Ok, let’s do this🙄
We’ll start with an explainer covering:
🕒What is a 15-minute city
🏫What on Earth is going on with Oxford
👽Where the conspiracy theories have come from
And then we’ll look at the Telegraph article
🧵
1/25
What is a 15-min City?
It is a term coined by urban planner Carlos Moreno, a professor at Sorbonne University, in 2016.
It is how towns and cities evolved before cars were invented.
People lived, worked, and socialized in their local vicinity. Everything they needed day to day was easily accessible
2/
Then the car came along. And over time everything got built around the car.
People could live in the suburbs and commute to work, and then drive to an out of town shopping centre and cinema complex.
So we spent hours commuting, sitting in traffic, living disconnected lives.
3/
So Moreno’s idea is to start to incorporate the old way of doing things back into how we plan new developments or regenerate current ones.
Wouldn’t it be great to live 15-minutes by foot/bike or public transport from all your day to day needs?
That’s it. That’s the 15-minute city concept.🤷🏼♀️
4/
It’s being used all around the world.
Paris is embracing it. Cities in Canada, Spain, The Netherlands, China have all incorporated.
I mean even Milton Keynes used it as the basis of their town planning back in the 1960s.
It is really not a scary thing!
5/
So what’s the deal with Oxford?
In 2015 OxfordSHIRE COUNTY council suggested a scheme to tackle congestion in the city centre.
They would introduce traffic restrictions on just 6 key roads at certain times of the day to free them up for essential traffic and encourage bus use and cycling.
6/
These are the 6 roads and when restrictions apply.
You can see there are 100’s and 100’s of other roads available at all times👍🏼
7/
Residents of Oxford City will be allowed to use the restricted roads freely on 100 days of the year.
Residents of Oxfordshire will be able to use them freely on 25 days.
And anyone who *needs* to travel by car in the city centre will be exempt👇🏼
8/
No where in Oxford will be inaccessible.
There will be no barriers.
No one is being prevented from travelling anywhere. They might sometimes need to take a different route.
And importantly NONE of this has anything to do with 15-minute cities!
9/
What?!
As OxfordSHIRE COUNTY council was implementing this trial to tackle congestion in the city centre, Oxford CITY council were looking at ways to make various districts within the city more convenient using the 15-min city idea…
And boom!💥
2 DIFFERENT councils and 2 DIFFERENT schemes get conflated to create a massive conspiracy theory!
10/
This became the “climate lockdown” theory.
That shadowy figures (including King Charles apparently🤷🏼♀️) wanted us to be locked in our homes for the sake of the environment.
Covid was just a dry-run to see if we’d be compliant enough… apparently 🙄
11/
In 2023 it moved from being an online conspiracy theory into the real world.
A group called Not Our Future did a leaflet drop to 1000’s of Oxford residents calling them “Guinea pigs” and saying their councillors had been duped into a “globalist” scheme.
They also organised in-person protests
12/
Were they concerned Oxford residents?
Nope!
They are an amazing who’s who of all our old Covid conspiracy quacks and GB News regulars.
I got a mild pang of nostalgia when I saw the list!😂
Right Said Fred, Calvin Robinson, Laurence Fox, Yeadon, Cahill, Malone, Neil Oliver….
13/
All apparently very concerned about a scheme to tackle congestion in Oxford city centre 🙄
It’s worth noting at this point that schemes like this are NOTHING NEW!
Cities the world over have pedestrianised areas, bus and taxi lanes, congestion charges etc.
The Oxford filter system is no different.
14/
The conspiracy went “mainstream” when Tory politicians started spreading the misinformation in their party conference.
No one is policing how often you go to the shops. Nor would they want to!
As for policing who uses roads and when?
I refer you back to my previous tweet👍🏼
15/
There is no “human right” to DRIVE wherever you chose whenever you chose.
That is policed every single day.
Traffic lights, congestion zones, bus and taxi lanes, toll roads, pedestrian areas, private roads, etc etc
It is entirely normal for there to be rules around road use.
16/
And to reiterate in case anyone has missed this point:
The ONLY thing being restricted on these 6 roads is private car use. You can still walk, cycle, scooter, take the bus.
No one is being restricted from going anywhere.
They just can’t DRIVE on 6 roads at certain times of day in a private car.
17/
And despite this being explained over and over, the conspiracy theory still sticks.
Here is former Tory MP spreading the same lies.
For clout? Or just ignorance?
And this is not consequence free…
18/
Councillors received death threats. Meetings were flooded with protestors protesting an imaginary issue.
Even Moreno, the 15-minute city guy needed a police escort following treats to “cut him into pieces”
And normal residents became terrified because they believed they would be locked down again
19/
So onto the Telegraph article!
They have also conflated the 2 different things - tackling traffic congestion and aiming for local amenities to be easily accessible.
Para 1 - 15-min cities
Para 2 - traffic filters dealing with congestion. And they specifically claim the latter is PART OF the former.
Which is untrue
20/
Another Tory peddling the conspiracy.
Oxfordshire is not policing how people live or move.
They are policing how people drive (on 6 roads). Policing drivers is a very normal practice. It is neither sinister nor a new concept!
21/
Ah, that’s were the “Stalinist” comment came from!
Hyperbolic much?!😂
No, 15-min cities will not require a “passport to visit you Granny”
Just stop it🙄
22/
“Cars are the easiest way to get in and out of town centres”
Really? Have you tried driving Oxford city centre recently??🙄
These people will fight til their dying breath to keep everyone in cars at all times. They have no interest in innovations that might make places more pleasant to live, reduce pollution or reduce congestion.
23/
So no, 15-minute cities are not restrictions of any sort
Restrictions on car use are entirely normal and have been in place for decades in one form or another
A scheme to reduce congestion is NOT the same thing as a 15-min city
The ability to DRIVE wherever you please, whenever you please is not an inalienable human right👍🏼
24/
For more detail and all the links and sources, as well as couple of debunks of posts on this subject, feel free to go to my substack:
monkdebunks.substack.com/p/no-oxford-is…
Free to subscribe!
And if anyone is that way inclined, buymeacoffee.com/MonkDebunks, really helps support my work!
25/25
Perfectly summed up!
They hark back to the good days when we had thriving communities and bustling high streets but any suggestion of doing anything to bring that back is “they’re locking us up!!”🙄
If you want to read about 15-min cities working well in Spain - open.substack.com/pub/valenciapr…
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