The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have A Point

Forthcoming in the May 2023 issue of Locus Magazine

One of the more baffling events of the first quarter of 2023 was the mass protest in Oxford (England, not Mississippi) against the “15-minute city pledge,” a movement to get city councils to strive for cities where each neighborhood is a walkable place, with most amenities (groceries, schools, health care, employers, leisure activities) located within a pleasant 15-minute walk from your door.

The 15-minute city is an extremely inoffensive and commonsense idea, and moreover, Oxford is basically already a 15-minute city, because it is a medieval city, with a street-plan to match, anchored around a massive university campus (university campuses everywhere are pretty much all 15-minute cities).

So it’s weird that a bunch of people showed up to protest it, chanting slogans and waving signs decrying the World Economic Forum, the Great Reset, imaginary “climate lockdowns,” and “eating bugs.”

In America, this is called “the paranoid style in American politics.” In the UK, they have a far more colorful epithet: “swivel-eyed loons.”

Here’s the thing: the swivel-eyed loons have a point.

Oh, not about 15-minute cities! The 15-minute city is a perfectly pleasant idea that mostly requires adding a few bus lanes…