15-Minute Cities: A Tool for Control or a Path to Sustainability?

I believe there is a growing, perhaps universal, trend to displace people from rural lands and draw them into urban centers. This shift isn't solely about people seeking comfort or opportunity. It also appears to be driven by a broader institutional agenda—one that finds it more efficient to concentrate populations in cities, where they are easier to monitor, regulate, and control. Increasing taxes on land, coupled with restrictive rural regulations, seem to be steadily paving the way for the gradual removal of people from the land.

Admittedly, small-scale farming is no longer the most productive way to earn a living or feed a family. However, for those who deliberately choose this lifestyle, modern technology offers a path to a more sustainable and autonomous existence. Today’s tools and knowledge make it possible to live at least partially off-grid with a level of efficiency unimaginable a century ago. This means farming doesn’t have to be all-consuming—it can leave time for other meaningful contributions to society, whether through craftsmanship, remote work, innovation, or cultural activities.

Despite this potential, the trend toward urbanization continues—and with it, the rise of compact, highly structured living environments. The so-called “15-minute cities” are becoming a reality, designed to concentrate every need within a short walk or bike ride. While marketed as sustainable and community-focused, they also raise questions about freedom of movement and the increasing role of centralized planning.

Meanwhile, as everyday people are nudged—or pushed—into city life under the promise of convenience, a different pattern unfolds among the wealthiest. The top 1% are steadily consolidating ownership over vast areas of undeveloped land: farmland, forests, water sources, and wildlife reserves. Sooner rather than later, city dwellers may even be taxed or required to obtain permits just to visit or spend time in the countryside—beyond the hyper-engineered green zones and urban parks designed to simulate nature within city limits. What was once freely accessible, raw nature may become yet another commodified experience, gated and rationed.

This widening gap between those who live close to the land and those who are increasingly cut off from it may have profound social, economic, and psychological consequences—consequences we would do well to consider before this trajectory becomes irreversible.

Anyone who wants to glimpse what a modern dystopia rooted in elite land ownership might look like should study the evolution—or perhaps devolution—of the United Kingdom over the past 500 years. Historically, the vast majority of raw, undeveloped land was owned by the aristocracy, the so-called "blue bloods." To avoid open revolts and bloody uprisings, the feudal system was gradually masked and partially restructured during the Industrial Revolution. Yet the core principle remained intact: those who own the land hold the true power.

One of the clearest signs of this lingering structure is how land is used and managed today. Much of what is perceived as “natural” in the UK is, in fact, heavily engineered and tightly controlled. Landscapes that appear wild are often manicured estates, tightly regulated farms, or recreational land shaped to fit aesthetic ideals rather than ecological needs. This shaping of the countryside to suit human tastes, particularly those of the landowning class, has come at a great cost to biodiversity. Centuries of monoculture farming, deforestation, wetland drainage, and the suppression of natural processes have drastically reduced native species and disrupted ecosystems. In some regions, rewilding is now a controversial concept—not because it’s harmful, but because it challenges centuries of anthropocentric land control.

Overlaying this is a taxation system that further reveals the survival of feudal dynamics. On paper, taxes are meant to fund the public good—roads, hospitals, schools, free healthcare, education, and social support. And while these services do exist, there's a growing disconnection between the amount paid by the majority and the value they actually receive in return.

The economic burden tends to fall on the working and middle classes, while benefits disproportionately flow to a narrow elite. A rough approximation suggests that nearly 30% of the population pays little to no tax yet benefits from public spending—this includes not only segments of the informal economy and welfare recipients but also members of the ultra-wealthy who legally minimize or entirely evade taxation through sophisticated schemes. Thus, the system allows both the bottom and top ends of society to extract value from the tax base—albeit in very different ways.

What remains is a society where the many are managed and taxed, and the few continue to own, control, and profit—often behind layers of historical legitimacy and bureaucratic complexity. The castles may have been replaced by corporate offices and trust funds, but the fundamental structure of land-based power and privilege endures. In the UK especially, where even “wild” land is often engineered, the illusion of natural balance masks a deeper, centuries-old imbalance—one that affects not just people, but the environment itself.