The 15-minute Doughnut City and Kurosawa’s dress-rehearsal

National lockdown: A woman crossing the empty the Place Charles de Gaulle in Paris during a nationwide confinement to counter Covid-19. — AP

IN December 2019, I was in Paris during one of the longest transport strikes the city had experienced in recent history. The strike, which was organised by the French rail union, put public transportation across the city to a halt.

Almost all metro transport and regional lines stopped running. Only two of 16 metro lines – the driverless ones – were operating as usual. For a city of 2.2 million people, surely the two lines weren’t enough.