Localism seems to have got itself a bad name. The Fifteen-Minute City is a concept that has been known to us geographers for a long time, albeit not with that name. It is a model for making communities that are sustainable in both human and environmental terms – and hopefully economic ones too.

Yet the phrase seems to have been grasped, without comprehension, by certain groups as a conspiracy theory for total control of people’s movements. In reality, all it describes is the ability of people to access the services they need, ideally on foot, within fifteen minutes of their home.

The concept was there, if not the phrase, when my wife and I moved to the small town of Coggeshall in north Essex, U.K. in 2002.

It is a small town of around 4000 people, in a rural setting about 45 miles north-east of London. While many people who come here (often from London) seem to be seeking a rural idyll, Coggeshall is more than that; it has a history going back to Roman times and a market charter dating from 1256. It has a more recent history as an industrial centre for the textile industry. I had known it since the mid-1980s, and when we moved here, we were attracted to precisely the urbanism of a small, relatively sustainable centre, where we can indeed access pretty much everything we need on a daily basis, within considerably less than a fifteen-minute walk. With many listed buildings, it does sometimes feel like a time-warp, but Coggeshall has not been immune to the various pressures of modern times. Its retail offering is still impressive for a place of its size, when many others in the region have few or no shops at all. But when a new local supermarket opened at a distance from the centre around ten years ago, the impact on footfall in the centre was immediate. Numerous shops have struggled to survive ever since.

Which is why the latest opening is so important: fully in the spirit of the fifteen-minute neighbourhood, Joe Hanna and his partner Harry, have opened a new café. Not exactly news of global significance, but within one week, their premises has brought back all the life to the centre of our small town.

We should not ignore the impact of a pre-existing tea-room, which has been making headway since Lockdown, but the new premises are perfectly attuned to the needs to the hitherto-urban population now living in our small town, and has added significantly to the critical mass of attractive eating and drinking places in the centre – enough to draw people back. And while the current addition of a considerable amount of new housing has caused much heartache, perhaps a benefit will be a larger local market to sustain such services.

Joe and Harry seem to have an unerring eye for detail and atmosphere – in all the ways that so many cafes in the U.K. disappoint, this one doesn’t. They have taken well-observed inspiration from café culture in France and Italy; they have taken care to provide high-quality products, rather than the usual disappointing clones that even many independents now purvey. They have resisted the trend to base the design and décor on the chains, preferring instead the full continental-café vibe. They have bothered to secure an alcohol and music licence, and permission for pavement seating, and are offering open-all-hours availability which, if it doesn’t kill them, means we in Coggeshall now have somewhere we can go at pretty much any time of the week. It all works magnificently.

Mr Hanna’s has only been open for a week, although it feels much longer than that in the way it has already bedded in. Already, they have been cleaned out of stock several times, and the queue has almost permanently been out of the door. Time will no doubt improve the slickness of the waiting, not that it is by any means bad.

Hanna’s is an excellent summertime hangout – but it promises to be equally good as the days draw in. By showing real verve and not cutting the often-cut corners, Mr Hanna’s offers a model for what can be achieved even in a small community like ours. Too often, it is precisely the cutting of corners that results in a lacklustre offering that disappoints, and which people soon grow tired of.

Amenities in small communities have been under assault for so long in the U.K. that it feels like the natural way of things. But it need not be so. Given something really appealing, people will still use their local services – and I think they actually prefer that to the anonymity of the huge chains and retail parks. Offering something inspirational is what makes all the difference.

There is nothing to fear from fifteen-minute communities, indeed quite the opposite.