Carlos Moreno: The Man Behind the 15-Minute City

"Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon." — Nicolas Gomez Davila, Colombian writer and philosopher (1913-1994)

By now, the reader is presumably aware – if only after watching the video above – of the WEF’s intention to transform Paris, once lauded as the pinnacle of cultural excellence and highbrow European discernment, into a showpiece for its current flagship proposal: the 15-minute city.

No doubt, their propaganda is on point. Drenched in a languid springtime glow, boulevards tree-lined and dotted with locals dining al fresco, this still yet theoretical utopia is portrayed as trendy, genteel, but above all convenient, its newly partitioned design complementing the native joie de vivre while simultaneously stripping away all the downsides implicit with modern Parisian life. But the French capital is far from alone. In recent months, similarly sanitized depictions of Madrid, Mumbai, and Johannesburg; London, Melbourne, and Seattle have all begun to emerge, each of these emanating from the Schwab-affiliated, Sadiq Khan-led C40 initiative - ‘a network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed right now to confront the climate crisis.’

Suffice to say, this is little more than branding. After all, one need only brush the globalist talking points from atop the WEF’s blueprints in order to see that the 15-minute city is inspired by the same megalomania behind Mao’s so-called “People’s Communes” and the kommunalka of the USSR, tyranny this time given structure by renowned French-Colombian urbanist, Carlos Moreno.

Who is Carlos Moreno?

Professor at Panthéon Sorbonne University and co-founder of Chaire ETI, a Paris-based research collective, it seems fair to say that Carlos Moreno has been at the forefront of Smart Cities even before such concepts became technologically viable. Possessing a background in both robotics and artificial intelligence, the soon-to-be city planner was quick to recognize how advances in these fields might be applied to, and indeed revolutionize authorities’ approach to urban development – a vision that would ultimately manifest in his “Digital and Sustainable City” and later “The Thirty Minute Territory.”

Politicians soon took notice. But although it remains Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s socialist Mayor who was the first and still most high-profile leader to openly embrace Moreno’s ideas, others have listened more covertly, the much sought-after advisor today ranking amongst the most influential voices in Europe’s ever-expanding “green agenda.” Bestowed the Légion d'honneur by France back in 2010, this has been followed by a litany of other accolades, not least the UN HABITAT’s prestigious “Scroll of Honor” as well as the 2021 Obel Award, the video above showing Moreno outline – in his stilted, idiosyncratic English – the three principles which underpin his notion of the 15-minute city:

1. “Everyone will have access to all essential human needs within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.”

In the grand scheme of Schwab’s technocratic ambitions, this one may appear relatively benign. Certainly, it is not difficult to see the appeal in having doctors, dentists, schools, and entertainment facilities all within a short distance of one’s front door, in effect affording commute-weary urbanites the perks of small-town life. Add to this the legacy of the COVID hoax - a period in which much of humanity was deprived of connection and conditioned into a smaller, more digitalized existence – and this newfound focus on community is sure to invoke, within an increasingly atomized population, nostalgia for a time few have ever actually experienced. As Moreno states:

“COVID 19 […] was, it is still now, a real drama, because for the first time in the modern era we have this planetary pandemic with the tragic consequences. On the other hand, I consider that […] it was, it is still now, a great opportunity, for changing our urban and territorial lifestyle [..] because during COVID 19  this is a compulsory to live in the lockdown, to live in proximity, to explore our public space in proximity, green areas, to find shops in our neighborhoods, and we have this possibility to take back again control of our useful time.”

Set aside for a moment, the brazen gaslighting on display here - the fact they closed your local shops and cordoned off the nearest public park. Set aside also the problems intrinsic with an exclusively pedestrian system: the impact on the elderly, unforeseen medical emergencies, not to mention simple bad weather. Hell, you could even ignore the question of what constitutes “an essential human need” and who precisely gets to decide, and still the most obvious counterargument to this slice ‘em, dice ‘em approach to city planning is that it is entirely reliant on coercion.

Take Oxford for example. Having recently announced its plan to pilot the 15-minute city, residents have been informed, overwhelmingly against their wishes, that they will be confined to their council-designated district for well over two-thirds of the year, incurring a fine every time they venture out beyond their hundred allocated days of freedom. Naturally, this is a gross violation of the right to travel. So too does it establish a de facto social credit system of permits and penalties and yet more terrifying still, is the level of surveillance required to enforce such unashamedly arbitrary diktats.

2. “The rhythm of the city should follow humans, not cars.”

It goes without saying that climate change, ever the excuse at the heart of globalist power grabs, is presented as the supreme rationale behind the 15-minute city. Already we’ve seen the purported warming of the planet prompt calls to ban everything from plastic cutlery to short-haul flights, from LED light bulbs to perhaps most delusional of all, cow farts, and yet still it remains cars - specifically those of the diesel-fueled, plebian-owned variety - which remain top of the environmentalists’ hit list. As Moreno, himself a dyed-in-the-wool eco-warrior, contends:

“In reality, we don’t have more choice. Carbon neutrality at the horizon 2050 is not an option, it’s compulsory, and today in May 2022 climate change – the climate emergency – is a reality. We have 1.3 million people in Asia, in India, under a catastrophic heatwave, with the extreme limits of the acceptability for humans. What is the situation today in Europe? In the spring, for the first time, we have a new heatwave. Today in Paris, we have reaching 37 degrees in just at the beginning of spring. This is the concrete reality.”

But for all his talk of CO2 emissions and one’s all-important carbon footprint, it does not require an unduly conspiratorial mind to recognize that beneath the elite’s virulent anti-car agenda is but another attempt to further curtail the movement of the rabble classes. For many, inflation and the subsequent price of gas has already put an end to most non-essential journeys and however enthusiastically Pete Buttigieg might extol the virtues of electric vehicles, experience has shown these to be less about providing a viable alternative and more about offering coastal-dwelling suburbanites another means of burnishing their egos.

15-minute cities will only exacerbate such hardships. So far, mayors in London, Amsterdam, and Santa Monica have all limited traffic deemed insufficiently green from accessing certain roads and areas, a scheme they seek to expand in the coming years. Indeed, as many commentators have pointed out, far from reducing pollution, such constraints will inevitably increase it, as owners of offending vehicles are forced to circumnavigate restricted zones rather than chart a more direct route through them. But needless to say, avoiding the alleged climate apocalypse was never the point. Schwab and his Davos-bound entourage will not be relinquishing their gas-guzzling limos anymore than they’ll be forgoing their private jets, all their self-righteous hand-wringing merely the justification required to make car-ownership too inefficient, too impractical, and too expensive for the rest of us.

3. “Each square meter should serve many different purposes.”

Perhaps the defining feature of Moreno’s reinvented Paris, at least as depicted in the WEF ad campaign, is its fusion of small-town accessibility with the verve and vitality of metropolitan life. This, the urbanist claims, is a consequence of the 15-minute city’s optimization of space, any business not in operation renting out its premises to be used by another which is. In addition to addressing the problem of sprawl and empty, often dilapidated downtown buildings, he also argues that this will facilitate, through some never-elaborated-upon magic, both the reduction of social tensions and the promotion of ‘diversity,’ one of the globalists’ other pet projects. But Moreno is thinking bigger still:

“We have this possibility for offer, not just solutions, but a new framework, a methodological guideline to transform the traditional urbanism based on centralized decisions, vertical activities, isolated urban lifestyles: the historical center, administrative center, corporate district [etc.]. We have the possibilities for giving a new trajectory for developing more and more intersections, for mutualizing, for developing a critical mass for having more and more public service, […] for optimizing our investments.”

But even beneath such intentionally obscurantist language, Moreno cannot conceal what his future would truly represent: the culmination of Schwab’s now infamous rallying cry, “you will own nothing and you will be happy.” Of course, we have heard subscription-based lifestyles advocated before, clothes, electronics, household appliances, and even furniture temporarily loaned out by the state or one of its corporate collaborators. The reader is no doubt cognizant of the kind of control this model would afford such entities and yet, by extending it to property, mankind would be condemning itself to a society utterly indistinguishable from - perhaps even far surpassing - the most myopic, invasive regimes in history. Quite at odds with the age of creativity and cooperation promised by Moreno, this would be a world sapped of both identity and authenticity (or at least, any which might be called ‘organic’), the buildings ugly and interchangeable, its citizens governed by an opaque and ever-changing ‘Terms of Service.’

Doomed to Failure

Mercifully, Moreno’s hypothetical Paris appears destined to remain just that: hypothetical. True, the foundations of the 15-minute city are already being laid, typically by people of extraordinary influence, but even they cannot negate the basic economic truth that the wealth required to sustain such a vast control mechanism (as well as keep the elites in the luxury they are accustomed to) necessitates a free market, itself an anathema to Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism.” Add to this the mistrust, if not downright contempt, authorities have earned over the course of the COVID hoax and it seems that there are just way too many people who are just way, way too pissed-off to ever comply with their diktats.

The only question is how much damage will be suffered in the process. As the last three years have shown, there is no amount of misery these tyrants are unwilling to inflict in pursuit of their goals – families shattered, lives ruined, society poisoned, millions injured, untold numbers dead. To them, we are but livestock. For too long, we have allowed ourselves to be treated as such. But with the emergence of 15-minute cities and all the unchecked abuses they would enable, the coming few months may well represent the last opportunity to stand up and reassert our humanity before Schwab, Moreno, and the rest of their globalist cohorts unleash the next, even more devastating stage of their agenda.

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