Fifteen-minute cities are suffering their 15 minutes of fame

When people drop the inverted commas from an awkward idea, something has changed. Witness the 15-minute city, which for years was known as “the 15-minute city”, because no one really understood what it meant. Suddenly, everyone from rule-making guru Jordan Peterson to Conservative MP Nick Fletcher seems affronted by their varying understandings of what low-traffic, liveable city neighbourhoods are designed to achieve.

Over 2,000 people marched through Oxford in protest at the idea earlier this month, and consternation has spread as far as Edmonton, Canada, where city planners are facing...