15-Minute Cities – How Urban Design Entered the Culture War

15-Minute Cities – How Urban Design Entered the Culture War

From Origin Story by Podmasters

February 25, 2026 · 1h 6m · Season 8 · Episode 19

About this episode

This episode explores the concept of 15-minute cities and the conspiracy theories that have emerged around it.

Welcome to another between-season bonus episode of Origin Story. This week Ian tells the story of 15-minute cities: the notion that every urban resident should live a 15-minute walk or bike ride away from all essential amenities. How did such a sensible and benign approach to urban planning give birth to a wild conspiracy theory about authoritarianism? We meet Clarence Arthur Perry, the first urban planner to protect city life from the rise of the automobile; Jane Jacobs, the urban theorist who championed mixed-use neighbourhoods in 1960s New York and prevented Robert Moses’ expressway from slicing through downtown Manhattan; and Carlos Moreno, the French-Colombian scientist who invented the 15-minute city in 2015. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo made the policy a cornerstone of her mayoralty and a model for cities around the world. But as the pandemic melted people’s brains, Moreno’s innovation became demonised as a “war on motorists” and, worse, a “Stalinist” plot to confine citizens to their neighbourhoods — permanent lockdown. By the end of 2023, Rishi Sunak’s government was fluently speaking the language of online conspiracy theorists. What constitutes the ideal urban environment…

People in this episode

Host: Ian

Topics covered

  • urban design
  • 15-minute cities
  • conspiracy theories
  • urban planning
  • public policy
  • pandemic impact

Keywords

  • urban planning
  • 15-minute city
  • conspiracy theory
  • public policy
  • urban theorist
  • pandemic
  • city life

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: 15-minute cities, Robert Moses, Paris

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