I live in a village, popn ±2000, within 10 mins walk we have two schools, supermarket, railway station, music academy, dance hall, sports facilities, and within 15 mins by e-bike (next villages) a hospital, commune admin services, more shops etc. It helps that services cluster along the river valley, but the e-bike helps a lot to climb up the side.
In much of the world population is no longer rising, so we shouldn’t just assume growing cities, rather provide better services near to existing housing stock - much of that is rural.
I was today years old when I heard about the 15-minute city conspiracy theory on NPR. It's quite a thing that after 30 years of continual assaults on reason like the ozone layer, George Bush, Iraq, global warming, Alaska Barbie, "I'm Not A Witch", Jim Inhofe, Trump, COVID & Giuliani - Republicans are still capable of surprising me with their stupidity.
What are the liberal conspiracies? Only one that comes to mind is the Bernie being screwed over by the DNC thing. (and extensions from there like you should vote for Trump to piss of DNC or third party).
On the far left you’ll get a lot of conspiracies around the CIA thwarting all attempts at socialism. On the moderate liberal side you’ll get theories on Russia. Both of these have a lot more basis in reality then republican ones, but still every political movement has a boogie man and a set of people who will blame all the worlds problems in them.
On the far left you’ll get a lot of conspiracies around the CIA thwarting all attempts at socialism.
I’m not sure how many of those can truly be called conspiracies, with the Freedom of Information act, we actually have a pretty significant amount of evidence that the CIA absolutely destabilizes countries that start gravitating toward socialism and replace their leaders with capitalist friendly ones. The CIA backed coup of Salvador Allende in Chili is just one example.
What annoys me about this particular conspiracy bs is that many people in Europe who fall for it, are already living in something like a 15 minute city, or maybe a 30 minute city thanks to the growing car dependency. But many cities in Europe are still very much walkable experiences with most needed services within a very easily reachable range of your living place and easily accessible by walking or public transport. This was even better some decades ago before car dependency moved everything further away from you. The alternative to this would be the idiotic American model, where you are required to own a car because you have to drive for half an hour outside the city to some big store with an even bigger parking lot, but probably need to take 3 times longer because of the huge ass traffic jam this is also causing. Thanks but no thanks.
Now people are against convience!? Just drive to a different town to use THEIR Walmart and McDonald's if you think it's such a big deal. I'm sure your corporate chain experience will be very different. 🙄
Less driving is good for you, me and the whole planet.
The conspiracy theories, as per usual, are not actually based on any logic.
The one that my government keeps repeating (and no one believes them by the way) is that it would enable the local authority to essentially dictate where you live and where you work. That they would restrict you from leaving your zone.
Of course this makes absolutely no sense because nothing like that has ever been suggested and even if it were the case, unless every area of the country was upgraded into one of these zones you’d still have to have people legitimately travel in and out of the zones anyway. If only to ensure the businesses that were not fortunate enough to be located in the biggest cities, didn’t run out of employees.
Well technically, as demonstrated by some proposed anti-abortion laws, the right to travel is not enumerated and thus, according to some republicans, does not exist. Just like the right to privacy. So if you are already drinking the koolaid, travel restrictions are possible.
I’ve lived in Austin since 1999. In 2012 I moved from a suburban area to downtown greatly in part because it would take me at least a thirty minute drive each way to get anything done. The moment I moved downtown, I rarely used my car. The best restaurants, coffee shops, and bars in the city are minutes away on foot or bike. Super markets, pharmacies, etc are really close. Anything I can’t I can order from Amazon and have it within hours or the next day. That’s one vehicle making multiple stops versus dozens of vehicles going to stores.
The quality of life dive my move is significantly higher now that I don’t have to battle traffic.
I doubt it is enough to offset the cost of purchase, fuel, insurance, maintenance, registration, and in many areas property taxes. Driving even a cheap used car is rather expensive.
Not entirely, but cars are useful tools so a few other things as well. Don't forget that large family implies lots of bus pases while the car has the.same cost.
There are lots of places in the US like this. Most of us are too busy being out and doing shit to comment about it. I don’t have great transit options here, so it’s different from my years in Europe, but it’s sufficient.
I obviously cant get to every bar, venue, museum, and place with public transit. My access to gourmet foods and exceptional stuff is limited. The life I’m leading now is very low footprint and again it’s sufficient for me.
I sometimes can’t believe how we are ridiculed by people who have never even set foot outside of the EU or even watched a travel show. You are really really focusing on the wrong things.
15 minute cities are arguably easier to implement because they can be done on the local level instead of national. A lot of the uproar about this comes from out of town extremists who should be ignored in local decision making.
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