As someone who believes in that planning can improve people’s lives, it has been frustrating to see conspiracy theories emerge around concepts designed to make our neighbourhoods more liveable and inclusive.
Neither I nor my colleagues wish to imprison anyone or confiscate their cars. We do want to do is enable people to meet most of their daily needs within a reasonable distance of their home. The 20-minute neighbourhood (20MN) principles adopted by the Scottish Government attempt to facilitate connected, compact neighbourhoods with active and sustainable transport options. But the obstacles to making them a reality are huge.
Most existing neighbourhoods are designed around the primacy of motorised vehicles. Retrofitting them to support more active forms of travel will not be easy. To make movement safe for cyclists and pedestrians, car users would have to accept that they no longer have priority. This may not be electorally popular.
Even with significant investment, the configurations of roads and streets mean that not all localities can form 20MNs. To be successful, a 20MN needs to provide local facilities and services – shops, schools, greenery/parks, and ideally workspaces too. Large-enough populations are needed to make all these viable if the potential benefits such as improvements to the quality of life, air quality, biodiversity, and mental health are to be achieved.
The 20MN is not a new concept. Its origins go back to the garden city movement. What is new is the accompanying fearmongering.
Opposition typically comes from those who fear that 20MNs will de-prioritise the use of cars. But motorised public transport, taxis and personal vehicles will all still obviously be needed. The point is not to eradicate cars but to make cleaner and safer alternatives more attractive.
Interest in 20MNs was greatly accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Globally, governments have expressed interest in a future that is more resilient to health and economic crises. The inadequacies of our existing built environment were highlighted, revealing widespread structural inequalities. The pandemic also unleashed an unprecedented wave of conspiracy theories so we should not be surprised that people who came to distrust governments, academia and authorities should be attracted to other theories portraying them as malign actors.
There is also the fact that some of the problems that we urban designers and planners are seeking to address – isolated communities, lack of amenities, poor transport links etc – were caused because we abetted a traffic engineering approach to the design and operation of our streets since the middle of the last century.
There remains a lack of consideration, beyond naïve environmental determinism, of the two-way relationship between the built environment and people’s behaviour. Personal choice will impact on the deliverability of 20MNs but this is not being factored into plans.
Without a strong political mandate and considerable financial resources, architects, urban designers and planners will have limited ability to improve the lives of people in potential 20MNs.
Dr Husam AlWaer is Reader in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Dundee
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here