Shutting out cars has given us no choice but to live more locally

Local is best, isn’t it? Local food, local shops, local businesses locally grown for locals. For decades, this has been the mantra of the well-meaning, environmentally anxious middle-classes. Yet we never quite seemed to put it into practice, beyond buying sourdough at artisan bakeries. Then came the pandemic – and now, the LTNS. These are the “low traffic neighbourhoods” where residential roads are effectively closed off to cars, to improve air quality and encourage locals to walk or bicycle instead. The Government has just pledged to bring in at least 200 new LTNS, as part of its master plan for a greener Britain.

I live in one of the many LTNS that were hurriedly implemented during the first lockdown by councils keen to capitalise on the sudden reduction in traffic. Innocuous-looking planters appeared overnight at both ends of our road, followed by a week-long traffic jam of baffled drivers executing three-point turns. Since then, the LTN has divided local opinion and provoked furious protests – real ones, with banners – but succeeded triumphantly in its primary purpose: making driving a nightmare.

All the traffic has been pushed out of the “residential” streets and onto the main roads, which are now permanently gridlocked. This is very hard on people who can’t work from home, and on those residents (one in 10 Londoners) who actually live on a main road, and whose homes are now engulfed in a red-lit smogscape of honking cars.

But it’s doing the job. I don’t drive any more, if I can possibly help it. All my neighbours admit, however grudgingly, to walking and bicycling more, and staying closer to home because leaving is too much of an ordeal. Environmentally, this has to be a good thing. Culturally, it’s quite a shock.

Ever since the industrial revolution, the trajectory of progress has been towards greater mobility. Every class of person in almost every country has become more widely travelled than their ancestors could have imagined. We have travelled for work and education and fun, and became so inured to the miracle of flight that we even grumbled about the legroom.

Children have moved further away from their parents; families have scattered to different towns, countries and continents. We have learnt to move about continuously, both abroad and at home. Cars have shrunk distances, and created new phenomena: the school run, for example, or supermarket shopping, or the out-of-town mall.

It would be foolish to suppose that our sudden immobility, caused both by the pandemic and by the urgent need to reduce pollution, will simply reverse these changes. Once this lockdown lifts there may be a boost for local economies, as workers still stranded at home seek out cafes and shops within walking distance. But many of our habits will remain global. We now have the infrastructure to bring the world to us, in both digital and physical form. The biggest beneficiary of our new localism is likely to be Amazon, which is about as un-local as it gets.

It is a revolution, though, make no mistake. Being unable to move around changes your priorities. Do you have enough friends and family nearby? Do your children go to a local school? Is there enough going on in the neighbourhood to stop you dying of boredom? A home is a very different thing once you can’t drive away from it.

follow Jemima Lewis on Twitter @gemimsy; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion