briefcase | invest smarter | Issue #125

🥐 The year is 2050 in Paris, citizens are facing a croissant shortage, and regular Parisians now have to wait two extra years for retirement. Mon Dieu!

To top it all off, a globalist plot is underway to create modern-day gulags under the auspices of a citizen-friendly 15-minute city urban planning concept. Don’t be fooled mes amis!

According to the conspiracy theorists 👽, this is far from being mundane city planning theory. They say the 15-minute city is a framework that puts boundaries on citizen movements and will ultimately lead to dystopian concentration camps controlled by one central authoritarian global government of elites.

Resistance to the concept is brewing, but is it warranted?

It’s an urban planning concept that puts pedestrians and walkability first over cars. As such, it limits vehicle movement in favor of walkways and foot traffic. The idea behind the 15-minute city is that within a 15 walk or bike ride, residents can access everything they need, such as schools, groceries, medical help, employment, public parks, and more.

Far from enabling citizens, this urban planning theory views vehicles as bubbles of illusory acceleration. Which is also the name of my Grateful Dead cover band.

According to CNU, the building blocks (pun intended) of the 15-minute city are as follows:

The 15-minute city dictates that each vicinity must satisfy all the basic needs required to live, work, and play.

Ultimately, the concept of the 15-minute city calls for pedestrian streets peppered with shops and communal spaces, versus concrete jungles, box stores, and McMansions tied together by endless highways. The latter has led to absurd city planning and long commutes that weigh on our mental health and environment. Sound familiar?

The problem in North America is that urban sprawl and massive highway networks have dominated urban planning since WWII. Here's a to-scale areal shot of Florance, Italy, and an interstate exchange in Atlanta. I'll let you guess which is which.

So how did this mundane planning theory get mixed up in climate lockdown conspiracy theories?

To start off, the 15-minute city is a concept explored by the World Economic Forum. And in conspiracy theorist math, the WEF + anything = bad.

But over here in the real world, according to a proposal in Oxford, UK, the municipality will install six traffic filters to help encourage people to use their cars less in central areas, passing out small fines for unexempted vehicles.

Now, this is a trial campaign to see if it will encourage less vehicle traffic and more “healthy” foot traffic. And, it doesn’t bar cars from traveling, it encourages alternative routes away from busy foot traffic and commercial areas. The plan also called for 100 yearly vouchers for locals to continue using those routes.

This plan has been justified by many of the tenants of the 15-minute city.

…Queue the overreaction…

Canadian (sigh) Psychologist and “culture warrior” Jordan Peterson had this to say about Oxford’s plans:

This set off a firestorm response from other right-wing groups who began protesting the move. Groups and protestors called this the first step toward a global lockdown with modern-day gulags masquerading as 15-minute city pockets.

Over 2,000 took to the streets in Oxford to stop this globalist / WEF plot. They were reportedly supposed to be double the amount of protestors, but they got held up in traffic (kidding!)

Per The Guardian:

This concept is not new, nor is the ideals of more integrated living less dependent on vehicles and highways. According to Feargus O'Sullivan and Daniel Zuidijk of Bloomberg:

And if we think we are free from this nonsense here in North America, think again. New York City is attempting to implement congestion pricing in Manhattan on all roads below 60th Street.

Similarly, the mayor of Montreal plans to turn an entire neighborhood into a ‘pedestrian kingdom’. The mayor may just not have gotten the memo that this area is devoid of the other key concepts that support the 15-minute city.

In any case, proposals like we’ve seen above work on the premise that if people drive less, then the neighborhoods will be much more walkable.

So What? Human-centric communities that favor foot traffic and walkability over highways and vehicles are the right move. Expect more of these policies, and subsequent overreactions, to be pop up over the years despite the conspiracy theories of a globalist takeover.

The communities and developments that win over the next 100 years will take the 15-minute city idea to heart, and create new spaces that improve our health and social well-being.

However, in the meantime it’s probably best we encourage communities with incentives, rather than impose taxes and ‘congestion pricing’. If the stick rather than the carrot rarely works in other industries, why would it magically start working in city planning?

Consider This. The reality of North America is that it’s draped with suburbs as far as the eye can see. This type of developed real estate can’t be retrofitted to make the 15-minute city work. So what would a push for walkability mean there?

📉 Yikes: 5 out of every 6 commercial real estate brokerages post a net loss in Q1 2023— Bisnow

📊 Yikes #2: Majority of largest metros see an uptick in CRE distress in April — Commercial Observer

🏢 Yikes #3: New Federal Reserve survey pegs CRE as the fourth biggest risk to financial stability, with China-US relations hitting the top spot — Commercial Observer

📉 Still Yikes: CRE loan originations are down 56% YoY in Q1 — ConnectCRE

🌲 Lumbering Prices: Framing lumber prices down 57% — Calculated Risk

💰 AirbnBonuses For All: Airbnb posts first profitable Q1 as revenue climbs to $1.8B — Inman

📈 Rents Rise: SFR rents rise in Q1, but properties are staying on the market longer — Globe St

🤖 Digital Mortgages: Ocrolus taps OpenAI to sift more mortgage apps without humans — Inman

🏘️ Remote Trend: The number of “super commuters” has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade — Apartment List

💸 You Messed Up, Sir: NAR chief economist says the Fed made a mistake — Inman