15min cities

i don't disagree with you - it's taken a life of its own now. I just mean that you could probably spend some time and effort to trace where it has come from (for example, Jordan Peterson's article about it a few months ago that knowingly misrepresented the idea) and find some astroturfers at the partial root of it all.

Maybe it's just me getting old but I actually feel depressed and completely powerless seeing this misinformation campaign spread so easily because this is one of those things I've been very passionate about for ages and it's very close to my heart. When you start feeling that things are slowly progressing, the insane conservative grifters take it hostage and within a week there is insane pushback and it turns into a culture war issue. This is why I don't really care about anything anymore, it's just so mentally exhausting to even deal with all the conversative lunacy of the past few years let alone actively trying to change things. I'd like to roll my eyes and ignore it but I can't avoid being emotionally affected, wether it's vaccines or 15 minute cities or education or whatever. It's like half the world population want to restrict access to happiness and it's so fucking exhausting to fight it that at some point you just give up and accept the world's shit forever...

On the Clarkson types, it feels like all the people who came out to support his farm shop for ‘supplying needed goods to local people/nearby villages’ are the same people who are ardently against this stuff now. Possibly including Jeremy Clarkson, haven’t heard much of his view, probably as he’s still in hiding after his Meghan Markle stuff and only tweeting to promote Clarkson’s Farm I think.

I think it's obtuse to act like there are no disadvantages.

Not my intention.

The objection comes from a simplistic, narrow understanding of the concept of freedom. In reality, if you truly want to increase freedom, there's usually a need to reduce the freedom of some to engage in activities that are harmful to others, but that requires a more mature thought process.

This guy is how I imagine a lot of them are
https://twitter.com/t_seaward/status/1626929732158738433?t=8REZ55fU8IxatSes3DvoNw&s=19

And you have to indoctrinate them young
https://twitter.com/ChildrensHD/status/1627050833706905600?t=JDqALWPpWGwlZr-byef1mA&s=19

It’s a very interesting topic.

Beside work locations everywhere I’ve ever lived has been “15 minute city” the village I started in had everything beside each other and every city thereafter has been the same.

The issue I feel is simply being told it’s a thing, we all live it daily but being told you’re doing it plays on people differently.

The people who it will affect are the post covid suburbanites. “Gentrification” is rife in my home town with people from Edinburgh moving out, driving the market up by circa 30% at minimum yet continuing to work, socialise and shop in Edinburgh an hoursish drive away taking no part in local community.

*says the guy who moved to the countryside from the city last year.

yeah...

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As a topic on social media it is also heavily intertwined with the we never voted for and were never consulted on net zero rhetoric

Slaves of a globalist regime, is that what he says?

What does he even mean? How does having a pub and grocery store within 15mins walk make anyone a slave of anything?

Too confusing for me, but I am very happy for him to live his life thinking he's being denied something.

Things like Dieselgate and ULEZ are peak eg.

People not wanting to be poisoned are the worst, amirite?

I more meant the uproar about the ulez policy that has been announced for-fucking-ever suddenly meaning the car you bought whenever for whatever reason not qualifying.

Or wanting compo after buying a green diesel for your BIK tax break. Whist dismissing claims other people make as frivolous.

But yeah. Your point too.

my own conspiracy theory is that LTNs and 15 min cities, ULEZ, and the rest have been identified as a substantial threat to the business model of vehicle manufacturers and fossil fuel companies, so it's a safe bet that a lot of this confused opposition has been fomented by some PR companies on their payroll.

Good conspiracy theory.
Makes more sense than than what these nutters believe. That LTNs and 15 min cities aim to keep people locked in their postcode zone - though if they can only construe moving around in cars then for them these progressive policies may genuinely be a threat.

i sorta wish that people would be more up front about that though - 'this makes my transport choices less optimal so i'm not supportive' rather than concern trolling about disabilities and pollution or making weird links to the surveillance state (as if you're not infinitely more traceable in a vehicle...)

Let's be honest; some of these cranks need increased surveillance.

As a recent wheelchair user (only 3 weeks, all fine now) I can confirm it’s a fucking pain using public transport and driving about is way nicer.

i'm not saying that there aren't real concerns about disabilities - i'm saying that a lot of (non-disabled) people pretend to care about disabilities only in this very limited context and don't otherwise give a shit (when it comes to any of the other ways in which the status quo disadvantages disabled people)

Good video on a town in Finland geared up for it, cycle friendly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-64354089

Am I right in thinking that a key step in between 15 minute cities being a harmless academic concept about getting to the shops easily, and it being the subject of tonne of weird conspiracism, is the particular example of traffic control being promoted recently in Oxford?

As I understand it (and I probably don't) Oxford actually is proposing something that, while not quite what the conspiracies are imagining, is sort of in the same ballpark. Well not really, but you can see the link.

They are dividing the city into neighbourhoods and charging £70 to drive between the filters that divide them. They are also branding it as a '15 minute city' concept, which is a silly thing to do because councils should communicate in normal English, not use policy wonk terms when the general public won't understand them.

There are a tonne of caveats that make it less bad than it sounds (you won't be charged for driving between neighbourhoods if you use the ring-road instead of local filtered roads, residents get 100 days free filter-crossing-passes per year, businesses & blue badge & blue light get to pass for free, etc).

But you can see where the conspiracists get the idea from. They see this as the slippery slope to some Orwell/Stalinist/Blade Runner world where Oxford City Council's eye of Sauron laser beam will evaporate you if you step outside of your allocated sector.

They then read up and hear that council transport teams all over the country have been making appreciative noises about 15 minute cities, and that makes it even worse.

as i've read elsewhere this morning...

There’s the freedom to drive, and then there’s the freedom of being able to quickly get across town in an ambulance, of having your merchandise arrive on time, of having streets that are safe enough for kids to play in, and of riding a bike without worrying about getting crushed. Maybe the real conspiracy theory is being forced to buy a two-ton, dinosaur-juice-powered metal box from one of a dozen mega-corporations just to get to the damn grocery store.

and unfortunately we still live in hyper-atomised post thatcher britain where everyone has internalised the first kind of freedom. When it comes to the second, people moan about the symptoms all day long but can't stomach what the solutions might look like.

I probably agree with you, all I'm saying is that, if people are wondering why weirdoes think 15 minute cities means your movements will be tracked and you won't be allowed to leave your neighbourhood, that is because in Oxford this is (sort-of, at a big stretch, ignoring the caveats and fine-print) actually happening.

And yes that assumes that you literally only travel anywhere by car but for a huge chunk of the population that is true

The problem is that the conspiracy wonks aren't just making it sound worse than it is, they're painting it as something that it just isn't. If Oxford just shut the roads in question with the message "if you're going by car you have to take the long way round, rather than drive along other people's high streets and past their schools" that would have been straightforward. Ironically it's only because they tried to mitigate some criticism by giving people limited car access along those routes that people have been able to paint it as some sort of Orwellian plan, rather than just human-centred urban design.

I like that quote, where's it from?

Sky did what seems like a decent job of describing the plans in Oxford and visit Ghent, where they have been applied.
https://news.sky.com/video/the-climate-show-with-tom-heap-can-bikes-beat-cars-12814496

https://slate.com/business/2023/02/15-minute-city-oxford-conspiracy-theory-cars-lockdown-explained.html