Also from ACX, A link to Data Secrets Lox discussing 15-Minute Cities, which is apparently gaining steam as an idea to implement in actual places, not just theorizing on the internet. I had not heard of 15MC as a phrase before, but the concept of encouraging everyone to live in tight villages has been around a while. Liberals like it because it will reduce driving, social conservatives used to like it because it will encourage the informal bonds of communities, though I don't think I have been hearing that argument much in the last decade. There is also a link to Matt Yglesias on the topic. Yglesias remains quite liberal despite being increasingly ostracised for saying that conservatives have some understandable concerns and some actual good ideas.
Of particular interest to me in the DSL discussion is that once there was a large protest against the idea in Oxford, the proponents seemed to have had a shared plan to paint all of that as stemming from right-wing conspiracy theorists. I think that is likely to be successful with a substantial minority* of leftward thinkers, who are in the culture and politics game for social reasons and want to make sure they are not tainted by any unfashionable beliefs. It is one of those easy plans to accomplish as well. there is no need for meetings or coordination, just get the word out that there is a fuzzy photograph of a right-wing conspiracist about in the woods and rumors of children by the score being eaten by a whole secretive tribe of them will spring up on its own. Links to the actual accusational stories are provided.
That this is an idea of charming romanticism but significant shortcomings, and is being rejected on those grounds will be covered up as much as possible. No, no, you fool! It's the right-wing conspiracists who are behind it all. The so-called rational opposition is all just a put-up job.
*More precisely, it will have 1%-100% success in persuading all of them, as even the most rational will be persuaded a little by the disquieting cognitive dissonance of holding the belief at all.
6 comments:
I've not heard the phrase before, but I'd often wondered about how something like that would work. A city with multiple neighborhoods, each with some subset of the facilities it needs, with a "downtown" or two that has the big facilities, and fast transportation networks that link the nodes.
Several things militate against the idea.
If it isn't there already the neighborhood-based city has to be designed in, but still be flexible since who knows what industries will be around in two decades? Oops.
Economies of scale mean the big stores have a price advantage--and if I have to drive well out of my neighborhood for my new job anyway (so much for getting a home close to everything), I might as well get everything at the big store instead of the local grocer and save some money.
Thanks to geography one design won't fit every city, but I have every faith that planners will cookie-cutter everything.
Camazotz
There was a push in Reading, England for a while too, that met with some substantial protest. I think (if I remember correctly) that one of the big reasons was because the plan called for a reorganization of an existing community to conform with the vision, which normal people understood was unnecessarily disruptive, maybe principally because the plan was to be implemented by closing off the traffic pattern as the first move.
It might sound like a nice little picturesque solution to urban life, but how is this very different to the neighborhoods one already finds in a big established city? They're much more expensive to live in, because now big-format stores are eliminated by regulation. And that means that consumer selection is severely limited too. Try finding everything you need at the bodega. I think people are understanding that they're going to be paying for this revolution, and then they'll be stuck with the higher cost of poorer living standards, all to satisfy some eco-creep's mania for stopping people from driving.
"Thanks to geography one design won't fit every city, but I have every faith that planners will cookie-cutter everything."
And then shift the blame onto the local leaderships for {e.g.) not having the resources to add chinampas to make the Lake Islands agricultural district the required size, not being able to carve and/or dynamite the western half of the Gray Jay Heights neighborhood out of the mountainside, or not being able to finish the Drumlinham neighborhood without cutting into Indian burial mounds?
I'm pretty convinced everybody does this anyway, getting most services within a relatively short drive with periodic longer forays for specific needs or special occasions. My ex-wife worked in a fabric store chain which had two locations at roughly the opposite ends of the small city we lived in. People would literally not drive to the 'other store' for items they wanted even though they were likely equidistant from each.
@ Christopher B - laughing. Good to remind us that homo econimicus does not always optimise for efficiency after all.
Speaking of which, you might like my new book, A Part-time Job in the Country, in which I propose an updated version of the English Garden City idea: carefully planned new country towns, roughly three miles in radius, in which people get around in lightweight cars that go 30 mph.
Here is a link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNJTJ2R
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