Suddenly there’s a lot of talk and media coverage around the concept of so-called 15-minute cities.
The idea is that everything you need to live well in an urban setting - healthcare, education, food, employment, cultural life - should be easily reachable within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in a town or city, thereby reducing car dependency.
At face value, the idea seems desirable and has much to commend it. But I can’t help smell a rat, especially following Covid lockdowns and the increasingly “nudgy” and authoritarian-lite sheen to public policies these days. I suspect the great Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc would have agreed, given what he had to say about the intractable struggle between Catholicism and socialism.
