Forbidden cities

The 15-minute city conspiracy theory is not the strangest such idea to emerge T in recent years the fantastical QAnon canon takes some topping - but it might be the most unlikely.

- Russell Brown

How on Earth did a benign, aspirational urban planning philosophy about local amenities and more accessible streets become a secret World Economic Forum plan to turn our neighbourhoods into open-air prisons? The 15-minute city concept was coined by the FrenchColombian urban designer Carlos Moreno, who wrote in 2015 that cities "should be designed so that within the distance of a 15-minute walk or bike ride, people should be able to access work, housing, food, health, education, culture, and leisure". Since then, the idealised 15 minutes has sometimes been extended to a more practical 20 and public transport is usually included in the vision.

As the UK government's Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities explained earlier this year, "15-minute cities aim to provide people with more choice about how and where they travel, not to restrict movement." Which makes it all the more odd that the Tories recently made the conspiracy theory part of their platform.