With only a matter of months before 15-minute city cameras are switched on, there's a conspicuous lack of any new facilities.
Time is rapidly running out for those local councils creating 15 minute neighbourhoods. In fact, it's looking very likely that there won't be a single new facility built before the cameras are switched on. The only thing that is being built is the infrastructure to confine residents to their own neighbourhoods.
The shops, cafes, restaurants, parks, health centres, theatres, cinemas and gyms that you might use are conspicuous by their absence in the utopian's plan. The cameras to log your movements are not. They are everywhere, increasing every day.
The 15 minute principle is a simple one; to have most amenities within a 15 minute walk of where you live. This, the designers assure us, would mean you no longer needed a car you would likely abandon driving altogether. The concept is one of convenience. In fact, if you believe the hype, that is the only selling point. Everything local. Everything Convenient.
The concept is always accompanied by an over-simplistic illustration with cartoon figures cycling, flying kites, and walking dogs in some brightly coloured vista of wide open space and blue skies that look nothing like your neighbourhood, that's because it doesn't look like anybody's neighbourhood, except maybe the Teletubbies'.
Opponents of the 15 minute city plan are then called mad for not wanting their neighbourhood to become like the idyllic pictures. They find themselves trying to defend a ridiculous argument they're not even making. The planners are performing a classic bait-and-switch on an unsuspecting public of course. They know that their 15 minute city will look nothing like that illustration. There are no new facilities going to be built. No new shops, restaurants, cafes or leisure centres. You will have to make do with whatever is already in your 15 minute neighbourhood, but they won't tell you that.
The ONLY aspect of the 15 minute city plan being implemented is punishment for non-compliance. Oxfordshire County Council were the first to attempt implementing a 15 minute city plan. Their head of planning, Duncan Enright, proudly announced to the Telegraph that installing 'bus filters' on major routes in Oxford would turn the town into a 15 minute city.
Residents, once they were aware of the plan, rejected the plan outright. But the Council have since pushed ahead with it. No new shops, cafes, or leisure centres of course, just dozens, and dozens of 'smart cameras' logging everyone who goes in and out of each zone. The cameras are everywhere, with new ones going up almost daily. These are costing millions of pounds and they only have one purpose; monitoring the residents to ensure they are sticking to the rules. But it was never about convenience, just control.
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