15 minute cities and the conspirators

[ivykaty44]

15 minute cities being organised to mean that you don't have to rely on a car to get to everything and can easily walk to many places therefore only have to use the car for longer journeys

the conspiracy theories im seeing on social media are suggesting its a world wide control formula and we will be fined for moving from one district to another.

www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2023/02/08/15-minute-city-conspiracy-theories-insane-says-15-minute-city-creator/?sh=121378916156

I'm wondering if the car manufactures are behind the conspiracy, as they would have a lot to lose if people live in places where they don't need a car and can just ave one family car or hire a car. Billions of sales could be lost if this takes off.

Some cities have gone car free - theculturetrip.com/europe/spain/articles/the-car-free-spanish-city/ and found after much objection, that it works well - especially for the elderly

The cycle routes aren’t segregated and aren’t safe. I use them as a reasonably fit adult, but they are no use for kids or people who feel vulnerable in any way.

Planning laws separated work areas from living areas because industrialization meant that work was frequently dirty, smelly and polluting. Access to bring in raw materials and take away finished goods required rail (smokey and polluting until modernization) or dockyards. There were aspirations to improve health by not having families living in the shadow of the factories, and once suburbanisation began people aspired to live in the cleaner air away from the industrial zones.

Work has changed though. Manufacturing is now cleaner and most of us now work in office-based jobs. Covid showed us that more of us can work productively from home or co-op spaces than we thought. The commute to big cities from the suburbs is largely a legacy tradition less than a century old. There's no reason why most office work can't be done from smaller local office buildings within a short active transport commute from home. I look at my own town, and it's effectively a 30 minute town already for the majority of the population - it just lacks the motivation to invest in the active transport corridors to connect up the dots, and the courage to insist on adequate community facilities and services being embedded in new developments.

There's much wringing of hands over the decline of town centres, when the answer has been stated time and again - start putting desirable/aspirational residential back into the centre of town.

PS
If you want to look at who's damaging your children's future right now, don't look at Davos. Look closer to home at people like Alan Sugar and the commercial property landlords insisting we must all go back to commuting to their city office blocks, the newspaper owners that want the commuters back because they've seen sales slump. There's a better future, but it's being stolen from in front of you whilst the shills are being directed to distract you with "brain hacking".

It affects us in the rural areas as Oxford has laid its housing need on us and we have thousands and thousands of Oxford-based employees trying to get to work, now facing the prospect of being pushed onto the already over-crowded ring road. Public transport isn’t adequate. Oxford has failed to consider the transport implications for these people.

@DogInATent

Totally, completely and utterly spot on!

@Abra1t

Campaign for more buses and better cycle routes outside of town.

I lived and worked round Oxford for years and I got a motorbike- public transport is shit

@DogInATent They are not mutually exclusive. Big landlords may have their own agenda, whilst our freedoms are being curtailed by 'plans' from 'world leaeders' gathering in Switzerland that none of us voted for

My City has introduced traffic measures to stop anyone driving through the City. It means traffic has to drive on a long loop to do simple journeys near the City Centre - the centre is very small. As a result various shopping places in one part of the City have really declined as you have to park much further away. But our City Councillors only seem focussed on the night time economy of bars and restaurants.

Personally I hate large pedestrianisation schemes as they shut out even taxis and simply make more places inaccessible to my family. But I think I just have to accept with a disabled husband and DD that more and more places will become inaccessible and no one really cares.

But I think I just have to accept with a disabled husband and DD that more and more places will become inaccessible and no one really cares.

Why do you feel that you have to accept this? There's consultations, these schemes can be called out, surely. I belive the people in Oxford are taking the Council to court

Lots of people in this thread have missed what I said about the Agenda 2030 plan to incrementally remove people from rural areas and into cities, where there will be 15 minute neighbourhoods. Rural life is being brought to an end.

No, we've not missed it.

If you want to shill for preserving large tracts of land as sporting estates for the elite you allegedly despise or protect the status quo on behalf of the corporate landowners of most of the UK's agricultural land, don't expect a lot of support. Rewilding will create rural employment opportunities for much of the UK. Rewilding and restorative agriculture can improve the future of rural economies.

I was being facetious as one of the other posters seemed to be suggesting this should be how we set our lives up.
Yes it's ludicrous.

We did. It lasted all of 18 months and our buses have now been stopped...do you know why? It's to provide better and cheaper services in the nearby city. Yep they've cancelled our only form of public transport so that the 78 bus route can have 4 buses an hour instead of 3, because God forbid anyone in the city should have to wait more than 20 minutes for a bus.

@thehorsehasnowbolted Because it is the way it is going. I have been fighting locally a plan to pedestrianize our local high street. Cars are already banned, but buses go down and are used by a lot of elderly and disabled people who go in the small supermarket literally by the bus stop. They keep saying the relocated bus stop will be "only" 5 minutes walk away. They have zero idea about the people who use the bus to access local facilities. They seem to want to pedestrianize to create more pavement space for cafes and bars - although they keep talking about pedestrian safety. So directly driving out disabled and elderly people for the benefit of younger well off people.

Abra1t The park and ride is there to use, with less congestion it would be faster on the bus than sat in lines going nowhere in the car 🤷‍♀️

How is rural life being brought to an end, out of interest?

Forced evictions? Like the Highland Clearances of the 18th Century?

Will it be like the Harrying of the North in the 11th Century?

Where do you get your insights? Asking for my rural friends.

How is rural life being brought to an end, out of interest

farmers not able to stay in business due to inflation but supermarkets refusal to increase pricing - though the consumer pays more.

when farmers fail the countryside jobs that go with it will disappear

It's horrendous. They are basically pushing disabled, ill or people who cannot use public transport for whatever reason to stay home and starve

It's not due to inflation. In the Netherlands there are repots of the government tied to the NetZero 2030 agenda demanding they restrict the use of fertilisers, hence in practice making them bankrupt and forcing them to sell their land

when farmers fail the countryside jobs that go with it will disappear

Exactly. No more rural communities

That's business. It was pretty inevitable from the moment we voted Leave.

There are still towns and villages where the coal mines used to be.

There are still towns and villages where the fishing ports used to be.

There will still be rural communities. There will still be a rural economy and there will still be leisure and tourism. In addition the increased ability to work from home is part of a trend of people moving from urban to rural communities for the increased quality of life.

Things are shifting, but the idea rural life will be "brought to an end" is silly.

Where do you get your insights? Asking for my rural friends

Even MSM is reporting what's happening in the Netherlands, Canada and NZ

If you cared to read plans laid out by the WEF themselves (hence, not conspiracy territory), you would be able to draw your own conclusions

The WEF says that rural life is being brought to an end? I'm not sure they do.

Where are you people getting the idea that if farmers can't make money, no one will live in rural areas? I know plenty of non-farmers living in rural areas.

Britain is a weird mix of NIMBYs and people who abslutely despise any curtailing of car rights. So it's no surprise this 15 minute city scheme has been turned into a conspiracy.

That's business. It was pretty inevitable from the moment we voted Leave

If we hadn't voted Leave, we would still be at the mercy of EU unelected beaurocrats. Our tractors would be on the streets

It's not 'business' when the state makes it nearly impossible for a sector to operate as seizes their assets. It has a different name. There's no market forces involved in all this process

Where are you people getting the idea that if farmers can't make money, no one will live in rural areas? I know plenty of non-farmers living in rural areas.

It's very easy to demand they moved back to the cities if there's no 'social requirement' for them to be there. They would no longer be 'essential workers', so to speak

If we hadn't voted Leave, farmers would still be receiving EU subsidies. And it was barely a viable industry as things stood because we're too used to paying low prices for food.

It didn't have to be this way though. We could have had a viable agriculture sector if the government had any kind of vision. Instead we've seen a situation where the environmental land management schemes that replace the CAP have taken FIVE YEARS to draw up. How's that good enough?