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.

Ive already said that buses should be a priority in terms of making sure they are regular and go to the places actually need, that wouldnt change, it woujld be like when I was growing up, buses were plentiful, cheap etc.

Where did I say reduced traffic wasn’t an aim? Obviously the fact most people won’t need to drive for day to day beds will reduce traffic. What I’m saying is there’s no fine/charge/ban on leaving the area.

Our council are obviously against the idea of everything within 15 mins they've just voted to close most of the local libraries and leisure centres, we can't even get a takeaway coffee within 15 mins of our house.

Fraud against the government you say fraud which benefits their friends and family. Yes. That’s what I mean. They enable it.
lt’s blindingly obvious.
if you can’t see it it’s because you didn’t want to. I’m out. Believe what you like.

Pikachuchicken, there are other ways to travel in a city without car or public transport

Ok, you can? That's not what 15 min cities is about. It means people in urban areas should be able to walk to all the amenities they need.

The next stage of this is tracking people then giving them permits to leave their area...then facial recognition at the barriers. This is already happening...very very slowly so you barely notice. It's absolutely chilling

There isn’t a shred of evidence that any member of the government has defrauded any of that public money for their own gain, or at all.

There may be questions to ask about how careful government was to spot fraudsters in the rush to spend to combat covid. But that’s got nothing to do with wrongdoing. And it applies to all government and local government contracts, and always has and always will.

I guess you now accept that the ULEZ story is completely bogus.

I get it. You want to support the Tories whatever because you think they are beneficial to you personally. Enough.

Comedycook, how does one track a pedestrian or cyclist?

Facial recognition

I'm genuinely surprised to see someone ask that question.

For a big shop?

we don’t really do one. Once a month I’ll take the car and go to Lidl and do a big basics shop. Maybe once a week I’ll do a top up shop (on foot using a shopping trolley / caddie) at the local supermarket. For fruit and veg I go to the markets: we have them on Wednesday & Friday mornings 10 mins away. 15 mins away every Sunday there is a massive North African market which is really cheap. Bakers are open daily.

Isn’t the overall idea something worth aspiring to? Like I said I grew up very rural, on a farm. Both my sister and I now live city centre and the novelty of having everything to hand has never worn off. My parents live rurally, and it’s lovely, but their lifestyle is completely car dependent, and that’s not a sustainable way to live.

Honestly, no. I think there’s plenty to level at the Tories. I may be instinctively a Tory but I wouldn’t defend them for the sake of it or in the face of evidence of wrongdoing. But I do have an issue with untruthful campaigns that pollute politics.

There were stupid things made up about the last Labour governments. Like the bollocks over the Blairs using a dodgy bloke to buy a house. Patently an attempt to make something out of nothing. I objected to that as well.

OP "My parents live rurally, and it’s lovely, but their lifestyle is completely car dependent, and that’s not a sustainable way to live."

so do you think that way of life should change?

Talking about sustainability on a chat board using mobile devices frankly seems ludicrous in itself.

re the markets, do these fit round your working hours, I guess they must do.

This is so much of the problem with sustainability and environmental aims. If we can do some things better, fine. But we can’t reorganise society wholesale in a mad dash or with utopian schemes.

Haven’t RTFT but have the gist of it. My question is this:

How are these 15 minute cities going to be achieved, with the variety of facilities both necessary and leisure wise when exorbitant rents on premises have hollowed out thriving high streets, major retailers are leaving town centres in droves, most people shop online and so much has been invested in out of town shopping centres?

It will mean trying to reverse a couple of decades of doing exactly the opposite of what 15 minute cities are designed to achieve.

Our town centre (south coast university town) is an absolute wasteland - we’ve lost all three department stores, M&S, Wilkos etc. We have a plethora of nightlife venues and coffee shops, barbers and nail salons and that’s pretty much it. Rent on even a small retail premises is in the region of 50 grand a year before you even turn the lights on.

Most landlords are out of town London corporations who are focused solely on asset portfolios and are not bothered if they are making money from rent because of tax breaks on empty properties.

We have two major hospitals at either end of town that are at least a 30 minute bus ride away.

Leisure centres and the like are also mostly out of town, though we do have one big complex of restaurants and cinemas in the town centre - the eateries come and go.

I’m really not opposed to reducing traffic etc, but given how things have gone to rack and ruin over the last ten years in my town at least, it would take some radical incentives and re-structuring to achieve the aims described.

Apologies if this has been covered up thread, but it seems really bizarre that suddenly we’re trying to go back in time to when this set up existed but wasn’t deemed viable or progressive.

Yes - that way of life should change in that there should be better rural public transport (bus services) and better, safer pedestrian and cycling routes in rural areas - eg pavements, road crossings, speed limits. And rural local shops, pubs, facilities should be encouraged and maintained through not permitting conversion to residential, business rates reductions so that more things are available locally in villages. Not everything will be available locally of course but more things could be.

Wouldn't that be better?

Not just because of climate change but because 25pc of adults and all children cannot drive and they should also be able to get around safely in rural areas too. And older people would be able to continue living rurally if they can no longer drive. And poorer people would benefit from spending less on cars/petrol

It's not about banning driving but about making other alternatives viable too even in rural areas.

Things can be different from the way they are now - everything is a policy choice. It's not a natural phenomenon that rural bus services are poor or that roads are unsafe to walk along - it is a policy choice not to require that it should be

Isn’t the overall idea something worth aspiring to?

Yes, absolutely. I have lived in many places and my favourites have been closest to the 15 minutes philosophy - York, Harrogate, Cambridge and Utrecht. The worst have been too big (London), or too industrial and car focused (Coventry, Nottingham).

Today my husband and I left home in Harrogate, walked across the stray to the other side of town, pottered round a market at the Valley gardens, got lunch from a street food stall and ate it on a bench, then walked home back across the stray but went via a supermarket for milk. 13,000 steps. Lovely experience. Everything we needed in easy reach. Oh and we live so close to the hospital we joke we’d walk there if I was in labour!

It is doable to create a functional, well-appointed town or city
that meets local people’s daily needs, it’s just not common. It takes investment and intent. Decision-makers have to have a clear vision and execute it collectively and consistently over decades or even centuries, withstanding external pressures and the constant bloody drive to do things on the cheap.

Also, I’ve lived in remote countryside. Massively overrated, but if you like it you can keep it. Nobody is taking the countryside away. But if you already live in a city, why would you not want that city to be more navigable, convenient and enjoyable through 15-minute type adaptations? It beggars belief. Some turkeys really will vote for Christmas.

So do I, but I'm self aware enough to know this won't be true of everyone or even most people. Planning a city from scratch, you could guarantee it. Imposing it on an existing city, especially an ancient or sprawling one, is much more difficult.

Mistress history is littered with that kind of back and forth though. Have you seen pictures of how Euston station used to look? It's amazing they would alter something so lovely and turn it into a concrete lump. Give it 50 years and someone might want to restore it.

Also, the wastelands you mention - I think they're being left to go derelict so planners can put entirely new towns, cities, developments etc in place there.

15 min cities are a planning aspiration to ensure everyone can access services without using cars.

So, suburbs, each with it's own High Street ? Which is how so many have lived for decades ?

I was going to say so much of what @MistressoftheDarkSide has said at 22:31
Life changes.

In the 50s / 60s / 70s people shopped at all the individual shops - the green grocers the butchers, the bakers etc., but then 'super markets' were invented, and our habits changed.
So many people now shop on line. Food, but also everything else. Light bulbs, birthday cards, all those things we need 'now and then'. There are not many clothes shops that can afford to be on the Hight Street anymore, let alone the haberdashery shop, or the ironmongers. Then most of us don't read printed newspapers anymore - so we don't go to the newsagent every day. We don't use the post office in great numbers as we don't post things (returns for on-line shopping often done with printed labels and drop off points or even collections from home). Chemists don't make their money with soaps and the like so can't afford to be on the High Street just to dish out prescriptions. We do on-line banking.
etc etc etc.
So, as no-one is in the High Street, then it is difficult to sustain other business like cafes and sweet shops.

Then, as I said many pages ago, anything that is publicly funded has been having sweeping cuts made for 13 years now, so all those services have closed their 'suburban' bases.
It seems ironic that the same Gvmnt that made all these cuts is now floating the idea that that is what we need to aim towards.

Bionic I'm in York regularly and I find the overcrowding worse than London.

I might not be the target market for a 15 minute city but I do worry that the suburb I live in now is exactly the type that will be targeted for these new sorts of areas.

We're in a village. Within a 15 minute walk we have 2 small grocery shops, butcher,bakery, pharmacy, GP, dentist, high school (with SEN outreach), primary, nursery, 3 pubs, Chinese, takeaway, chippy. Vet and pizza takeaway is 5 mins drive. Main supermarket 20 mins drive - also theatre, cinema etc. A&e 15 mins drive. It works for us.

In terms of activities for kids, cadets, scouts and guides, drama are all walk able.

It's amazing how many people drive around the village though- particularly on the school run. I'm an experienced and confident driver but school run traffic scares the living daylights out of me - and i won't go nearer than one block away if the kids demand a lift!

Otherwise I walk in our village and cycle to the next one. Occasionally I'll cycle into town (it's 10miles) but not if I'm taking the kids in or I'm time limited.

There is a bus into town, but it's only every couple of hours so not hugely convenient if you need to be in, or home for a certain time - eg DD needs to be on the 9am bus to get to an 11am class, and last bus home is 5.30.

@EmmaEmerald

i think you may be right about letting things go rotten in order to allow new developments- a local developer (wide boy who built his empire on nightclubs and brown envelopes) is proposing re-developing a large chunk of the town centre with a behemoth of an apartment complex which will look as though a giant cruise liner has been docked among the crumbling Victorian architecture that the town has consistently failed to capitalise on and is almost beyond salvation now due to negligent absentee landlords.

The development is going through planning and has stalled on a technicality, apparently. Guaranteed that the proposed apartments will be snapped up by overseas investors and rented out at exorbitant prices, or left empty like several other blocks.

Our council is ranked as something like the sixth most corrupt in the country. I wouldn’t trust them to re-develop anything with any level of competence.

Our 150 year old sewerage / drainage system is crumbling so badly that a heavy downpour floods the pleasure gardens - after a spectacular one a few years back, there were major concerns about e-coli afterwards.

I could go on and on - the town if my birth, which I still love, is dying - mind you, there’s always funding for bizarre art installations like upright metal girders that make bird noises if the wind is blowing in the right direction….

I’ll get off my soapbox now - it all just boils my piss to hear all these wonderful plans that won’t come to fruition because our local overlords couldn’t organise a piss up in a Brewery unless it came with a fat kickback.