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Imagine a municipality where much of the city center consists only of sidewalks and bike paths, and private car ownership is banned. Buses, perhaps all-electric, provide transportation to destinations outside the city center. Zoning is mixed, with work and residential needs concentrated mostly or entirely in the center. Shops, retail, and other amenities would all be within 15 minutes of one's front door. In some urban design fields, this concept is called the “15-minute city.”
Urban planner Dan Lusher wrote on his website: 15MinuteCity.com, I got it.:
Cities like Paris, Melbourne and Portland, Oregon are working to reimagine themselves with more travel time spent walking and cycling, and many more have long-term goals to increase walking and cycling to improve urban life and reduce carbon emissions.
The 15-Minute City framework is great for long-term urban planning. But what really matters is effective implementation – the difficult but rewarding work of transforming cities and neighborhoods. For urban areas to reach their full potential, 15-Minute City efforts must be far-reaching, ambitious and effective.
He added:
Walkable and bikeable neighborhoods need to become the norm, not the exception (…)
First, think about where individuals live and where they need to go, and then consider how neighborhoods and cities can be remodeled to create the “hyper-proximity” and accessibility that makes urban living great. Discussions about urban mobility and “urban decongestion” often focus on speed of travel – enabling people to travel significant distances in a short amount of time.
This focus is misguided. If we look at the history of cities, and the history of commuting, we see that cities sprawl as travel speeds increase. After all, the time spent traveling remains the same, but travel is faster and farther. If planning focused on reducing the need for travel, we might not need to constantly add costly transportation infrastructure in a losing battle against traffic congestion and crowded buses. (emphasis in original).
Certainly, that makes some sense, and few city dwellers who are free to choose their urban lifestyle would argue with the proposition that their apartment, workplace, pharmacy, grocery store, etc., are all within walking or biking distance. Traditional taxi services, or the relatively new Uber and Lyft, obviously have a supporting role to play in realizing this vision, but some urban planners are even more keen to severely restrict access to these popular options in the city center.
Global city connections
While there may be a certain appeal in the initiatives proposed to make cities better places to live, the world's leading think tanks, backed by the super-rich and corporate sponsors, are pushing the idea of ”global cities” (see another article I wrote about five years ago on the development of global cities), predicting that more and more people will abandon rural life to become the new working class in densely populated cities. Thus, there is a dark side to these plans to transform urban centres.
The Dark Zone is made up of globalist individuals and groups with well-known names. C40 Cities Climate Leadership GroupToday, the group comprises 96 city councils, representing one-twelfth of the world's population and one-quarter of the global economy.
“C40 is founded and led by cities. Climate Change Promoting urban activity, Greenhouse gas emissions and Climate RiskThe online encyclopedia Wikipedia states that “urban urbanization increases the health, well-being, and economic opportunity of urban residents while also increasing the health, well-being, and economic opportunity of urban residents,” adding in 2019:
Mayor Los Angeles Eric Garcetti (Note from author Mark Anderson: His often authoritarian COVID-19 lockdowns are nearly identical to those imposed at the state level by California Governor Gavin Newsom.) He is chairman of C40 and a former mayor. New York City Michael Bloomberg As chairman of the board (…) |
They worked closely with a 13-person Steering Committee, Board of Directors and professional staff. The rotating Steering Committee of C40 Mayors provides strategic direction and governance. The Steering Committee members are: Accra, Bogota, Boston, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Dhaka, Dubai, Durban, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Seattleand Stockholm.
In October 2005, the then Mayor of London Ken Livingston Representatives from 18 major cities came together to form an agreement to cooperate and reduce “climate pollution,” which for globalists means carbon dioxide, one of the gases crucial to life itself. Thus, in 2006, the name C20 was coined. Clinton Climate Initiative— Led by former president Bill ClintonThe two organizations were merged and strengthened, bringing the number of network cities to 40 and establishing the name “C40.”
The idea is for member cities to undertake projects to further “reduce carbon emissions.” The C40 is currently chaired by the ultra-globalist, anti-EU Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, but Bloomberg served as chairman from 2010 to 2013, during which time the group has grown far beyond its original nominal number to include 63 cities.
December 2013, Former Mayor of Rio de Janeiro Eduardo Paez He became chair of C40 and oversaw the onboarding of more than 20 new member cities. Mayor Agreementwhich became the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, a group that is tied to the global cities movement that I've been following for many years. American Free Press Since its launch in 2016, and at other outlets.
In 2015, the 10th anniversary of C40, 1,000 mayors, local representatives and community leaders from around the world attended a Climate Summit for Local Leaders, hosted by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change (then Michael Bloomberg). United Nations Climate Change Conference.
In August 2016, the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo He became the first president of C40. In 2008, he served as first deputy mayor in charge of urban planning and architecture under Mayor Bertrand Delanoë.
Notably, during her second term in office, Mayor Hidalgo went beyond imposing nighttime curfews and closing “non-essential” stores amid the “corona pandemic” by introducing 50km of temporary bike lanes, known as “coronapistes,” to ease pressure on public transport. Moreover, by early 2021, the Socialist mayor's policies were attracting international attention, including a bold proposal to remove more than half of Paris' parking spaces and transform the Champs-Élysées into a “great garden.”
Tyrannical tendencies
Recent history aside, Paris is destined under Mayor Hidalgo to become a “15-minute city,” according to the now infamous World Economic Forum, “with the aim of reducing car use, lowering CO2 emissions and cleaning up the air.”
For example, the WEF also touts Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, for transforming its historic center into a “car-free paradise.” Indeed, visiting car-free places, such as Mackinac Island in Michigan or Sark in the Channel Islands, can be a pleasant change of pace from the everyday and has many desirable characteristics. And getting more people to bike or walk can have significant health benefits, including reduced obesity and improved immunity. But car-free policies are a matter of the larger political context and what such policies mean for ultimate freedom of movement, not to mention whether city residents would be given the opportunity to vote for such a dramatic change, let alone whether such a wholesale change would be legal under the city charter or the statutory powers of city councils.
Moreover, will unvaccinated people be quarantined on buses? And, as Scottish-born citizen journalist Neil Foster speculated in an exchange with me, might there be “enclaves” from which “health dissenters” or those deemed politically “undesirable” could not leave without special permission? Brian Gerrish, in a past UK column news broadcast, recalled how this very vision of the future, dystopian as it may seem, was being debated within Plymouth City Council in the early 2000s.
Given the recent history of sweeping coronavirus lockdowns in countries like Australia, and the Orwellian nature of the WEF’s interventionist policies, WEF founder Klaus Schwab himself Admission feeIt is not at all absurd to ask whether this question applies to a cabinet at the federal level, such as in Canada.
Summit to be held in October
Notably, the next C40 World Summit of Mayors, held every three years, will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina from October 19-22, 2022, as a hybrid in-person and virtual event. C40.org Announced:
The Summit will bring together mayors of the world's leading cities, business leaders and global influencers. (Original text)The event will bring together a diverse range of cities, including philanthropists, activists, youth leaders, scientists and residents, to showcase the work their cities are doing to deliver effective climate solutions and demonstrate what a powerful global coalition united around radical climate action can achieve.
Organizers point out that such urban planning also goes by other names such as “human-scale cities,” “complete neighborhoods,” “20-minute neighborhoods,” “vibrant neighborhoods” and “superblocks.”
The C40 literature goes on to add, in more “globalist” terms, that “15-minute cities can help us coexist with Covid and build back better”, and current C40 mayors and leaders are: 96 Member cities are planning unrealistic pathways to “net-zero emissions.”
The pursuit of this dream will inevitably send widespread automobile use down the road to oblivion unless the people of the world, who have already woken up to the harsh reality of blatant tyranny with the COVID-19 crackdown, demonstrate a greater awareness and insight into the machinations of tyranny and rise up to oppose such fanatical plans.
