The WEF's New Plan For The Future: 15 Minute Cities!!

The Truth About 15-Minute Cities

In this video, the speaker discusses the concept of 15-minute cities, which is the idea that existing cities can and should be transformed into districts where everything is available within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. The speaker explores who is behind this concept, where it's being tried, and why it's not as beneficial as it may seem.

Introduction

• Last March, the World Economic Forum published an article about the popularity of 15-minute cities.

• The idea of a 15-minute city is to have everything within arm's reach.

• Carlos Moreno coined the term "15-minute city" in 2016.

• Carlos Moreno's primary motivation for designing the 15-minute city was climate change.

Popularity of 15-Minute Cities

• The concept of a 15-minute city didn't take off until early 2020 during the pandemic.

• Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, was planning on dividing Paris into districts months before the pandemic began.

• Carlos Moreno has reportedly been advising Anne Hidalgo about this concept for years.

• The push for 15-minute cities has come primarily from public institutions like C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• SDGs are a set of goals created by United Nations to be met by all member countries by 2030.

• SDGs prescribe creation of terrifying technologies like digital ID and are being pushed by public sector through regulations and private sector through ESG investing.

C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group

• C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group consists of 97 of the world's largest cities accounting for one-twelfth of the global population and one quarter of the global economy.

• C20 merged with Clinton climate initiative to become C40 after Paris agreement.

Conclusion

• The concept of 15-minute cities is not as beneficial as it may seem, and its popularity has been driven by public institutions like C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

The Rise of the 15-Minute City

This section discusses the rise of the 15-minute city concept and its implementation in various cities around the world.

The C40 Partnership with NREP

• Many cities announced plans to transform themselves to fit the theoretical UN SDG compliant city created by Carlos Moreno and his colleagues.

• The C40 partnered with NREP, a Danish urban investment firm, to pilot the 15-minute city concept in at least five unnamed cities.

• NREP has received funding from mostly unnamed institutional investors and owns 7 million square meters of real estate across Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Poland.

Oxfordshire County Council's Pilot Plan

• Search trends for 15-minute City went parabolic after Oxfordshire County Council published their final plans for a 15-minute City pilot.

• The pilot is tentatively scheduled for the start of 2024 and will see Oxford divided into six districts.

• Traffic filters will be used to enforce boundaries between districts. Violating vehicles will receive fines after exceeding their allotted number of trips per year.

• Critics argue that this plan would cause more pollution and take more time for commuters who need to drive through several districts to get to work.

• During a consultation period for the pilot, 93% of comments received were opposed. However, the council dismissed critics as conspiracy theorists and collaborated with social media platforms to fact-check and censor criticism.

Conclusion

This section concludes the transcript by summarizing the main points and highlighting the ongoing controversy surrounding the 15-minute city concept.

• The council continues to post articles linking to fact-checking websites and plans on going ahead with the pilot despite opposition from residents.

• The controversy surrounding Oxfordshire County Council's pilot plan highlights the challenges of implementing a 15-minute city in practice.

Criticisms of 15-Minute Cities

This section discusses criticisms of the 15-minute city concept, including concerns about control and segregation.

Control and Segregation

• The 15-minute city concept is criticized for being about total control rather than environmental sustainability.

• Critics argue that the plan will segregate cities into districts, ensuring that the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich.

• The UN has repeatedly claimed that 15-minute cities will make existing cities decentralized, but this is patently false because districts in 15-minute cities will be close together and centrally controlled.

Population Growth and Consumption

This section discusses population growth projections and consumption concerns related to the implementation of 15-minute cities.

Population Growth Projections

• The UN projects that 80% of people will live in cities by 2050, leading to an unsustainable increase in consumption.

• However, the global population is not growing as quickly as projected by the UN. Millions of people moved to rural areas during the pandemic thanks to remote work.

Consumption Concerns

• It's guaranteed that people living in some districts will be able to consume more than others under a 15-minute city plan.

• Critics argue that everything that 15-minute cities claim to want to do is already being done in towns and villages where populations are geographically spread out into communities.

Decentralization and Rural Living

This section discusses the benefits of decentralization and rural living as an alternative to 15-minute cities.

Decentralization

• The true definition of decentralization is populations being geographically spread out into communities.

• Critics argue that the 15-minute city plan is an excuse for more control, tying into concerns about segregation and total control.

Rural Living

• If a community can secure its own food, water, shelter, and companionship, people won't need others to tell them how to live.

• The response from central planners will be to declare that living in rural areas is bad for the environment and introduce all manner of taxes and restrictions to force people back into cities.

The Failure of 15-Minute Cities

In this section, the speaker discusses how 15-minute cities are doomed to fail because people resist local control. The people in power are aware of this and are obsessed with digitizing everything to make us reliant on hardware and software that they can control. However, even these centralized systems are inherently unstable.

Centralization is Unstable

• Central Bank digital currencies (cbdc) will fail because anyone who knows how to build crypto-related tech can make more money in cryptocurrency.

• Centralized systems, whether digital or physical, are inherently unstable. As the pile of coins gets higher, it becomes easier for something to come along and knock it down.

Resistance Against Local Control

• When entities try to exercise control at a local level, people notice and immediately resist.

• The people in power know they will never have the manpower to maintain control, which is why they're obsessed with digitizing everything.

• People are starting to notice that they're being made reliant on hardware and software that can be controlled by those in power.

Failure of 15-Minute Cities

• 15-minute cities are doomed to fail as Oxford has shown.

• Even if 15-minute cities succeed, they won't last very long due to their inherent instability.

• The speaker hopes other cities will see this and stop their shenanigans before they get off the ground.