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The concept of '15-minute cities' came up a few weeks ago, but since then it appears to have piggybacked off a local dispute in Oxford to become the locus of the latest so-called 'far-right conspiracy theory'. The proposed measure certainly codes as dystopian to me on this side of the pond, even as someone who is generally supportive of new urbanist ideas, but I can't speak to how it plays in Europe.
I've often felt that the culture war battle lines on these urban planning issues have not been as clearly drawn as those on gender, immigration, or abortion, mostly due to a lack of attention, but that time appears to be coming to an end. Though seeing as we already can't build anything, I suppose it isn't much of a loss.
I live in a 15 minute hellhole. There are probably a dozen coffee shops within a 15 minute walk, almost as many churches, a bunch of drug stores, some clothing stores, infinite amounts of restaurants
It’s early morning here and I can hear the light rail’s grating, electronic simulation of a bell dinging and angrily bleating at cars as it rumbles past my house. It’s morning, but dark in my house because of the blackout shades I had to install after my city switched to dystopian white LED flood lights to “prevent crime”. All night long people literally drag raced up and down my street reaching speeds of >100mph directly in front of my house.
I used to sit on my front porch every night and chat with neighbors as they walked by, but these days the neighbors mostly sit in their own houses, rightfully fearful of the homeless drug addicted schizophrenics who have laid claim to the sidewalks here.
No I do not love my 15 minute city. Tear out this god awful light rail, it does nothing but bring crime to the neighborhood, tear down ALL of the streetlights, start enforcing the laws against open drug use, and speeding, and maybe then this city would be enjoyable.
But the same people who advocate 15 minute cities seem to think these horrifying hell demons are virtues, not things to be overcome, so no I do not want to give them any power. If they want to build their childish utopia, they can do so out in the desert from scratch. Stop ruining cities.
I’m not really an active advocate for “15 minute hellholes”, but I always find these comments a bit baffling. Surely what “everything should be within 15 minutes” is aspiring to is something like Seoul or Tokyo or Singapore, which are convenient and pleasant enough places to live, even if a bit cramped and not for everyone?
So the bait for "15 minute cities" is small Italian villages and the switch is East Asian anthills, complete with wide boulevards full of cars and motorbikes down the sidewalks (at least in Seoul's case)?
Well, I don’t really see how you’re fitting 5 million people in a small village on the Alps. I always think of Yokohama or Hong Kong when I think of “convenient city to live in”.
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"bait", No, I'd say realistically the goal is how the nice parts of Chicago are where you have smaller distinct neighborhoods that have everything you regularly need/want connected by cheap and regular rail but just slightly more so. Put the houses closer together in a brownstone or townhouse configuration, make yards smaller and use much of that sqft saving for nice green parks, which are a much better space for community formation, and the rest for much more local businesses like grocers, bakeries, butchers, restaurants, ect. The areas that are like this make going about the town a pleasure rather than a chore.
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Well, the difference is that those cities are in countries that, ah, generally frown upon "immoral" behaviors and crime. I'm not exactly a 15-minute-city opponent, but I can agree that any city that resembles, well, a non-US city needs to enforce laws and norms to a rather strict degree to keep it pleasant.
I will never understand why urbanists will name other countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, and then gloss over the key differences between them and the United States: Cultures, laws, and norms. Singapore even bans chewing gum, for heaven's sake. Meanwhile in the US you'd be surprised if a three-time felon murderer stays in jail for more than a year, in San Francisco they just recalled a prosecutor for not prosecuting crime, and Vancouver is flooded with homeless drug addicts under a misguided "harm reduction" policy.
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