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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.
THEN WHY ARE THERE CARS EVERYWHERE?
This is the most Orwellian piece of journalism I’ve read in months. No understanding whatsoever of economics. Traffic isn’t bad because traffic is bad. Traffic is bad because it makes it take longer to get where you want to go. Banning cars to reduce traffic doesn’t solve the problem, it makes the problem worse because now it takes longer to get somewhere than it did when you were stuck in traffic.
Stockholm and Copenhagen are two similar cities with completely different transport infrastructure.
Stockholm has six freeways and massive freeway tunnels while Copenhagen has four freeways. Stockholm has 100 subway stations, roughly 120 light rail stations, 54 commuter rail stations.
Copenhagen has 37 subway stations using far smaller subway trains. They have 86 commuter train stations running fewer trains per hour than Stockholm and their commuter trains are smaller and slower.
Copenhagen has lower average commute time, less traffic and fewer traffic jams. The difference is that Copenhagen is a city that doesn't really require transportation. Everything is close and easy. Stockholm has vast urban sprawl. The average commute in Copenhagen is 17 minutes shorter per day than Stockholm's.
Compared to an American city of two million Copenhagens road network would be a complete joke worthy of a bigger town rather than a city. Yet their commute times are lower than almost any city of its size.
It simply isn't true that Houston has fantastic traffic and shorter commute times compared to Barcelona. The idea that cities with massive transport infrastructure have fast commutes doesn't really stack up.
Possibly because Copenhagen only has 600,000 people and the metro area only 1.4M. Closest US comparison might be Oklahoma City. Stockholm has about 1M in the city and 2.4M in the metro, more comparable to Austin, Texas, though in both cases the geography is quite different.
A quick look on google maps and Oklahoma city has far bigger freeways and far more of them than Copenhagen.
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