FALSE CLAIMS ABOUT 15-minute cities, including that they are “concentration camps” have been reshared in the wake of a fatal fire in Hong Kong.

The devastating fire at an apartment complex in the city’s northern Tai Po district killed 151 people last week.

In the aftermath, images of the fire were spread online, accompanied by conspiracy theories.

“‘Ghost cities’ aka ‘15 minute cities’ where communist government literally turn society into digital prisons/ concentration camps,” began a 27 November post on the verified Facebook page of the defunct Irish TV show Damo & Ivor.

This account now regularly posts false claims and conspiracy theories, some of which have previously been factchecked by The Journal.

The post goes on to mention digital IDs, facial recognition cameras, biometrics, carbon credits, a social credit system, smart meters, smart houses and smart appliances.

None of these things have any obvious connection to either “ghost cities” or 15-minute cities, nor to the fire in Hong Kong, despite being shared along with an image of the blaze.

‘Ghost Cities’

The term “ghost cities” was used, particularly in the 2010s, to describe large centrally planned urban developments in China. Many of these initially struggled to bring in residents, resulting in eerie, almost-entirely-empty urban landscapes.

While there are still many millions of vacant homes in China, often in these cities, the population of these areas has risen greatly. It has been argued that China’s model of building housing in anticipation of future demand has been effective, and is an instructive contrast to the more free-market approaches of the western world.

The concept of a ghost city is very different to that of a “concentration camp”, as mentioned in the Facebook post, and has little to nothing to do with Hong Kong, which is very much not a ghost city.

The term also has no obvious connection to 15-minute cities, which are something else entirely.

15-minute cities

The concept of the 15-minute city is attributed to the Colombian urbanist Carlos Moreno, who is said to have developed the idea in 2015 and then coined the term ’15-minute city’ the following year.

In essence, the idea is that services can be provided so that residents in a city need never be more than 15-minutes away from their daily needs — work, school, shopping, etc.

The idea became particularly fashionable during the Covid-19 pandemic, when remote working became more commonplace and people couldn’t travel long distances.

Advocates hope the 15-minute city could enable people to live more sustainably, reducing the need for private vehicles and a wider reliance on fossil fuels, as well as an improvement in local areas and citizens’ quality of life.

“This is really about enhancing people’s quality of life,” explains Niamh Moore-Cherry, a Professor of Urban Governance and Development at the School of Geography in UCD.

“If you think about how small towns in Ireland would have evolved: people might have lived over a shop; they would have had their business there; they might have walked to school; they’d have the local library, the post office and the bank. Everything was pretty accessible.

“But the nature of planning has changed. We have these more sprawling cities with developments on the edge, so people are in their cars, traveling longer distances, just to access basic things. And the centres in our towns are dying.

“This is something that the idea of the 15-minute city could really help to tackle, by kind of encouraging the redevelopment of our town centres rather than building more new things that are further and further away.”

However, some conspiracy theorists claim the theory secretly involves governments prohibiting people from using cars, eating meat, or traveling a certain distance outside their area, often under the guise of stopping climate change. 

“I’ve heard this referred to as climate lockdown, but this is not about locking people down,” UCD’s Professor Niamh Moore-Cherry said.

“It’s not about restricting movement. It’s actually the complete reverse. It’s about people making people’s lives easier and better and giving them more time to do the things they want to do themselves.”

The concept has little to no connection with Digital IDs, facial recognition cameras, biometrics, carbon credits, a social credit system, smart meters, smart houses, smart appliances, or anything else mentioned in the Damo & Ivor social media post.

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