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.

I can see where the flexible workspace might be useful for someone who needs a printing facility or a meeting space or some space away from the kids or something, but rocking up to an office just to sit with random strangers who happen to be working, rather than your colleagues feels like it could be quite isolating and pointless.

Who said anything about pods and limiting movement ? Or owning nothing ?

Global fossil fuel companies want your cash to make massive profits and pay huge dividends and bonuses with. Now that alternatives are emerging they are crapping themselves and using propaganda to confuse the gullible into giving up ever more of their income.

Not a coincidence that as fossil fuel prices rose dramatically, so did their profits.

It's not true, when fuel prices went up it was because COSTS went up. What you're talking about is the amount of money that came into the company, and the propaganda handily left out how much higher COSTS are. Their actual profits didn't go up.

You are advocating for eliminating private vehicle ownership to punish energy companies. But no one is advocating for eliminating smart phones, despite the huge profits those companies make and the huge bonuses and salaries they pay (larger than energy companies). Why? Because one set of companies supports one political side, and the other advocates for things like personal responsibility and freedom.

If alternative energy were practical, sustainable and cost efficient, it wouldn't have to be forced on people by trying to eliminate individual privacy and independence. People would gladly use alternative energy if it were reliable and cost efficient. It isn't. It's also far, far worse for the environment than fossil fuels.

I do agree that wild conspiracy theories about being made to wander around an urban zone, like an unhappy chimp dragging itself around a cage, are batshit.

But that’s not really the objection. What bothers people is that driving will be punished, when so many people - including in urban areas, but especially rural - have to use cars for basic practicality. Motor vehicles have emancipated people, of all classes and in all circumstances, including in many respects women, over time.

To make life so economically difficult for people who just want to drive, say, a family car - let alone a vehicle needed for work - locally or further, and to able to park it, is a massive imposition that can’t realistically be justified by an urban planner’s daydream.

I am mostly thinking of LTNs, pedestrianisation (which I can support where it can be done without too much knock-on effect), congestion and emissions charging, but these do seem to come hand-in-hand with the 15 minute city idea.

What’s the plan for when/if self-driving (electric) cars are feasible? Do we come down against them too, as part of some middle class, green fantasy?

If self driving cars become feasible, an interesting model would be hiring them for just the time you needed. Perhaps just for your journey to a destination and then for your journey home. Or a bit longer if you're using it as a mobile storage unit for part of your day. No need to have a car parked outside your house for 16 hours a day not being used. Imagine what our narrow residential streets could look like if they didn't have a permanent line of parked cars along one or both sides.

I agree. The analysis shows that ‘wandering’ driverless cars, ordered by app, could greatly reduce the numbers of cars needed. And the absence of off-street parking and garages would free up loads of land. But can we rely on planners to allow this? Will the cult of the bicycle stifle it?

That's what I said, Ddraigh. My point is that Oxford's scheme ISN'T a 15-minute city but they gave the concept a bad name by calling their scheme that. And so did Canterbury.

I don't think anyone dislikes the idea of having basic facilities within 15 minutes of home, actually. They just don't want to be forced to stay within the same 15 minutes all the time and never allowed to go out in their car!

May I say that I am a big fan of eco initiatives. And I do think that putting basic facilities within walking distance of people is eco and will lead to less driving. But I want the facilities BEFORE you block my car, thank you, otherwise it is just totalitarian meddling in my right to move around.

Bear in mind that I LIVE IN LONDON and even in this very population-dense environment do not have all those facilities within reach. Since the government has no direct say in where private facilities (which increasingly seem to include doctors and dentists, let alone shops) set up, and since the government has no money for the kind of measures that would be needed to encourage private facilities to set up (land/rent subsidies?), I can't see the concept of the 15-minute city happening soon in most places. We've had decades of (Tory) underinvestment in infrastructure, from housing and transport to medical care, and that will take decades to reverse if it's reversible at all.

Aside from "wandering" driverless cars (or even just lots of Zippers) I think we could also use more small but frequent buses rather than double-deckers every half-hour in London and only once a day outside London. I look at Istanbul, where they have the concept of the "dolmus", and Hong Kong, where they have both public and private minibuses that ply set routes along the same routes as public buses. This would work very well in London, and perhaps in some other areas. Alternatively a government-run system like the "Handi-bus" you find in much of North America, where it's a free bus but comes only when pre-booked: for the disabled, the original handi-bus concept involves the bus stopping right at your door, but for the rest of us, especially in rural areas, you could still have a public stop people walk to and the bus would come when a certain number of people had booked. Shared, but still somewhat customised to meet actual demand.

I'm with you OP.

Ignoring the bleeding obvious that most of the UK isn't set up that way now, the point is how to redesign future planning to focus on medium/high-density housing.

There's also a housing crisis in the country I live in but medium-density new builds sell far more quickly than more rural homes with lots of space precisly because everything is designed around the 15-minute concept (or just plain old 'community' as it used to be known).

Very few people here want to be car-reliant whether or not they want own a car (personally I don't, it's easier to hire a car the one or two times a year I need one).

Much easier for your 10 year old to jump on their bikes to school while you jump on your train for work or your bike for grocery shopping, gym, friends houses, meals out etc.

I think planning that mandates car ownership is classist at best.

Whilemydishwasher - why make life so difficult for people who just want to walk or cycle safely, in streets not dominated by motor traffic and breathe clean air. Non drivers have been 'punished' for years. The cult of the car has stifled our towns for decades

The Edinburgh trams were an unmitigated disaster even by British terms. It was the most expensive travel system, mile for mile, installed anywhere in the world in history. It would be impressive to cock up that badly again, although I agree it hardly fills you with confidence.

Give them the chance and they'll manage to make as big a mess again. Edinburgh Council have a reputation for it.

Finally someone with common sense.
Agree with everything you say r.e. Oxford's scheme not being a 15 minute city. But also, creative thinking r.e. public transport!

@Sigmama 'other ways to travel without car/public transport in a city' - You've missed the point. The 'city' isn't the issue, in fact '15 minute cities' is a misnomer it's '15 minute neighbourhood'. Even the Oxford plans detail people being restricted from travelling not just into Oxford but between the suburbs. Nobody's disputing the walkable/cyclability of the city itself but the surrounding areas.

Very few places in the UK have the population density to support what's detailed in the OP. Even if you had, say a GP surgery in every 'neighbourhood' there's nothing preventing it from being so shite that people don't want to use it. You also can't build things like cheap supermarkets and leisure centres in every neighbourhood - they need space.

It's far cheaper to provide better public transport, like what @allswellthatends details.

Hang on, are you American?

That does explain rather a lot.

No one is "confining" anyone anywhere.

I am American. Not only am I American, I am Texan. We are the most stubbornly independent of all the stubbornly independent colonists and rebels.

"Don't tread on me" isn't a request. No step on snek.

Rishi says "hold my beer"

They've managed to load considerable extra costs onto the HS2 project to appease Chiltern NIMBYs, and are now not only rumoured to be cutting off the Manchester section (bearing in mind that London to Manchester is the most profitable rail flow in the UK), but they're also dithering over whether to stop it seven miles short of London.

Yeah, that does rather explain a lot about your posts. Right-wing nutjobs abound in that part of the world.

😂😂😂 Yeah, all of us scary "right-wing nutjobs" over here being responsible for ourselves, minding our own business. 😂 Terrifying, isn't it, people who think for themselves? Chilling stuff, I know.

I’d go for the better public transport over making people live in high density housing

Many are fine with houses and prefer them

I’d go for the better public transport over making people live in high density housing

Nobody is going to "make" anybody live anywhere. Building some extra higher-density housing in urban centers is not the same as forcing any individual to live in it!

Can you imagine if we talked about chocolate the way we talked about housing in the UK?

"My newsagent has just started selling dark chocolate Bounty Bars alongside the usual milk chocolate ones. I'm disgusted. How dare they literally force me to eat dark chocolate? Don't they know some of us like milk chocolate Bounties???"

(Yes. We know. The milk chocolate ones are still right there in the shop. Buy those ones instead and ignore the dark chocolate ones).

Funnily enough I manage my life with minimal interference from outside bodies. And yet I still manage to walk to the shop for a pint of milk.

I’m too cynical to believe that what you suggest will actually happen. My experience to date of these sort of initiatives is that “ consultation “ actually means “ you can say all you want but we’ve already decided what we’re going to do, tough luck if you don’t like it, and no, we won’t even consider any modifications or improvements you suggest.”
As I said in my post, our local council and the GLA can’t even maintain the existing structures, there is no budget, our services are being cut to the bone, of course they are not going to put in in new infrastructure. They’ve said it’s too expensive to install cameras to permit residents to come in and out of the area without travelling a considerable distance out of the way in increasingly heavy traffic, they will not do anything that doesn’t result in additional income. It’s resident volunteers who deal with keeping any green space clean, the council just refuse to do the simplest, cheapest tweaks that would make a difference to the area. They turned down the street lights to save money, so now it’s darker and unsafer to walk from the bus /station; they refuse to cut back trees overhanging residential roads making walking at night even more difficult…. these are simple, cheap hacks . I’ve no faith at all that they will improve the area and and every expectation that they will charge us more if they possibly can- that would include charging on journeys out of the area.
I can’t imagine why you think it will benefit anyone other those getting the contracts to enforce breach of yet another set of rules. The improvements you are suggesting are just not going to happen, that’s just wishful thinking.

🙄

Alright for the picky. I’d prefer planning to go for better public transport than focus on squashed housing

It can exist but we generally like houses in the U.K. compared to a fair few other countries, op’s included

By the way, @HoneyBadgerMom I could legally drink from 18. Not 21. What a nanny state you must live in.

Women in the UK also have the freedom to make medical choices about their own body. US libertarians seem rather quiet on that, don't they?