All parts of the county will remain accessible by car, officials said.”ĭespite what is actually happening in Oxford, right-wing influencers have painted the plan as a thin veneer for controlling every aspect of residents’ movement with the goal of preventing them from owning cars or leaving town at all. But car owners can apply for daylong permits to bypass the new rules, and many other vehicles are exempt. According to a fact check from the Associated Press: “Oxfordshire has approved a plan to put ‘traffic filters’ on some main roads, restricting drivers’ access during daytime hours and freeing up space for buses, cyclists and pedestrians. The traffic plan approved by the Oxford County Council which triggered backlash is meant to reduce commuting time and greenhouse gas emissions from excess traffic. But that’s not what has drawn so much attention in the media.
The City of Oxford is implementing a separate strategy, Local Plan 2040, to help achieve these goals. According to Carlos Moreno, an urban planning professor who helped lay out the plan in Paris, cities should be “designed so that we can live, work and thrive in them without having to constantly commute elsewhere.” The goal is to foster healthier habits and stronger social relationships between neighbors by prioritizing green space, accessibility, and safety for human bodies, bikes, and public transportation, rather than cars. In a nutshell, the concept of the 15-minute city is that life’s necessities such as schools and grocery stores should be just a short walk or bike ride away. Backlash, led in part by climate change denier Jordan Peterson, was so severe that academics and politicians who support the plan or the related idea of a 15-minute city got death threats. The plan recently made headlines when right-wing media influencers presented it as one component of the sprawling “Great Reset” conspiracy theory, saying its goal is to lock down residents and essentially turn cities into open-air prisons. The Oxford plan, which aims to cut down on daytime traffic and greenhouse gas emissions from cars, has been conflated with a broader “15-minute city” urban planning concept, which calls for communities where necessities are within walking/biking distance. Misinformation surrounding a plan to reduce traffic in the city of Oxford, England, is the latest example of how three years after the onset of COVID-19, anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers have seamlessly transitioned into climate change denial, and how this message is proliferating not just in Europe, but now in the U.S.
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