The Father of the 15-Minute City Doubles Down on His Vision
In the wake of attacks by conspiracy theorists, Carlos Moreno is out with a new book that seeks to school the world on his pervasive urban planning concept.
Paris’s Clichy-Batignolles quarter is a primary example of urban theorist Carlos Moreno’s 15-minute city concept.
Courtesy of the research lab Entrepreneurship Territory Innovation (IAE Paris-Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
When Carlos Moreno first introduced the phrase “15-minute city” at COP21 in 2015, it would have been hard to imagine that nine years later, he’d find himself vilified and threatened across the world, his concept for sustainable urban planning attacked by figures as wide-ranging as Jordan Peterson and Rishi Sunak.
“I had to have a police escort in Argentina because someone literally threatened to cut me into pieces,” said Moreno, a professor at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. “The main gist of these criticism is, as you say in English, insane — eco-skeptic, anti-vax, anti-digital. There are people who have called me the new Pol Pot, the new Stalin.”