Who's Afraid of the '15-Minute City'?

Central planning limits freedom and mobility. While the '15-minute city' concept is mostly a well meaning idea for urban planning, it will no doubt spiral into a technocratic nightmare which would hamstring the 'spontaneous order' that makes cities special. Look at Google's attempt at this - Sidewalk Labs. I want organic grass root urban development - not big tech smart cities. Its hard to dismiss conspiracy theorists when the technocrats are super invested in these projects.

The conspiracy theory aspect of this doesn’t make any sense to me. Weeks before the COVID-19 lockdowns I moved to a very walkable urban area with a work from home job. The idea being if I was working from home, I wanted it to be easy to get out of there and do other things. Have lunch at restaurants around town, get together with people for drinks after work, etc without needing to be driving everywhere. It was a 15 minute city; it could have even been an 5 or 10 minute city.

The lockdowns were not a test that aided in that concept. Everything was closed, there was nowhere to go, and we were told to stay home. Instead of feeling like I had a nice urban life, I instead was in a cramped little apartment with nowhere to go. All the downsides of urban living with none of the upside.

The result of this was buying a house so I could have some room to move around. This took me out of that urban environment, rather than solidifying myself in it. I can technically still walk to a bunch of restaurants and a local market/grocery store, but it’s more effort than the prior location so I typically drive places. The walkable restaurants would be a minimum 2 mile round trip, which I think pushes the limits of what a 15 minute city would be. That 2 miles would be largely walking through neighborhoods with single family homes.

Without lockdowns, the idea of the 15 minute city (having only read the article without the full context of the book), sounds like more freedom not less. It was what I was after before the lockdowns happened. Having most of what you need a short walk away sounds more free than needing to sit in traffic to do anything, and it doesn’t prevent a person from traveling to another area for things they might want/need that aren’t in their local area. And with more walkable things, it should mean less traffic than we have today.

Any conspiracy theory that starts with “Bill Gates…” is usually going to be ridiculous. If it weren’t for COVID-19 I’d still be living in a 15 minute city today. I do think of going back now that it’s passed, but the cost has me hesitant, as I don’t want to restrict my living space as much as I did the first time around.

How many people really believe in these (conspiracy) theories? Are we sure there's no conflation with the loudest online with what people really think?