AIBU to think 15-minute cities are a good thing?

[ForthegracegoI]

I live in a 15-minute city location and it's absolutely brilliant.

Within 15 minutes walk I have easy access to:

Multiple cafes, bars, pubs, restaurants.
Multiple hairdressers, salons, barbers etc.
Many, many shops.
Several gyms.
Cinema.
Two swimming pools.
My oldest's high school is literally across the road. My youngest's school is slightly further, probably 12 minutes walk.
My GP, gynaecologist, dentist, optician - all within 10 minutes walk.
Trauma centre: when my youngest fell and broke his arm on the way home from school, he was in the trauma centre and being treated straight away. We walked there, and walked home afterwards.
Hospital - DH is having an operation in a couple of weeks: he'll walk there, and probably walk home a few days later
Veterinary surgery.
Small supermarket and two different fresh produce markets, and loads of bakers / grocers / 'metro' type supermarkets.
Huge park, including a zoo and botanical garden.
Four smaller parks with play equipment and outdoor gyms - one literally across the road.
Bus stops, underground stops and the main city railway station is (just) within 15 minutes walk.

The 'price' I pay for this:
We live in an apartment, not a house.
We don't have off street parking (we do still have a car for holidays / weekend trips / trips to IKEA for big items) but we do have resident parking - it's never been a problem to get parked.

For work, DH and I both cycle - 25 minutes each way. It's a great way to build exercise into the daily routine. Our apartment building has a secure bike storage room in it.

So as not to drip feed; we don't live in the UK, we live in France. We aren't huge earners - DH is a teacher, I work in administration in a school. We are definitely in a 'naice' area, but it's not super-wealthy at all.

I can't understand why Rishi Sunak would actively campaign against making essential services easily accessible to people living in cities.

Probably the opposite. It sits alongside donut economics, concern about health, pollution, community building and protecting our environment. 15 mins comes from research showing that when journies without a car take 15 mins or less people are much more likely to consider them.

A population that travels by walking, cycling or other forms of active travel is healthier. Fitting exercise into their daily routine getting stuff done instead of setting aside time for it, something a lot of people struggle with

Streets with more people walking, running, cycling etc are also safer, so there's an element of crime prevention.

That’s what I was trying to get at upthread. You said it much better and more succinctly!

Question is...why are the government and councils so obsessed by this concept? Do we really think they care about us? Do they genuinely want us to have better lives? I absolutely do not believe that they do. This is just a control measure...and it is being done very slowly so we that we become acclimatised gradually. Eventually we will be living in zones, need a permit to leave. Have our faces scanned when we do. Be given tokens allowing us a certain amount of time away from our zone. Don't fall for their shit.

Have you considered doing something really crazy, like reading the book by the journalist who coined the term? It'll open your eyes to actually do that rather than relying on half truths and outright lies distorting the truth to encourage paranoia, alienation and dispair and keep the population divided. People who buy into that are the hardest to motivate to get off their bums and actually DO something about problems

She specifically references the danger that a "perfect" implementation represents with references to the reality of how some cities are structured today as well as looking at essential characteristics of large cities that don't, and can't, be replicated in such a scenario.

There's no need to control people to maintain power and privilege, that's why no major power is interested in the concept of empires anymore

Yup, that encapsulates exactly what was said over and over about not letting high streets die

I live in a lovely village which has most “amenities” within a reasonable walk, but my work is 30+ miles away (wfh 3 days per week).
That said, I couldn’t afford to shop in the local shops all the time, so I normally do a “big” shop in the Sainsbury’s Superstore 4 miles away, once a month, and use the local shops for top-ups.
I wouldn’t have done this before COVID, and I’ve completely changed my lifestyle because of it - but the difference with my self-imposed semi-15-minute neighbourhood is that I’ve chosen it!
Attempting to restrict people’s movements by imposing “punishments” on those not willing to conform is an astonishing overreach of State control over people’s private lives, so I very much do not support it…

We live somewhere like this but it’s a town and plenty of people have small gardens. First/middle schools, decent variety of shops/restaurants/bars, libraries, leisure centre, doctors/dentists, play parks, big supermarket, local rugby/football/other sport teams, lots of after school classes for kids, beach and links by train into nearest city all within 15 minute walk. It used to also have a minor injuries unit a 5 minute bus ride away and buses running 18 out of 24 hours (and a maternity ward) but the hospital has been reorganised and that’s gone now so if OOO/scans in pregnancy are needed it’s a 30/20 minute drive & wouldn’t be accessible without a car at all as the new sites are at a private clinic on an industrial estate and at a new hospital built well outside the local towns.

Cant be done everywhere but unclear why extending to more places is a bad thing.

Because he’s not talking about 15 minute cities. He’s talking about low traffic neighbourhoods. Which are where TFL just got a map and decided to put bollards and cameras at random locations so people have to drive around the houses to get out of their areas or they are fined. It’s chaos driving through London now. Truly is. Unless you have a super up to date sat nav and prepay set up for everything then you will get a fine!

Like where have you been living? Big cities like Oxford etc they're already charging people 'to leave the area'? It's just semantics to say that the ulez charge that you have to pay or the charge you pay for parking outside your zone is not paying for leaving the area, it's exactly what it is. It's disencitivising taking your car somewhere in a certain zone. Sounds good and well - you know how is less cars a bad thing? - until you realise that all it means is that the rich can drive where they want, money is no issue and the poor are the restricted ones?

I don't get why you label people as conspiricay theorists for pointing out what's already happening? Labeling someone as a conspiracy theorist is just shutting down any of their arguments

Spook "Streets with more people walking, running, cycling etc are also safer, so there's an element of crime prevention."

I'm surprised by this but London streets are pretty grim atm with no police as well. I see far fewer people walking to the shops where I live now because most people drive. There's data for the two areas of course, street crime is much much lower here than my previous place.

Pp have mentioned "obsession" with cars. As well as it being fun to drive - I really miss it - you don't have to suffer public transport, of course travelling in a car is nicer than public transport! You can modernise and clean it all you want but it still contains people.

Exactly.

And before anyone asks why one would drive to London?! We live in the Midlands. We got the train at 9 one morning to go to Kew with a 1 yr old. Standing on the train there next to the loo. Get off and the tube line to Kew and original line was cancelled, alternative line was shut down whilst we were on it and it took us nearly 3 hours to get to Kew. Got there about 1 with taxis to finish off.

Upon leaving said we best leave early - 5.30pm. Got to the Kew tube station, that line has just been cancelled 😭 Zigzagged across various tube lines and finally got to Euston. Our train was cancelled. Thought about staying at my parents on outskirts of London just for a roof but you need a car there to reach shops, we didn’t have enough supplies and food for little one next day and my parents were on holiday.

Waited hours for an Alternative train even though we didn’t have a ticket for that (as you prepay for exact trains). That got cancelled whilst we were on it and stopped over 45 minutes from our house. Had to call on parents in law to come and save us. By this time it was 12.30pm.

We thought never fucking again! Always drive

My partner drives to London every day for work, the cost of the train and parking a the station is more than double the petrol and takes longer, and the commute is long enough as it is, its about 80 miles if there are no diversions on the motorways

I've lived in a lot of places in UK and several cities and never had that range of services.

I lived in city center in flat ( and it was very noisy )and actually couldn't get a GP has to do without - weren't allowed to join ones near work 30 min walk were directed to one in city center that had closed down years ago or one in suburbs that was really had to access - we did without.

Last town I lived in they were very close entire time to losing their A&E service - here technically the A&E moved to nearby town as built whole new hospital and that were land was available.

I don't drive so like local services and public transport ( IME it's very expensive and increasingly unreliable) but like with electric cars and heat pumps ( I can see issues here small garden close together older properties very few drives ) proponents just dismiss concerns and then often try and demise people raising points.

It's just semantics to say that the ulez charge that you have to pay or the charge you pay for parking outside your zone is not paying for leaving the area, it's exactly what it is.

No, paying for parking space is just the free market in action.

If your local government gives you a parking space for free, it's not only costing them the maintenance costs of maintaining the parking space over time; it also costs opportunity cost, because they are forgoing the revenues that they could have earned if that space was being used for something else. If real estate currently used for parking space was used for businesses, for example, economic activity would be generated and tax revenues would accrue to the government. If you demand that the government gives you free or cheap parking (cheaper than the free market would charge you), it's literally asking for a handout.

In Japan, you not only cannot just park your car for free on the side of the road, even the road right outside your building (any more than you could decide to plonk your hot tub or kids' play equipment there - because it's the road!), but you have to pay full market price for all parking you use, because nearly all parking is owned by private organizations and you pay the rates they need to cover the land cost and make a profit on top; it's expensive. You also have to pay for all major roads like expressways in Japan; they are supposed to be self funding so the cost of all building and maintenance has to be covered by tolls. I was staggered when I learned that in the UK most roads are free to use other than the M6 and I think a few others!

If you came to Japan, no doubt you'd be freaking out about THE GOVERNMENT IS ROBBING ME OF MY MONEY. But they are not. They are expecting you to pay for the things you use. It's like, I have to pay for tickets (well, PASMO card charging, strictly speaking) every time I get on a train. That's not theft or social control. It's about paying for the transportation you are enjoying.

The more truculent kinds of British motorists like to use the language of freedom and liberty and personal choice and personal responsibility about driving, but the irony is that they are actually getting subsidized left right and center. When the subsidies are taken away, they have hissy fits and demand their freebies back. It's quite comic to watch.

"No, paying for parking space is just the free market in action."

yes, but the ULEZ charge is not. Admittedly that poster made an unfortunate conflation there.

Oh, and bike parks should not be free and cyclists should pay road tax.

Well, that's just wrong, isn't it? Of course people will take the selfish option if it is cheaper, quicker and more convenient. When I was a young adult, I found that there was a rule of thumb, that if I was travelling on my own, train was cheaper. It wasn't till there was two of us that driving was cheaper. Nowadays, driving is always cheaper. So of course trains apart from on the commuter run are being less used.

I'm not sure what your obsession with high streets is about. It's nothing to do with that, it's about things people are doing and want to continue doing. There's an awful lot more to life than shopping. Nobody with a serious interest in our environment, health and sustainable way of life wants more shopping! Less, actually, a lot less because it's wreaking our environment. Infinite economic growth on a finite planet with limited resources, besides being impossible to sustain is an absolute disaster should we attempt it

1. why? and 2) how would that work, then, given that road tax is based on emissions? Presumably they'd pay the same as electric cars (ie £0)

I think if we follow user's argument, we pay for use of the roads. Electric cars shouldn't pay £0 either.

it sounds like Japan is charging for use rather than emissions?

cyclists and electric cars cause congestion as well. Free bike parking is paid for by someone.

A bicycle (average occupancy 1 person) takes up a fraction of the space of a car (average occupancy 1.3 people).

Bikes don't cause congestion, cars do.

Governments will have to move towards various forms of road charges/tolls/road pricing whether they want to or not, because as EVs get rolled out, they aren't going to get fuel taxes any more (fuel taxes are already very low because they have not kept up with inflation).

Road pricing based on a metering system of some kind within one's car (and perhaps weighted by vehicle's weight, discounts of some kind for low income people or rural dwellers etc, etc, ) would be one way to do this. But the conspiracy theorists will probably bust a blood vessel when this is brought in.

It's as though they think that roads just sort of bloom naturally out of the ground like beautiful organic life forms, and should be free of use to all drivers as nature's bounty or something....

It's incredible how this thread went from "wouldn't it be nice to be able to walk to basic facilities" to "it's all about control, you won't be allowed to leave your zone...". One batshit poster even claiming that facial recognition cameras would be fining pedestrians for stepping outside their neighbourhood.

Honestly, if you went into Alabama and hinted that maybe schoolkids getting shot just might be a bad thing you'd have got a similar response.

They're not less used at all which is another factor in him driving in, he has to stand the whole way, for hours, he simply doesnt have the ability to do that for hours each day at his age. And thats before you get onto the calibre of fellow passengers he has to endure, anti social behaviour, aggression, noise etc.