Localising hospital treatment within the 15 minute zones is just not feasible.
Good Morning Thursday 7th May 2026
I think someone got out of the wrong side of the bed
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Rishi Sunak and other Tories attack 15 minute cities
(176 Posts)A Sorbonne professor, Carlos Moreno, has formulated the idea of 15 Minute Cities. These will be somewhere where " where inhabitants have access to all the services they need to live, learn and thrive within their immediate vicinity - and shares ideas for making urban areas adapt to humans, not the other way around"
According to the NY Times Moreno is now Public Enemy No 1 because of the widespread belief that he wants to ban cars. He does not but he hopes that by people being able to walk or cycle for 15 minutes to get to what they need dependency on cars will be reduced.
This is taken from Forbes Magazine:
After coining the term “15-minute city” Moreno was invited to give talks internationally. But with this growing profile—and the swift acceptance of his simple-to-grasp defining concept—he became the target of hate. He is often on the receiving end of personal abuse on social media.
“They insult me, call me human trash, Neo-fascist or a rotten Latino,” he told me by email last year. He has critics from the left and the right, but in an all too typical Venn diagram of tinfoilhattedness they share climate denial, downplay of Covid harms, and anti-vaxxer beliefs.
“Their lies are enormous,” he exclaimed.
“You will be locked in your neighborhood; cameras will signal who can go out; if your mother lives in another neighborhood, you will have to ask for permission to see her and so on.”
He added, in disgust, they “sometimes post pictures of concentration camps.”
“The conspiracists see a big global agreement,” he said.
“As the UN-Habitat, the World Economic Forum, the C40 Global Cities Climate Network, and the Federation of United Local Governments, among others, have supported the [15-Minute-City] concept, it feeds their fantasies that I am involved in the ‘invisible leadership’ of the world.”
Moreno has been shocked to see his concept derided by the U.K. government, with the U.K. transport secretary trashing 15-Minute Cities in his speech today at the annual Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
“Right across our country, there is a Labour-backed movement to make cars harder to use, to make driving more expensive, and to remove your freedom to get from A to B how you want,” Transport Secretary Mark Harper told the conference.
“I am calling time on the misuse of so-called 15-minute cities,” he added.
“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,” Harper said.
According to The Sun, Prime Minister Sunak “takes aim at so-called ‘“15 Minute Cities’” to make everyday essentials bike friendly - vowing to make sure drivers are not ‘aggressively restricted’.”
“Associating the 15-Minute City again with so-called liberty-restricting measures is tantamount to aligning with the most radical and anti-democratic elements of this movement.”
This is from Politico:
Broadly, the idea is to cut down on long commutes and car emissions, and improve people's quality of life by ensuring they have access to quality services where they live.
That's not the way it's being seen in Oxford.
News that the city council adopted a plan to embrace the 15-minute city model prompted fierce backlash, with local groups and public figures alleging that authorities planned to restrict residents to their immediate neighborhoods and strictly police their movements. A rally attend by thousands in Oxford last month claimed to be protesting plans to reconfigure the city as a "Stalinist-style, closed city" and the eventual enslavement of local citizens.
The outrage has been fanned by popular right-wing media figures and politicians, who seized on the issue as an outrageous example of government overreach.
"You will only have 15 minutes of freedom here in the U.K.," said the far-right media personality Katy Hopkins, who compared the scheme to pandemic-era lockdowns and claimed authorities will use facial recognition technology to police residents.
News commentator Mark Dolan denounced the plan as "dystopian," and similarly warned that the city planned to use "numberplate recognition cameras, installed everywhere" to create "a surveillance culture that would make Pyongyang envious."
The issue even made its way to the House of Commons, where Tory MP Nick Fletcher described 15-minute cities as an "international socialist concept" whose ultimate purpose was to "take away personal freedoms."
Although these alarmist claims of mass surveillance and loss of individual freedom are indeed far-fetched, the anxiety and unrest unleashed in Oxford fits into a broader picture of local pushback across Europe against green measures that are perceived as an attack on personal freedoms — particularly when they affect personal car use.
Given that most people are used to our high streets becoming deserts with only charity shops and cafes and not much else, surely the idea of the facilities that we need being much closer to our homes, surely the 15 minute city is a good idea?
What do you think?
The majority of any individual’s journeys should not involve frequent trips to hospital in the average lifetime. Most gp surgeries are locally based even if with inadequate parking.
Shopping especially with home delivery, going to work, school, recreation, and some social events can be locally available up-to a point. It would be much less stressful for working parents with very young children to live in a 15 minute city. Also 15 minute cities might have better social cohesion and be friendly places to live and work.
Carlos Moreno's life is interesting. Born in 1959, the child of peasant farmers with an illiterate father. He has/had 7 siblings.
As a 16 year old student he joined a left wing organisation in Columbia which fell foul of the military and in 1979 he fled to France seeking political asylum. Originally interested in mathematics and robotics he gradually turned his attention to infrastructure and the concept of sustainable digital cities.
According to an article in Nature, cities produce 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Just think how long it can take to drive across a city or large town. When we lived in Brixton in the 80s it would take us about 1 hour to drive to visit friends in Chiswick during the evening - a distance of 8.5 miles. No one is suggesting that people walk that distance but many of the cars that held us up would have been travelling a couple of miles. It was noticeable at Christmas when there was much less traffic on the roads that my journey to work by bus was around 30 minutes. Usually it was at least an hour.
Many people suggest that the Tories are only thinking in the short term (apart from HS2). What the country needs is ideas for the long term, which may be alien to many people, but which improve the way in which we all live.
Dinahmo why not go by underground from Brixton to Chiswick?
And where are all our relatives and friends supposed to be?
Within the 15 minute zones as well??!!
If you have a supermarket within 15 minutes but chose not to use it that will be your choice. However, more will use it because, for many, convenience comes first M0nica. This will help when it comes to the climate.
When did people stop applying reason, as the reports seem to imply they have? It's almost as if some of the population are choosing to believe stories if they give them an emotional buzz rather than thinking things through. The also seem not to question why it is to the advantage of some to feed us frightening scenarios.
When we lived in Brixton in the 80s it would take us about 1 hour to drive to visit friends in Chiswick during the evening - a distance of 8.5 miles
If Brixton and Chiswick each became 15 minute cities you might still want to visit friends. Where were all the other people causing the congestion going?
Theatres? Out for meals? Work?
Many people work in cities - where will they all live?
What we need is better public transport.
We probably need both buses and a better, closer infrastructure.
ronib
Dinahmo why not go by underground from Brixton to Chiswick?
Because we'd be coming back in the early hours - and we'd get home quicker than if we'd gone by tube.
Callistemon21
^When we lived in Brixton in the 80s it would take us about 1 hour to drive to visit friends in Chiswick during the evening - a distance of 8.5 miles^
If Brixton and Chiswick each became 15 minute cities you might still want to visit friends. Where were all the other people causing the congestion going?
Theatres? Out for meals? Work?
Many people work in cities - where will they all live?
What we need is better public transport.
It was not unknown for us to walk home from the West End if we were out late - about 4 miles. When we were even younger we walked almost everywhere. But then we were living near Derry and Toms.
All this idealistic talk of walking or riding a bike seems to have taken no account of what disabled people are supposed to do.
It would be a big change for most simply because we have got out of the habit of walking and we expect to get where we’re going more quickly than public transport.
I could get public transport to work- set off 90 minutes early, walk to the bus stop, bus 1 then change buses to bus 2 and walk the remaining 30 minutes, carrying school stuff. Or I could get in the car and be there in 30 minutes.
I could walk to the nearest shop-it’s less than 10 minutes away-at the bottom of a long, steep hill, quite near the bus stop I’d use for work, or if I didn’t want to walk to the doctor, 15 minutes away, in the other direction, involving another 3 steep hills each way.
When I was a child, we walked to the shops, hills or not and only got a bus into Manchester.
Like many, I’m older now and however fit I am, hauling shopping up a hill in the pouring rain or blazing sun just doesn’t appeal.
Many older people couldn’t walk 15 minutes to anywhere! My mother lived until she was 94. She spent her last year in a care home, but prior to that, she lived for three years in a sheltered apartment. She couldn’t walk the ten minute walk to my house, and so we collected her in the car. She couldn’t walk the ten minute walk to the local supermarket and so I took her. She certainly couldn’t use public transport to get to the podiatry clinic twenty minutes drive away. I took her, in my car!
All very elderly people would be seriously compromised by such a situation. They can’t walk anywhere, and need to use a walker just to get around the shop. I hope we don’t become such a callous society that we think the very old simply don’t matter!
I don't know why public transport in the UK is so dreadful (outside of London, anyway). When I was a child buses were always full, and they ran regularly from the suburb where I lived to the city centre. There was never more than a ten minute wait of you missed a bus, and they ran in all weathers.
Other countries have good, reliable and cheap (or free) public transport, and years ago every town and some villages had a train station. I see no reason why we couldn't do the same.
I agree with biglouis that it's all very well saying that people should walk or cycle everywhere - not everyone is able to do that - and I agree with Callistemon that many people work in cities, or at any rate not near their home towns. I know hardly anyone who lives on the doorstep of their workplace. Theatres, cinemas and restaurants tend to be out of town, so even if we all shopped locally (and many people shop online anyway) and medical centres spring up everywhere, there would still be people coming and going - I just don't see what difference a 15 minute city would make, really.
If you have a supermarket within 15 minutes but chose not to use it that will be your choice. However, more will use it because, for many, convenience comes first
But would supermarkets want to be that close to each other? And what about doctor's surgeries? Our local town has one huge surgery to serve the whole town. the majority of its patients, even though they live in the urban area around it, live considerably more than a 15 minute walk away.
The same would apply to secondary schools.
Doodledog Public transport outside towns has never been good. As a child, at various times, I lived in several villages. 3 buses a week, going to the local town 4 miles away, in on the 9.00 bus, back at 11.00, 2 buses a day at another one. The station was in the parish, but a mile from the village. There was a village shop, and in one a bakery, but visits to the doctor, dentist, required a major expedition.
So much of the talk about using local transport, walking and cycling is predicated on urban living. I live in a highly populated area, which is however, still rural, My local authority has a population of 150,000, the majority live within 5 miles of where we live and for most of us 15 minute living is quite impossible.
biglouis
All this idealistic talk of walking or riding a bike seems to have taken no account of what disabled people are supposed to do.
They will move around in whatever way they do now..
Nobody is planning to force everyone out of their cars
Nor will they be obliged to use the '15 minute' services. People will use them, though, because they are there and convenient.
Reading what has been already happening in other countries will not stop these Sunak style attacks from the far-right on GN but it may stop those not quite so invested in the New Aristocracy looking quite so lacking in kowledge.
www.nlc.org/article/2023/06/13/exploring-the-15-minute-city-concept-and-its-potential-for-communities-of-all-sizes/
www.portland.gov/bps/planning/about-bps/portland-plan
DaisyAnneReturns
Reading what has been already happening in other countries will not stop these Sunak style attacks from the far-right on GN but it may stop those not quite so invested in the New Aristocracy looking quite so lacking in kowledge.
www.nlc.org/article/2023/06/13/exploring-the-15-minute-city-concept-and-its-potential-for-communities-of-all-sizes/
www.portland.gov/bps/planning/about-bps/portland-plan
With respect, DAR, I don't think that the posters voicing objections to 15 minute cities have anything to do with the far right.
"According to The Sun, Prime Minister Sunak “takes aim at so-called '“15 Minute Cities'”
"Rishi Sunak’s Attack On 15-Minute Cities Is ‘Baffling’ And ‘Concerning’ Says Originator Of Concept"
I don't think it is meant to be an instant panacea to all the problems of access to services, climate change and reducing use of the car. To me it seems like long term planning, which a lot of people feel the current government aren't doing.
If the 15 minute cities aspect (and environmental aspects) were at the top of the list when town planning, house building and other building planning were concerned, then a gradual shift towards a more sustainable way of living in the future would occur. It won't be in my lifetime, but it looks to me to be an eminently sensible plan for the future.
No-one will have their cars confiscated, not be allowed to travel outside their 15 minute zone, or only be allowed to shop in one place! It is a long term plan that will improve the lives of our children and grandchildren, and (I hope) help reduce damage to the planet.
I don't think it is meant to be an instant panacea to all the problems of access to services, climate change and reducing use of the car. To me it seems like long term planning, which a lot of people feel the current government aren't doing.
I agree. I thought the piece I flagged was particularly interesting. Portland, Oregon, started their research in 2010, producing their plan in 2012 and moving firward from there. It seems significant to look at what has happened here in this time.
I do have my own bias. Communities matter.
The important words here are "long-term planning" and "gradually". City planning departments are concerned for their own reputations and want to see a magic-wand change in the few years while they are involved in committee decisions, so they make wholesale alterations almost overnight in traffic redirection and putting up bollards and confusing signage. This alienates residents in my area who can't get from a point in a side street on one side of the High Street to a destination in a street on the other side without driving to a roundabout on the edge of town, part way round it and back down side streets on the other side. This adds more traffic, uses more fuel, creates more greenhouse gases, and increases the stress and frustration in everyone's life.
Is any council suggesting a "magic wand"?
Leeds included 20-minute neighbourhoods in their current and ongoing plans.
This quotes people who live in such an area, not people with fears imagined by a far-right government.
I live in a commuter village within a 15 minute walk I have GP, Dentist, Opticians (2), Chemists (2), primary schools (3 including a special needs school) restaurants (4) takeaways (5) along with 2 coffee/tea shops.
In the opposite direction within a 30 minute walk, main line station into London, primary schools (4), one senior school, two pre-schools, two private nurseries, Supermarkets (3 one an independent) chemists (2) dentists (2) pubs (4) restaurants (6) along with multiple takeaways, hairdressers, beauty/nail salons three dress shops (one of which is renowned for formal/ mother of bride/groom outfits)
Cannot see what’s new about 15 minute cities?
Cannot see what’s new about 15 minute cities?
Some of us might call them market towns 😃
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