very difficult election in 2024.
[00:13:52] Sunak knows that cars are particularly important for many Tory voters, or Conservative Party voters, and he was trying to align himself with them on this car-centric policy.
[00:14:06] But even so, it seemed strange.
[00:14:09] The votes the Conservative party need to win in the upcoming election are not from the now dwindling number of people who have always voted Conservative; the votes they need are from people who think the Conservative Party doesn’t represent them.
[00:14:23] According to some pundits, there is something more sinister about this decision, this decision to turn against the 15-minute city.
[00:14:32] See, one thing that kept on being repeated by British ministers was “people are concerned”, “we’ve seen it on social media and on forums”.
[00:14:42] If most surveys were suggesting that it was not an issue for regular British people, why were British politicians suggesting that it was?
[00:14:52] Well, according to some commentators, this is a so-called “wedge issue”, something that the Conservatives can use as a way to get people thinking about a subject that they had never really considered before.
[00:15:06] See, this seemingly harmless 15-minute city plan has become the target for conspiracy theories.
[00:15:14] Starting last year, there were reports and posts on forums that the 15-minute city concept is part of a global initiative to restrict movement, and the first step in a dystopian future where people literally cannot leave their local neighbourhoods.
[00:15:31] According to some conspiracy theorists, the COVID-19 pandemic was the first step by global elites to get people used to the idea of lockdowns, so that climate emergencies can be declared and people are banned from using cars or travelling more than 15 minutes from their homes.
[00:15:50] And while you might think that these ideas would be ideas confined to Facebook posts by your crazy cousin or uncle, these ideas are now being repeated by the British government.
[00:16:02] To quote the British transport secretary, “What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate, is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and that they police it all with CCTV.”
[00:16:18] End quote.
[00:16:20] Here you have the British Minister for Transport saying that the local authorities will be deciding how often people can go to the shops and policing this with CCTV.
[00:16:31] To underline, this has never been a part of the 15-minute city project, at least in its original form; there is no plan to decide how often someone can go to the shops or to use CCTV to punish people who break restrictions, but various UK government ministers are pushing the theory that there will be, and if the Labour party is voted into power, this will be the reality that Brits face.
[00:16:59] You might be familiar with the expression “clutching at straws”, which means trying to do anything, no matter how small and pointless, to get out of a situation.
[00:17:10] And this is what many commentators are saying the Tory party is doing by turning on 15-minute cities - it is trying to sow the seed of doubt in voters’ minds, getting people to think that there could be some sinister plan and that only the Tory party will be able to save the people of Britain from it; if the Labour party wins, it's game over.
[00:17:31] Now, I use the term “sow a seed of doubt”, because you might be listening to this and perhaps my words might have sown a seed of doubt in your mind.
[00:17:42] After all, what if there were a global conspiracy to restrict people’s movement, and the 15-minute city plan was just the beginning?
[00:17:50] What if there were some secret master plan to constrict people to their neighbourhoods?
[00:17:56] Clearly, for some people it is a seductive theory, and the fact that there is no evidence for it hasn’t stopped people from believing it.
[00:18:06] So, to wrap things up, the idea of the 15 minute city is a powerful one, a return to the neighbourhood community feel of yesteryear, but with the advancements of modern technology.
[00:18:19] Understandably, it is a popular idea in the UK, despite the British government’s unexpected criticism of it.
[00:18:27] As it stands, cities across the UK, and in every corner of the world, are looking at the concept and seeing what elements of it can be incorporated into their towns and cities.
[00:18:40] Is this part of some huge global conspiracy?
[00:18:44] Who knows, but if there is some huge secret global masterplan to make cities more liveable, green and friendly, then I, for one, am happy to say count me in.
[00:18:57] OK then, that is it for today's episode on 15 minute cities.
[00:19:02] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:19:05] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:09] Is there much talk of 15 minute cities in your country? Do you live in a town or city that has implemented some “15 minute city” policies?
[00:19:17] How has this changed the city, and what do you think of it?
[00:19:21] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:25] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:33] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:38] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the concept of a 15-minute city.
[00:00:26] It is both new and old, simple and complicated, a simpler and better way of living, or, if you ask the British government, perhaps a precursor of a dystopian future.
[00:00:39] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:44] Let me start this episode by asking you a question: what makes the perfect place to live?
[00:00:51] It's a question that people have no doubt been asking themselves for as long as time, well before the profession of “urban planner” was invented.
[00:01:01] And of course, one person’s perfect place will be different to another person’s perfect place.
[00:01:08] You might dream of living on the top of a Scottish mountain, isolated from the world, with only sheep and highland cows for company, while I might dream of being in the pumping heart of the city, the noise and smells from nearby bars and cafes coming in through my window and filling me with a sense of activity.
[00:01:28] I imagine that both of our perfect places to live fall somewhere in between those extremes, and perhaps we are both lucky enough to have some agency, some decision-making power, over where we decide to live.
[00:01:44] In the UK, like in many countries, both extremes exist, and, like in most countries, the percentage of the population that lives in cities and towns has changed over the years, as have the structure and layout of towns and cities.
[00:02:00] Before trains and cars, towns and cities needed to be walkable, and most people rarely left their neighbourhoods because they didn’t have the means.
[00:02:10] What’s more, everything they needed was within a short walking distance.
[00:02:16] Of course, this is far from some urban utopia. The reality of this was, if we're talking about Victorian London, working from dawn to dusk, 6 or 7 days a week under terrible conditions, only to return to a cramped damp room that you shared with a dozen other people. It was about as far from a utopia as you could imagine.
[00:02:41] Moving into the 19th century, as rail networks were laid, and public transport meant that people didn’t have to live within walking distance of their place of work, those who were able to seized the opportunity to move out of the crowded city centres, out of cities like London and Manchester.
[00:03:00] They could live in bigger houses, perhaps even with a garden, they could breathe fresh air and hear the birds sing, while still being able to travel to their place of work in the city every day.
[00:03:12] And as private car ownership became more widespread, the nature of smaller towns and cities in Britain changed too. People now didn’t need to live close to a railway station, they could live anywhere, and they could drive into the town or city to work every day.
[00:03:31] The result was a large change in the structure of towns and cities in the UK. The centre of many smaller towns and cities in the country became places where people came to work and shop, but not places where people tended to live.
[00:03:48] Pedestrians became second class citizens, schools and public amenities replaced by car parks.
[00:03:56] And this was a self-perpetuating cycle: as people moved out of city centres and they became more car dependent, city centres became less attractive places to live, therefore more people moved out, their houses were replaced by shops and offices, and the cycle continued.
[00:04:14] And moving towards the present day, British town and city centres, especially their shops in them, faced two large threats.
[00:04:24] Firstly, out of town shopping centres, the large retail parks where people could go to buy everything from food to clothing to TVs, often with a wider choice than would be available in the town centres.
[00:04:38] And secondly, online shopping, where you have all the choice in the world, and you can get anything delivered to your doorstep, often at a lower cost than you would find at a shop. So, people simply didn’t need to go into town and city centres nearly as much.
[00:04:55] The result of this is that many British town centres are, if we have to be brutally honest, quite miserable places, stripped of character and now with deserted shops and offices.
[00:05:10] If you've been to the centre of London or Oxford or Edinburgh or York you might be thinking “what’s he saying, they’re lovely”, but you probably haven’t been to places like Portsmouth, Slough or Swansea, smaller cities that have suffered from these urban planning decisions.
[00:05:28] Now, of course, there are other factors at play, including a faltering economy, decades of cuts by a Tory government, and so on, but when we talk about city centres specifically, this background helps us understand why some of these areas are how they are.
[00:05:46] But there is a plan to rejuvenate British urban environments.
[00:05:52] It's called the 15-minute city, and it's something you may well have heard about, as it is not a British plan at all.
[00:06:01] The concept came to prominence during the 2020 successful reelection campaign of the Parisian mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
[00:06:10] And the idea of a 15-minute city is a simple one.
[00:06:15] Everyone living in a city should have everything they need to live a happy, healthy life, within 15 minutes, either by foot, on a bike or on public transport.
[00:06:27] To break it down, residents should be able to fulfil six core functions within 15 minutes: living, working, commerce, healthcare, education and entertainment.
[00:06:42] The results, according to the main proponents of the 15-minute city, will be wide-ranging.
[00:06:48] It will lead to an improvement in air quality, as more people will choose to walk, cycle or take public transportation rather than travel by private car.
[00:06:58] It will also lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions, doing a bit to curb global warming.
[00:07:04] It will lead to better social connections, as people will exist in neighbourhoods rather than huge, soulless cities where they go from one place to another in a car.
[00:07:15] It will lead to productivity increases, as people will waste less time travelling. After all, everything will be less than 15 minutes away.
[00:07:25] It will improve people’s health, as walking or going on a bike, and even fresh air for that matter, this is better than sitting in a car.
[00:07:34] And perhaps on a harder to measure level, people will be happier. After all, the prospect of getting into a car, sitting in a traffic jam and then navigating an underground car park isn’t a pleasurable one for most people, and the idea of not doing that, well it would make people happier.
[00:07:55] Now, as you heard a few minutes ago, this 15-minute city plan was a large part of the Parisian mayor’s reelection campaign, and it worked, or at least she was reelected.
[00:08:08] Perhaps it is no surprise that Paris was the one of the first major Western cities to implement this plan, as it already kind of is a 15-minute city.
[00:08:18] If you have been to Paris, you will know that the city centre is a vibrant place, with everything you might possibly want or need within 15 minutes, often much less.
[00:08:30] Of course, the further out of the centre you get, the less this is the case, but the majority of Parisians live with this reality, and so being sold on the prospect of intensifying this, improving green spaces, increasing bike lanes and so on, presumably this wasn’t a particularly difficult one.
[00:08:51] And something that gave Hidalgo, the newly reelected mayor of Paris, an unexpected opportunity to fasttrack her 15-minute city plan was the COVID pandemic.
[00:09:02] As the city centre emptied, roads were converted to bicycle lanes, parking spaces to playgrounds and so on. The idea was to reduce the attractiveness of driving, and therefore increase the attractiveness of walking, cycling or taking public transport.
[00:09:20] And although the mayor has her fair share of critics, people who complain about her anti-car policies, initial results suggest that the plan is popular with Parisians.
[00:09:31] And other cities are following suit, they are following the example of Paris.
[00:09:38] From Milan to Cagliari, Cleveland to Utrect, mayors and urban planners are looking to this 15-minute city concept for inspiration.
[00:09:48] And this brings us to the UK.
[00:09:52] In British cities, many local councils have proposed ideas that are based on this 15-minute city concept.
[00:10:01] Some have slightly different names, such as “20 minute neighbourhood”, but the concept is similar: make cities more liveable, and improve access for pedestrians and cyclists.
[00:10:15] As you might expect, it is quite a popular one, with a recent survey suggesting that 62% of British people support it.
[00:10:25] And several British towns and cities have started to implement it.
[00:10:30] Oxford is one of the best-known.
[00:10:32] Much of the city centre has become completely pedestrianised, and if you want to travel from the north to the south of the city, you can walk or you can cycle through it.
[00:10:43] But if you want to go by car, you have to drive north, get on a motorway and drive all the way around the side of the city, and even if you take your car, it is difficult and expensive to find parking, and the speed limit in the city has been reduced to 32 kilometres per hour in most places, so it is quicker, cheaper and more convenient for most people to walk or cycle.
[00:11:12] Of course, Oxford is not alone, and it is not the first city to implement these kinds of anti-car measures.
[00:11:19] London, as you may know, has had a similar policy to discourage the use of private cars in the centre for over 20 years.
[00:11:28] There is a large area of the city centre of London that is under what’s called the “Congestion Charge Zone”, which cars have to pay a fee to enter.
[00:11:37] It started off relatively small, £5 a day when it was first introduced in 2003, but it is now £15, which is almost €20. And if you want to park in central London, it can cost over £50 a day, so taking your car into the centre of the city for the day can easily end up costing you more than €80.
[00:12:01] Now broadly, the British government has been supportive of these kinds of local initiatives proposed and then implemented by local authorities. Good stuff, the government says, well done on making our towns and cities more liveable places.
[00:12:17] And as I’m sure is the case also in your country, in the UK the central and local government do not always agree on everything, but this seemed to be an area in which there was broad consensus, the government was supportive of the 15-minute city initiatives that were taking place throughout the UK.
[00:12:36] However, last year, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, changed his mind.
[00:12:42] He lashed out at local councils for their anti-car policies, and he specifically took aim at the 15-minute city concept.
[00:12:53] In September of 2023, he unveiled a new policy that backs motorists, it supports car drivers, promising to do everything he could to stop policies that would restrict or discourage car use.
[00:13:09] The transport secretary went one step further, saying that he was “calling time on the misuse of so-called 15-minute cities”, and another minister went on the BBC saying that “people are concerned about their civil liberties”.
[00:13:25] Clearly, there was an orchestrated government plan to criticise the 15-minute city concept.
[00:13:32] But why?
[00:13:34] It was a curious decision, given that surveys suggest the concept is popular with British people, but pundits and commentators have suggested that it is a last ditch attempt to win over some voters ahead of what is likely to be a very difficult election in 2024.
[00:13:52] Sunak knows that cars are particularly important for many Tory voters, or Conservative Party voters, and he was trying to align himself with them on this car-centric policy.
[00:14:06] But even so, it seemed strange.
[00:14:09] The votes the Conservative party need to win in the upcoming election are not from the now dwindling number of people who have always voted Conservative; the votes they need are from people who think the Conservative Party doesn’t represent them.
[00:14:23] According to some pundits, there is something more sinister about this decision, this decision to turn against the 15-minute city.
[00:14:32] See, one thing that kept on being repeated by British ministers was “people are concerned”, “we’ve seen it on social media and on forums”.
[00:14:42] If most surveys were suggesting that it was not an issue for regular British people, why were British politicians suggesting that it was?
[00:14:52] Well, according to some commentators, this is a so-called “wedge issue”, something that the Conservatives can use as a way to get people thinking about a subject that they had never really considered before.
[00:15:06] See, this seemingly harmless 15-minute city plan has become the target for conspiracy theories.
[00:15:14] Starting last year, there were reports and posts on forums that the 15-minute city concept is part of a global initiative to restrict movement, and the first step in a dystopian future where people literally cannot leave their local neighbourhoods.
[00:15:31] According to some conspiracy theorists, the COVID-19 pandemic was the first step by global elites to get people used to the idea of lockdowns, so that climate emergencies can be declared and people are banned from using cars or travelling more than 15 minutes from their homes.
[00:15:50] And while you might think that these ideas would be ideas confined to Facebook posts by your crazy cousin or uncle, these ideas are now being repeated by the British government.
[00:16:02] To quote the British transport secretary, “What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate, is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and that they police it all with CCTV.”
[00:16:18] End quote.
[00:16:20] Here you have the British Minister for Transport saying that the local authorities will be deciding how often people can go to the shops and policing this with CCTV.
[00:16:31] To underline, this has never been a part of the 15-minute city project, at least in its original form; there is no plan to decide how often someone can go to the shops or to use CCTV to punish people who break restrictions, but various UK government ministers are pushing the theory that there will be, and if the Labour party is voted into power, this will be the reality that Brits face.
[00:16:59] You might be familiar with the expression “clutching at straws”, which means trying to do anything, no matter how small and pointless, to get out of a situation.
[00:17:10] And this is what many commentators are saying the Tory party is doing by turning on 15-minute cities - it is trying to sow the seed of doubt in voters’ minds, getting people to think that there could be some sinister plan and that only the Tory party will be able to save the people of Britain from it; if the Labour party wins, it's game over.
[00:17:31] Now, I use the term “sow a seed of doubt”, because you might be listening to this and perhaps my words might have sown a seed of doubt in your mind.
[00:17:42] After all, what if there were a global conspiracy to restrict people’s movement, and the 15-minute city plan was just the beginning?
[00:17:50] What if there were some secret master plan to constrict people to their neighbourhoods?
[00:17:56] Clearly, for some people it is a seductive theory, and the fact that there is no evidence for it hasn’t stopped people from believing it.
[00:18:06] So, to wrap things up, the idea of the 15 minute city is a powerful one, a return to the neighbourhood community feel of yesteryear, but with the advancements of modern technology.
[00:18:19] Understandably, it is a popular idea in the UK, despite the British government’s unexpected criticism of it.
[00:18:27] As it stands, cities across the UK, and in every corner of the world, are looking at the concept and seeing what elements of it can be incorporated into their towns and cities.
[00:18:40] Is this part of some huge global conspiracy?
[00:18:44] Who knows, but if there is some huge secret global masterplan to make cities more liveable, green and friendly, then I, for one, am happy to say count me in.
[00:18:57] OK then, that is it for today's episode on 15 minute cities.
[00:19:02] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:19:05] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:09] Is there much talk of 15 minute cities in your country? Do you live in a town or city that has implemented some “15 minute city” policies?
[00:19:17] How has this changed the city, and what do you think of it?
[00:19:21] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:25] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:33] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:38] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
