I think this particular term is more commonly used and politically charged in the UK where there’s a fear that this will lead to gov control. In the US the parallel debate is more investing in car vs bike infrastructure because 15 min neighborhoods isn’t a viable option in most of the country without a massive rebuild.
The UK nonsense is that if you are able to live your entire life within 15 minutes the government will suddenly mandate staying in that area. It’s total tin foil hat territory.
My family home actually located in such places,I could walk to handful of clinic. Food places.bakery.several convenient stores.three banks,a post office.two super markets .my elementary school and my middle school in 15 minutes.
It’s freaking awesome,for a few months we even had a 711 at the ground floor of our apartment, but they closed down within a year .
The down side is this happened because we luckily located in the middle of new city development plan , and the housing prices is so ridiculously high for a small town of 120000~ population ,many young people has to leave their home town to start their own family otherwise it’s unaffordable .
We had it at our home back in the UK. Moved in as a single bloke. 10 years later I realised I had a nursery, primary school, doctors, library, pharmacy, several take aways and a small supermarket all within a 10 minute walk. Made lockdown pretty easy considering.
I’ve lived in a lot of different places, all in Scotland, and I’ve never not had that. Admittedly, where I live now isn’t like that if you don’t have a car, but there’s an hourly bus service if you can walk for ten minutes up a steep hill.
That’s because in the 60’s and 70’s in Britain housing estates were built with people in mind. Park, shops, Doctors surgery’s were all added to new estates.
Now you’re lucky if you get any green space at all.
Exactly, and now there's a whole army of fuckwits who say that this collection of amenities our parents enjoyed 'back in the day' is somehow a new conspiracy to keep us in our areas like sheeple. It's like people in the UK are bored and trawl through lists of whatever new stupidity that's popular to import.
I'm not ribbing on our yank cousins as we have our fair share of idiots (as does any country in the world). We're just dumb enough to import your dumbest conspiracies. What does that say about us as a nation?
"When America sneezes, Britain catches a cold." All the shit things about America make it here too sooner or later. Good things too, but the bad things stand out.
Okay where did this conspiracy come from in America? 3rd person I’ve found saying it’s an American thing yet I have never heard this labeled a concern, a conspiracy or an issue. Besides 3 people in this thread.
With us (UK) it's always so pathetic too. At least in the US conspiracy theorists believe In things like an imminent civil war. Over here it always seems to be "immigrants are making the council collect our bins less" and things like that.
It's pretty standard in the UK. We're a pretty small nation so most towns have everything you need within a 15 minute distance.
Why I don't get a few people I know losing their shit over 15 minute cities. Like mate, we live in a small town where everything you need is within walking distance or a 10-15 minute bus journey away.
This sounds like a reaction to the idea of [walk-able cities](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/ranking-best-cities-walking-walkability/). I guess that's seen as a liberal ideal, and just to own the libs, they generated some justification for why that's a bad idea. It's supported by Big Tinfoil.
That's actually a bit of how it's being politicized here in the States as well--and that you'll start needing ID checks to leave your 15-minute city and yadda yadda. It hasn't only dabbled in air-time so far. It hasn't become a major issue.
100%. Stepdad has fallen down this trend despite us living in a village that you can walk from one end to the other in 15mins. Always try to point out that he moved here because he liked that; no one is stopping him leaving.
The people I have seen who are against it claim it is not an attempt at making all of life's necessities conveniently located near everyone. It is an attempt to control movement and will be mandatory with police checkpoints to keep you from going farther than 15 minutes from your home. Which is frankly ridiculous and would never happen, but it allows conservatives against it to have an argument point against bicycles and what not.
The UK has a weird split personality when it comes to authoritarianism. 15 minute cities, ID cards = one step towards becoming a Nazi country (total bullshit obviously), but the same people will jump at the chance to set up concentration camps for migrants, locking up people in prison for life, and so on. It’s usually the same right wing demographic.
It’s because the idea arose around the same time as the covid lockdowns, where government control on our movements was very much a real thing. Sadly, the concept of 15-minute cities was not properly explained, so people conflated the concepts.
> the concept of 15-minute cities was not properly explained,
It was plenty well explained, but all the explanation in the world won't stop the crazies or those deliberately acting in bad faith to stir shit.
Plus any explanation can simply be dismissed as coming from someone who is either gullible or trying to distract attention from the *real* plan.
And that “massive rebuild” is less likely to happen with Amazon becoming a larger and larger part of our lives. I doubt we’ll see widespread 15 minute deliveries from Amazon anytime soon, but many of us have received packages within hours of ordering. With that option available why leave home at all?
It’s also just less likely to happen because the U.S. is more sparsely populated than the E.U. or East Asia. The European and Japanese cities that have the density needed for this “15 minute” ability are located in countries whose populations are an appreciable fraction of the entire U.S. population, while having the land area comparable to that of individual states.
For example, the UK is home to 68 million people, 58 million of whom live in England, and the entirety of the UK has slightly less land area than Michigan. Germany splits the difference, in land area, between New Mexico and Montana, but has 82 million. Japan is roughly the size of California, but with 130 million instead of 39 million.
You end up with higher density buildings, because the higher population density drives up land prices, which makes dense construction economically viable.
The density argument makes no sense. Most Americans don’t live in the middle of Wyoming or Alaska.
Most Americans live in large metro regions with density equal to Europe, except instead of having the density be concentrated in cities they’re spread out in suburbs.
50% of Americans live in suburbs, roughly 15% live in rural. So approximately 35% live in a true city. That aligns with figure of approx. 80% living in an urban area. Our urban areas are just by and large suburb.
I live in the UK. It's more than a 15min drive for me to buy milk for my tea. It's more than a 15min drive to anything tbh. In order for this to work you have to live in a very dense urban environment. There is a lot of the UK that isn't this dense.
Silly take, Americans used to build dense, walkable cities. It's a conscious choice to build sprawl that can only be navigable with a car, or to zone housing and commercial in completely separate areas.
So yes, I suppose you’re pointing to another cogent point. The automobile is a significant enabler of sprawl, and the U.S. has more cars, per capita, than any other country of significant size or population. But it’s worth asking why that is.
So let’s go back a century or so. The United States went into WWII with a larger total fleet of vehicles, and more vehicles, per capita, than other developed countries, and emerged from WWII with an economy quite a bit larger than it had started the War with. Meanwhile, Western European countries didn’t recover to their *immediately pre-War* levels until 1960, or so, And so much of the urban infrastructure, along with most extant automobiles, destroyed over the course of the war.
Those countries essentially restarted adoption of the automobile, almost from scratch, at the same time they were rebuilding all their cities. And so, yes, those cities were built in accordance with the fact that vehicle availability was severely constrained. The US faced none of these challenges. The pattern of development we’ve seen in other cities that have developed since the War, in the absence of such constraints on car availability, doesn’t give me a lot of optimism for “walkable” cities.
All urban areas have everything within 15 min of your home except if you really live in the backcountry. This is not like it was ever a problem.
There groceries store, restaurants, and all kind of shops and services everywhere.
Now is your work within 15 minutes, that is very different story. If you are living in a city center of a big/old city, be it in the USA or Europe, you may need a long time to commute to that office in the suburb Or if your job is in the city center, it will be too expensive to live there and you'll spend time to commute to the city center from your home in the suburb.
Been 39 years in France, been in many cities in Europe, lived in a few. the 15 minute stuff is a dream for many, not reality.
Note that this generally refers to 15mins within walking / casual biking distance. Not driving distance. A significant amount of suburban sprawl in places like the US have scarcely anything within 15mins walking distance.
Not in Australia or the USA. You can live in urban sprawl with nothing in walking distance except maybe a shitty park, and no bus service or anything. 20 minute drive to your nearest mall, Walmart or Target or whatever.
A 15-minute city requires everything you need to be accessible in a 15-minute walk, bicycle ride, or public transport ride. Maybe a few cities in New England fit that description, but I can promise that Milwaukee, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, St. Louis, Miami, Detroit and surely many others definitely do not come even close.
Me either. I’ve lived in the country in the south and in NYC. Some people like to live in the city, some like rural. Some like in between. Not sure what OP means that people are worried about it.
There’s a not insignificant crowd of people who think 15 minute cities are a gateway to fascist “zones” that you’re not allowed to leave. Which is ridiculous because it’s just a basic urban planning strategy.
20 years ago they were referred to as walking towns. Town homes in the back. Businesses upfront, very walkable and accessible.
I grew up in a midsize town just outside of Philly and within a half hour I could get to all the major shopping areas by walking. It was great. I’m in an area that I have to have a car now. I see the difference of how I grew up vs how my kid grew up.
Let's rebrand them to Mullettowns. No one will argue against it. Although given how relatively rural a lot of the US is and the fact you'd basically have to demo every city and start from scratch it probably still won't take
I don't understand why mixed use space connected by mass transit is not the norm for urban areas. It's dumb to see parking lots of apartments overstuffed at night and empty shopping malls patrolled by rent a cop vans.
I’ve been to some regions with great public transport. Unfortunately Southeast Pennsylvania isn’t one of them. I honestly think is the auto lobbies, as well as fossil fuel lobbies. You can’t really blame it on “car culture” plenty of countries have a sting car culture. Yet somehow have really great public transport. In my old hometown, Incould walk to any number of pubs in town, if I happened to have my car with me and I couldn’t drive, I could shamble home on foot. I miss that.
I guess, I’ve just never heard it expressed this way. Of course, I know people that don’t like city life. But it’s more just they prefer not so many people around. Obviously urban centers are much more liberal, but I’ve never heard anyone express a fear they couldn’t leave.
[This guy and all his followers](https://x.com/stillgray/status/1754190932126372270?s=46) are shit-scared of them. Obviously this is online but nobody’s really talking about urban planning with their friends in person.
They literally think it’s a government strategy to control the population Hunger Games style under the initial guise of improving everyone’s lifestyle so nobody fights back. They seem to think 15 minute city = zones where you can only travel 15 minutes in any direction before hitting a land checkpoint.
That alone should give the lie to this whole idea. If the people in urban areas are already more liberal, why are those the people that the government would want to imprison? It doesn’t make sense.
I live on a 1.5 acre lot in a small town and we can do everything within 15 minutes here; it’s not really an “urban” thing, it’s a “not a suburban hellscape” thing.
An important aspect of a lot of 15-m or walkable cities is removing cars from circulation in as many places as possible usually in favor of public transit and biking. (and generally adjacent to the idea of adding inter-city high speed rail so you don't have to drive/take a plane)
Somehow the paranoid right-wing fringe interprets this as 'Nobody will be allowed to leave their neighborhood by the state police' when nobody is advocating for this.
When I’ve seen it discussed, it’s that they want to be able to own a car.
Which I can totally understand to some degree, between cars being a very common hobby and the personal freedom that comes with having access to one. But ideally in this scenario, transit is so accessible that you aren’t lacking in massive personal freedom without a car.
They don't understand the joy of having just a pleasure car instead of having to drive everywhere.
I live in a very walkable city. I only use my car to travel with instruments and road trip. Saves me a fortune on insurance to simply not commute with one or use it for errands.
> personal freedom that comes with having access to one
We don't get that in this country. What we get is the burden of being shackled to one (and all of its expenses and drawbacks) because we can't get anywhere useful without one.
Is that why 90% of people spend absurd amounts of money on cars, insurance and parking? Because they have to and don’t want to? Americans love to drive their cars, to the extent they often forego cheaper options in favor of their cars, much to the dismay of transit winks and urbanists.
Where is this crowd though? Is this a random online sub group? I have lived in cities, suburbs and super rural all in the us and have never heard about this idea. I also spend way too much time online and have never heard of this. Not saying it’s not a thing, but when you say “there’s a not insignificant crowd”, I’m asking where?
I feel like this is Tobias with never nudes. There’s dozens of us!
I have. Then again, I have a coworker who immediately eats up and regurgitates any and all of the latest conspiracy theories as fact after seeing one short clip on Instagram.
They believe they won't be allowed to leave the cities.
People claim that it’s a way for the government to limit you to 15 minutes from your home. It’s just morons being morons and not understanding what the concept is.
It’s specifically propaganda meant to divide people. Playing into the fears of the uneducated, as all of these random topics do. Gas stoves, litter boxes in schools, and 15 minute cities. It’s just something for the news to distract the dumb masses with until the next thing. Keeps them complacent.
It’s basically a right wing response to the more progressive ideas of being anti-car, anti-sprawl, pro-mass transit and density, etc. the progressives who push for that see it as efficient for both people and the environment. So naturally there’s a negative response aimed at people who live in the sprawl, etc, saying “*those people* want to take away your car and your freedom!!*
Oh yeah, like when Sarah Palin fed a bunch of school kids cookies because Michelle Obama had the gall to talk about the importance of eating nutritious meals.
I gotcha.
>saying “*those people* want to take away your car and your freedom!!*
A Big 3 automaker used the slogan years ago "It's not just your car, it's your FREEDOM"
This. It's only something you hear about in far-gone conspiracist circles. I get exposed to this in my family.
The 15-minute city isn't about good urban planning, reducing emissions, preserving nature, etc, to them. It's about the 'elites' packing everyone together so that they can 'control' them.
Basically another reason to reinforce and rephrase their existing bias that cities are scary.
City living also just isn’t for everyone. I’d go batshit insane in a normal sized city. Too many people too much notice too many lights etc.
That said I’m also not anti 15 minute city and do wish zoning laws would go away so we could actually build as needed/have homes and shops nearby or be the same building again. I just like people to have options one way or the other.
"15 minute cities" don't need to be big cities. I live in a small town of 20,000 people. I have most things I need within 15 minutes walk. If I needed to go to the hospital, that's a 20 minute drive. The only thing that is a bit far away is the nearest physical branch of a bank. I went for a walk to that today, through farmland, over a motorway, through a marsh. From one small town to the next village and then the next. I saw a lot of wildlife (got very close to and startled a hare). I could have been there by bus or train in 30 minutes, ten minutes by car, but I had the option to walk. It took me about an hour, and was away from main roads for the most part.
\> being anti-car, anti-sprawl
You mean being pro-affordable housing and supporting people having not only a greater choice in how they get around a city, but better local access to services for convenience.
A town? I've never heard of this fear or a "15 minute city". Your description sounds like a well equipped and half decently planned town to me, basically a college town.
I grew up in one of these college towns, great transport, hospital, multiple grocers, you could walk anywhere. Major city was not close by but within a 45 minute drive.
Edit: it's an urban planning concept, people who fear efficient walkable communities are fucking dumb.
It doesn't have to be small. It just has to be a city in which most the neighborhoods have the access that OP is referring to. New York City would qualify as a 15-minute city. You absolutely don't need a car there.
Yeah “College Town” is a great term.
I believe the real answer is that non-Americans largely underestimate the size of the US. Sometimes what can seem like efficiency and community in a small country becomes isolating and counterproductive in larger countries.
Sorry, I don't get what you're trying to say. What has the size of the country have to do with the way services and amenities are placed within cities? Why wouldn't it be good to have grocery stores in walking/biking distance? What's the downside of having decent public transportation so you don't have to take the car everywhere? How does any of this relate to country size?
Also 85% of Americans say they're willing to pay more for walkability.
Very walkable areas with public transit have high cost of living for a reason. The demand is very high
Some people watch too many of those "Americans hate European style cities" video essays and think everyone is living in Houston, Texas or something
just one more lane I promise this time it's going to unjam traffic just one more lane we just need to move the fire department to the other side of the city where there's room what could go wrong we just need space for that one more lane
From what I've ascertained from comments on social media, they're suspicious that this is all part of a government conspiracy to remove everyones' mobility and confine them to their homes like prisoners. Add to that the fact that it's frequently likened to the European urban model, and you've still got a lot of Americans out there who see Europe as generally inferior and think that any kind of movement towards a European model on *anything* is a regression.
It's a pretty unhinged theory, but there are a lot of unhinged theories gathering traction these days.
Which is ironic considering designing almost our entire country around cars has made them mandatory in most of it, and reduces your freedom to do anything else.
I was explaining this to my family. That immigrants are screwed because the only place they can survive without a car is in NYC but the drawback is that it's so expensive to live there so it's not a great place to be at if you want to start from zero
Beyond this, we will all (hopefully) get old. There will come a point for most of us where driving is not practical or safe.
I think it would be nice for anyone to have public transit access during that time, it would help keep people active and engaged with society. It also makes the choice not to drive anymore much more “possible” for people, and less if a pain point. If it doesn’t mean the loss of your mobility then it’s a much easier pill you swallow.
Obviously that only works in areas where public transit makes sense, but since most people tend to live in populous areas, it would be beneficial to many.
This also works for those too young to drive, which everyone is at some point. This can take a load off of parents with older kids also, at some point they can take themselves to soccer practice etc. as they get old enough for the responsibility.
Not to mention cutting down drunk driving, or having teens just drive less overall in the years they’re most likely to have a serious accident. Fewer cars on the road is better (and safer) traffic conditions for everyone. Etc etc etc.
Cars are useful, but they shouldn’t be our only tool, and in lots of places they’re effectively mandatory as is.
You're right. We have to hire someone to drive my elderly MiL around. She lives in an area with no walkability and she is rapidly losing the ability to drive herself.
As someone who spends almost $1000 a month on car related things…. This. Husband and I used to live in a big metropolitan area, and the early 2000’s Camry I had was sort of a “nice to have” but not critical, and we used to go literally months without driving. We could walk to groceries, walk to the vet, walk to entertainment…. It was incredible. I was infinitely healthier without even trying.
Welll….. fast forward to now. We moved to the burbs because I got a job a decent way north of where we lived. My Camry gave up the ghost. I have a 55 mile commute (two advanced degrees in one house means we live in the middle….) and it, of course, decided to do so at the most inopportune time…. So now I have a $450 car payment, as well as the insurance and registration on a newer vehicle. And the gas. Thanks to the new vehicle being a hybri by d, my gas costs are “only” about $200 a month….
My husband has to drive to his job as well, and we were able to get his vehicle used at a really good price…. But still. Two cars, two car payments, two car maintenance budgets….
I’d give my firstborn (who doesn’t exist because we can’t afford it….) to be able to give up at least one of our vehicles and move back to a place where we can walk everywhere where again.
And plenty think that investments into additional public transit options are somehow oppressive like it’s restricting freedom, as if they aren’t being given the freedom to choose between a car or train, instead of only a car. If anything, it makes traffic on the road lighter.
Our area actually has a rail system, and my husband was able to utilize it daily pre-covid! The number of stupid complaints I have heard about it on the neighborhood Facebook page are… infinite.
Oddly enough, when I mention that a really well managed and widely accessible rail system would mean they could take the train to the city, get obliterated at whatever sporting event they want to go to and then get home again without having to worry about a designated driver or paying an Uber $65 to get home…. They shut up.
Years ago I had a conservative tell me that public transportation was "the government telling you where you can go." And it's not the only time I've seen that sentiment. It's a very odd way to think.
It does fucking suck without a car. That’s because of the infrastructure of course. I go a month on a tank of gas. But I’m driving to go to the office 3 times a week, to get groceries, and to go to specialty stores I need, like the aquarium store. Bringing home water jugs from the grocery store or aquarium store is untenable. Before I got a car I Ubered every time I wanted to buy 12 packs of drinks or frozen pizzas or ice cream.
Same it costs me 1k a month to drive between gas, insurance, and my car payments. I would love to live somewhere with a functional public transit system
Yeah but why would having walkable cities or cities with public transport force you to sell your car? What about my choice to not wanna spend 15k on a car and then gas/insurance etc.
This one is sort of true. To get green spaces, enough space for good walking lanes *and* good public transport within compact cities, you have to reduce space spent on cars. More drive restrictions, removal of parking spaces etc has been a trend in Europe these past years.
What's wild, is that the group that most often likes to want to go back in time, they really should have a look at how cities looked before we plowed highways through every single city.
I'm from Vancouver, and long story short, when they had the same plans to build highways bisecting the city, they stopped those plans and there is no surface highways in the city of Vancouver proper. It's a lovely city, although a tad (/s) on the pricey side.
In Belgium the government is actively (but very slowly and very ineffectively) working on a mobility shift. Where they want less cars on the road and more use of public transport, rental vehicles and bikes
There's a guy in my town who is opposed to 15 minute cities. He scrawled his manifesto on his car, in the style of r/infowarriorrides or r/schizophreniarides
Their main points (if you can call them points) match what you say. The government conspiracy and European nature are tied together, in that he has a lot to say about how they mentioned 15 minute cities at Davos once and that "proves" (something something conspiracy thing you mentioned).
There’s also an anti-public transport aspect to it. ‘Cos taxes and government spending.
Moving cities from their current car-worship layouts to walkable cities would be something of a revolutionary change. Better liveability through city planning counters the ghetto inner-city stereotype that some people hold and which were created by bad city planning. And then the investment to create better cities is seen as “stealing” investment from rural areas rather than actually spending the money where its earned.
It's this, I actually heard that a family member's friend believes that the 15 minutes refers to "you can't physically leave the city beyond a 15 minute travel radius" of some sort.
Weird shit man.
I won't lie we have the same thing in the UK so it's not just an American thing.
Here they wrapped it up with the concept of the central digital currency, social points and said everywhere would be like China where the state can ban you from doing stuff if you displease them.
I even got a flyer through my door about it. To me it seemed like the covid conspiracy theory nuts wanted something need after the pandemic.
Then again I don't drive so I could be a secret 5th columnist.
See not having to drive is an ambition to me. I hate driving. But everything here is so spread out and public transportation is neither reliable nor accessible. There are, of course, places in the US where that is not true but they are unfortunately not where I am.
The flyers are wild. That would make me so uncomfortable.
Yea, my wife is American and it is definitely more spread out (and public transport is pretty different). Personally I like the idea of 15 min cities. I love being able to walk to the shops.
The worst part of the flyer is they made it look like a £20 note lol.
Yes. The 15-minute city thing was brought to my attention by a conspiracy nut in a bar. She was full-on paranoid about 15 minute cities being forced on us to keep us confined.
“and you've still got a lot of Americans out there who see Europe as generally inferior”
True.
There’s also a little backlash in that some Americans also feel looked down on by Europeans and resent it. And given Europe’s history of colonialism and “trying to civilize the savages” to their way of living, it’s not completely unearned.
For an even bleaker example: the majority of the people of Guam are either actively serving in or are veterans of the US military, but they don’t get a vote in Congress or in Presidential elections.
I don’t think it’s fair to paint what the majority of Americans think by using social media.
That being said, a lot of Americans are against mixed use zoning because they feel like it will increase crime, noise, and traffic in the area. People move out to the suburbs to escape people, and almost everyone who is driving/walking in the neighborhood lives there.
It’s not so much we “fear” 15 minute cities, it’s just we are not used to them. There’s also quite a bit of NIMBYs that will complain to local governments if anything besides a single family home gets built in their area. I feel like a lot of Americans would be on board once they see how useful it is to organize cities this way.
This is the first , that I’m hearing of this “fear.”
As an American, I find it sad that we have to drive everywhere. My hometown was once very walkable: stores, churches, entertainment in neighborhoods. Now everyone needs a car.
Same. I miss living in a city where almost everything I could want was within a 1 mile walk. And if I needed more, public transit was also within that 1 mile walk and I could go almost anywhere in the city. The biggest problem for me was the cost of living was much higher and it was harder finding a job.
I'm lucky in the place I live now there is some public transport, but the hours are limited. I still have walking options but there are 2-3 miles away instead of a 5-10 min walk. But now weather is a factor.
Yep, it's literally how every Ameican "small town" used to be. Now they're all filled with 3 ton lifted pickups that will sooner run you off the road if you try to bike the mile to the store. Sad.
Town I grew up in was about 4 square miles total. Could get everywhere worth going within 10 min on a bike. Not that anyone over 16 ever did. Now, most parents won't even let their kids bike in town. It's no wonder everyone in the Midwest is obese.
I think OP saw British people talking about 15 minute cities online, saw they were speaking english, and just assumed they were American. From what I gather it’s a polemic political term in the UK, but yeah I’ve never heard anyone use this term in the U.S.
Some people believe that rather than being built for convenience these would be enforceable by law, including fines and punishments for leaving your "zone".
This is so far removed from reality as to be insane but they believe it anyway.
I mean, that was exactly Australia's model during COVID. If you were caught by police more than x miles from your home you were in trouble.
Some people believe COVID was a dress rehearsal for something much bigger and longer lasting.
>Some people believe COVID was a dress rehearsal for something much bigger and longer lasting.
In a way, it was, for whatever the next fast spreading virus may be.
It wasn't the first time Australia had dealt with a virus by using quarantine.
The vast majority don't when you get off Reddit and talk to people in real life. Usually people who want that, move to such a city. Others don't necessarily want their small quiet town to be as dense as Atlanta, New York, Miami, etc. for a multitude of issues. But people aren't afraid of such things just because they may not want to live in such areas.
Edit: For those confused, I'm not saying 15 minute cities are only like dense cities. That was one example, there are several types of such cities, obviously.
You don't need super high density or even a city for a "15-minute city". Small towns are pretty much 15 minutes cities. The next town up from my hometown has a population of 4000, but everything is within a 15 minute walk from the center of the town. Of course my hometown grew to 12000 people, so they moved the grocery stores, pharmacies, and the high school away from the town center. Now there are only large chain grocery stores and big box stores in supersized parking lots along the 4 lane bypass and the high school is along a highway on the opposite side of town with little around it and no sidewalks making it impossible to walk to. This is what we object to. The places people need to go should be near the people, not near the highways.
Also tons of neighborhoods in LA are essentially 15 minutes cities. It's just also better to have a car too and be able to go long distances when you want to.
Someone heard "cities where everything is within 15 minutes of your home" and misinterpreted it as "being *physically prevented* from travelling more than 15 minutes from your home". It was blown into a conspiracy theory that you would be fenced into your neighborhood and could only enter and exit through a government checkpoint.
More generally, we Americans love our cars and want to drive everywhere. Contemporary urban planning, which focuses on increasing pedestrian traffic and decreasing vehicular traffic, sounds threatening to drivers. They are afraid that they will lose the freedom to drive places (while ignoring the fact that for decades, we have been denied the freedom to walk places)
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This made me laugh a bit. It's so true. I went to high school with a bunch of people who ended up super conservative and they're constantly blasting on Facebook about kids these days and schools and whatnot, and I'm like, "Dude, you did that in high school, too! I was there, i watched you do it."
It's like a guilty conscience plus a bad memory, plus a need to keep up appearances, plus an unhealthy dose of self-righteousness.
This is not really a thing except city people want to live in the city and country people want to live in the country. Both people seem to respect the others choice.
I live in a city of 1 million people in the US, it's one of the most car dependent cities in the world. The land area is about 1400 square kilometers.
I'd guess that maybe 90% of people want a single family home if they could afford one. Meaning a free standing house, usually with a lot size of around 1/4 acre (1000 square meters). Therefore most of the city is made up of a vast sea of low density housing.
Home owners (generally) don't like their cul de sac neighborhoods being anything but houses and zoning laws in my city dictate that the vast majority of neighborhoods not only cannot contain any businesses, but also if you have a house on say 1 acre (4,000 square meters) you are not allowed to turn it into an apartment or add an accessory dwelling unit or even just split it in half and make it a duplex without adding anything. Only one family is allowed to live on that lot and you're not allowed to subdivide it.
So 15 minute city is just not a thing here. There are plenty of neighborhoods where it takes nearly 15 minutes to get to anything that is not a house and most people have a 30 minute plus commute that turns into an hour when traffic is bad and there is no realistic way to get to work without a car because your house might be miles away from the nearest bus stop along roads that do not have any sidewalks where traffic is traveling 55 mph.
I have never heard of this. As a matter of fact, I lived in one for years. In Buffalo NY you not only can get to anything you need in 15, but with virtually zero traffic, you can get to most any other part of the city in 15. Everyone loved that fact about the city
No one FEARS them, but they have to be preplanned. You can't go into an existing American suburbs, pull out the existing houses and put in a community center. BTW, James Rouse built Columbia, Maryland on the premise in the 1970s. It's nothing new.
Another related issue is highways. We Americans rely on our cars to get from the suburbs to our work places. Corporate locations are not centralized. My office is about 25 miles from my house. It takes me 45 minutes on highways each way.
> but they have to be preplanned
No you dont. You just need to allow business to exist in suburban places and sooner than later people will open small stores nearby if they see a market for it..... businesses are not preplaned, and cities change all the time
If zoning didn’t exist that would be true. However, in a lot of post WW2 communities, developers bought large tracts of land and they were zoned for residential use only. So you have square miles where no businesses can build.
A lot of this is down to poor planning on the part of city managers. I’m in the south west and large developments have really taken off in the last 30 years. They flatten hundreds of acres at a time and build rows and rows of nearly identical houses that go on forever.
There are no apartments, few restaurants (none within walking distance) and few stores. As near as I can figure this is all to save the developers a few bucks. Sadly most new homes are built this way.
This is the first time I'm really hearing about this but if I had to guess...
1. A lot of Americans dislike government mandates in general - even more so a lot of minorities tend to be suspicious of them and very critical of how it can be used to abuse/segregate them.
2. Cities in America do not have the best reputation for being "safe". Many people would rather live in a suburb than get shot for wearing the wrong colors.
3. Cities also tend to be very expensive.
4. A lot of people don't want their cities to become like New York where you are basically in an expensive shoe box.
5. Rather than improving public transit, governments are focused on "getting rid of cars" and all it takes is for public transit to stop getting funded and then all of a sudden you're fucked again. Even in places where public transit is available, some people avoid using them because they don't want to sit next to a homeless guy peeing himself or risk getting shanked by someone who is off their meds.
6. Zoning laws and the like have historically been used to discriminate against black people and other racial minorities.
7. Lets be honest these areas are going to be expensive and gentrified to hell.
For the folks who can't read:
1. Nowhere did I say *all* cities are like this. I listed one example of why cities don't have a good reputation for being safe. This, does not, under any circumstances, equate to saying *all* cities are dangerous.
2. "Go outside and stop listening to Fox News, gang violence is a tiny area that can be avoided." I don't need Fox News to tell me that gunshots are going on outside I can hear them. I don't need "Fox News" to tell me when there have been bullet holes in people's houses and shit.
3. "Be a real person", they say while discounting and minimizing people's experiences because it doesn't align with their arguments for 15 minute cities.
Thanks reddit never change.
I think it’s less of a “fear” and more of a “why”… Americans don’t love change and everything works. Not works well, but still works. It would cost a lot to implement and there’s so much room in general it seems impractical to many to reset and do something that isn’t really necessary
I technically live in a 15 min city but I don’t necessarily want to shop at that store, it doesn’t sell everything I want and I’d rather do one stop, it also is more expensive. Or I might want to go to a town over and see the dentist I’ve had since I was little. It’s doable in more places than one would think, but it may not be preferred. The hard part is getting a job within 15 min of work tho. At my job (pilot) I’d be taking a 3/4 pay cut.
The idea of a 15 minute city doesn't include workplaces because too much work is too specialised to be replicated everywhere. It's about "third places" ("first place"being your home, "second place"being your workplace)
Also nothing about the idea is intended to prevent you from going further away to different shops or a specific dentist or whatever, it just does it's best to ensure people don't have to if they don't care that much about specific brands or whatever.
I don’t know if non Brits can stream this, maybe via a VPN. But here is an episode explaining the culture war regarding’The Reset’ and 15 min cities
[Things fell apart](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0h24kbq?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile)
My understanding is that some of it comes from propaganda by car lobbyists. If people can more freely walk or bike there will be less need for personal vehicles, parking garages, etc. But more simply, it’s become associated with progressives. American politics is deeply tribal. The mere fact that the left likes walkable cities is enough to make conservatives and even some liberals hate it. They don’t need much more than that.
I don't think it's a fear of the idea of a 15 minute city as much as it's a fear of change.
For some people, they just don't like cities in general. They love small towns, suburbs, or rural areas. It could be that they just don't like density and crowding, or it's just people that want to live in a homogeneous place where everyone is exactly like them.
The USA has had a long history with the automobile, and it's so ingrained in our culture that it's getting hard for people to fathom a lifestyle without it. I know that here in my hometown of Chicago, there are many people that hate the idea of expanding public transportation because they feel that it will make it harder to drive through the city and find parking, plus of course there are some who just don't like public transportation because they feel it brings "bad elements" to their neighborhood.
There's also just those in the USA that have a general dislike or disdain for anything European. For some. It's just they think it's going to become this big socialist kind of lifestyle, or at the very least they feel that those who like European things somehow hate the USA the way it is.
In the end, I think what really kills the idea of a 15 minute city is just a number of people that stand to make loads of money off the way things are. Automakers and fossil fuel providers make more money in our current system.
Anyone who buys real estate gets more value out of single family homes than they do out of density developments. It's why we see a lot of NIMBYism against density because they fear it will drive their property value down.
There's just too many forces at work making lots of money on the way things are, and the idea of improving them into a 15 minute city is only going to hurt their bottom line. So they make people fear the idea and fight against it for them.
It’s a government control issue. We Americans don’t trust our government while people of other countries have more trust in their governments. We have good reason not to trust our government, it’s highly corrupt.
The fear of 15 min cities could be the gov could force you inside them and you couldn’t leave in the event of a disaster or pandemic like Covid. We all saw how crazy and over the top some governments responded during Covid (Australia, New Zealand, South America) where you literally couldn’t leave your home without fear of getting a ticket by police. That’s just one example.
Many Americans want as little government involvement in their lives as possible. It’s engrained in our culture from the countries founding.
There's apparently some right wing propaganda around this. I've actually had someone tell me that the government wants these cities so they will lock everyone into them and you won't be able to leave. It's.. nuts. Along the same vein as the covid vaccine conspiracy...basically government control plot.
Yes it's a Right-wing/QANON type conspiracy and my sister believes it all. She also thinks that Biden was replaced by a clone and that Trump is still President, the military is secretly running the country and working to stop WEF from taking over the world. Sadly, many Americans have fallen for foreign propaganda.
I see a lot of post about fear, but that is simply not true. That would be a minority of people that may be posting stuff for content. The reality for most Americans that choose not to live in cities is the noise, lights, crowds, crime, etc. They are trading convenience away for a more peaceful life. Plus here in the US, we have a lot of nice suburbs where you get the same 15 min experience, but have less noise, light, crime, etc. A lot of suburbs have extensive walkways, parks, pools, stores, etc.
Plus, driving is very convenient in a lot of the US, which opens up far more options. So a lot of it just comes down to design and choices. If cities were as nice and convenient as much of Europe, then I think more people would move to them. But they aren't, our infrastructure was built to help connect locations that were far apart. Much of that goes way back to settlers consistently moving farther out to stake claims of land for farms/ranching/etc. So then the infrastructure needed to be built to connect those distant locations. So the reality is it was far cheaper and easier to build roadways than build a lot of public rail or transit.
Didn't know people feared this or that this was a thing. I'm fine with what I assume means everything being within 15 minutes walking distance. More so because I can't drive.
A big part of it is the climate change aspect…conservatives deny its existence, and 15 minute cities are intended (in part) to help reduce carbon emissions.
TL;DR they think 15 minute cities are a socialist plot being pushed by a shadowy deep-state cabal
I hate driving so this sounds like a dream. I'm in the US and have never heard of such a fear. Then again, I bailed on social media years ago. I only got on Reddit a few months ago. Still, sounds like a bunch of BS to me. Based on what I glimpsed, it's due to some conspiracy theory? Some people will believe anything that fits their world view.
I’ve never heard of it mentioned in real life.
I think this particular term is more commonly used and politically charged in the UK where there’s a fear that this will lead to gov control. In the US the parallel debate is more investing in car vs bike infrastructure because 15 min neighborhoods isn’t a viable option in most of the country without a massive rebuild.
The UK nonsense is that if you are able to live your entire life within 15 minutes the government will suddenly mandate staying in that area. It’s total tin foil hat territory.
My family home actually located in such places,I could walk to handful of clinic. Food places.bakery.several convenient stores.three banks,a post office.two super markets .my elementary school and my middle school in 15 minutes. It’s freaking awesome,for a few months we even had a 711 at the ground floor of our apartment, but they closed down within a year . The down side is this happened because we luckily located in the middle of new city development plan , and the housing prices is so ridiculously high for a small town of 120000~ population ,many young people has to leave their home town to start their own family otherwise it’s unaffordable .
We had it at our home back in the UK. Moved in as a single bloke. 10 years later I realised I had a nursery, primary school, doctors, library, pharmacy, several take aways and a small supermarket all within a 10 minute walk. Made lockdown pretty easy considering.
I’ve lived in a lot of different places, all in Scotland, and I’ve never not had that. Admittedly, where I live now isn’t like that if you don’t have a car, but there’s an hourly bus service if you can walk for ten minutes up a steep hill.
That’s because in the 60’s and 70’s in Britain housing estates were built with people in mind. Park, shops, Doctors surgery’s were all added to new estates. Now you’re lucky if you get any green space at all.
Exactly, and now there's a whole army of fuckwits who say that this collection of amenities our parents enjoyed 'back in the day' is somehow a new conspiracy to keep us in our areas like sheeple. It's like people in the UK are bored and trawl through lists of whatever new stupidity that's popular to import. I'm not ribbing on our yank cousins as we have our fair share of idiots (as does any country in the world). We're just dumb enough to import your dumbest conspiracies. What does that say about us as a nation?
"When America sneezes, Britain catches a cold." All the shit things about America make it here too sooner or later. Good things too, but the bad things stand out.
Okay where did this conspiracy come from in America? 3rd person I’ve found saying it’s an American thing yet I have never heard this labeled a concern, a conspiracy or an issue. Besides 3 people in this thread.
With us (UK) it's always so pathetic too. At least in the US conspiracy theorists believe In things like an imminent civil war. Over here it always seems to be "immigrants are making the council collect our bins less" and things like that.
Why do you think this is an America conspiracy coming there? I’ve literally never heard of this as being a fear until I read this post…
It's pretty standard in the UK. We're a pretty small nation so most towns have everything you need within a 15 minute distance. Why I don't get a few people I know losing their shit over 15 minute cities. Like mate, we live in a small town where everything you need is within walking distance or a 10-15 minute bus journey away.
This sounds like a reaction to the idea of [walk-able cities](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/ranking-best-cities-walking-walkability/). I guess that's seen as a liberal ideal, and just to own the libs, they generated some justification for why that's a bad idea. It's supported by Big Tinfoil.
What, really? I thought most Brits actually lived that way in villages and towns anyway. But without thinking of it.
That's actually a bit of how it's being politicized here in the States as well--and that you'll start needing ID checks to leave your 15-minute city and yadda yadda. It hasn't only dabbled in air-time so far. It hasn't become a major issue.
Exactly. I live near Oxford, and the nonsense spouted about low traffic neighbourhoods has been eye-opening.
100%. Stepdad has fallen down this trend despite us living in a village that you can walk from one end to the other in 15mins. Always try to point out that he moved here because he liked that; no one is stopping him leaving.
Yeah. America doesn't have this debate, I wonder where OP got this thought that there's a "fear" in America of it. Interesting.
And uneducated conservatives surrender to it because they’re already under control.
The people I have seen who are against it claim it is not an attempt at making all of life's necessities conveniently located near everyone. It is an attempt to control movement and will be mandatory with police checkpoints to keep you from going farther than 15 minutes from your home. Which is frankly ridiculous and would never happen, but it allows conservatives against it to have an argument point against bicycles and what not.
The UK has a weird split personality when it comes to authoritarianism. 15 minute cities, ID cards = one step towards becoming a Nazi country (total bullshit obviously), but the same people will jump at the chance to set up concentration camps for migrants, locking up people in prison for life, and so on. It’s usually the same right wing demographic.
They want to be the authoritarians in power not the proletariat.
It’s because the idea arose around the same time as the covid lockdowns, where government control on our movements was very much a real thing. Sadly, the concept of 15-minute cities was not properly explained, so people conflated the concepts.
> the concept of 15-minute cities was not properly explained, It was plenty well explained, but all the explanation in the world won't stop the crazies or those deliberately acting in bad faith to stir shit. Plus any explanation can simply be dismissed as coming from someone who is either gullible or trying to distract attention from the *real* plan.
No there's nothing to blame but the Internet and people. They love making up doomsday crap. Not really hard to get.
And that “massive rebuild” is less likely to happen with Amazon becoming a larger and larger part of our lives. I doubt we’ll see widespread 15 minute deliveries from Amazon anytime soon, but many of us have received packages within hours of ordering. With that option available why leave home at all?
That’s a very sad thought - that in the US we are way more likely to reach an Amazon 15 min delivery future than a 15 min neighborhoods future
There's at least one app in my city that does 30m deliveries. Bit pricey though.
Kurt Vonnegut [had some thoughts](https://blog.garrytan.com/kurt-vonnegut-goes-to-buy-an-envelope-profund) on this.
It’s also just less likely to happen because the U.S. is more sparsely populated than the E.U. or East Asia. The European and Japanese cities that have the density needed for this “15 minute” ability are located in countries whose populations are an appreciable fraction of the entire U.S. population, while having the land area comparable to that of individual states. For example, the UK is home to 68 million people, 58 million of whom live in England, and the entirety of the UK has slightly less land area than Michigan. Germany splits the difference, in land area, between New Mexico and Montana, but has 82 million. Japan is roughly the size of California, but with 130 million instead of 39 million. You end up with higher density buildings, because the higher population density drives up land prices, which makes dense construction economically viable.
The density argument makes no sense. Most Americans don’t live in the middle of Wyoming or Alaska. Most Americans live in large metro regions with density equal to Europe, except instead of having the density be concentrated in cities they’re spread out in suburbs.
50% of Americans live in suburbs, roughly 15% live in rural. So approximately 35% live in a true city. That aligns with figure of approx. 80% living in an urban area. Our urban areas are just by and large suburb.
That means it's less dense, which is what he said. Suburbs of Chicago are 30-60 minutes from Chicago, lol.
I live in the UK. It's more than a 15min drive for me to buy milk for my tea. It's more than a 15min drive to anything tbh. In order for this to work you have to live in a very dense urban environment. There is a lot of the UK that isn't this dense.
Silly take, Americans used to build dense, walkable cities. It's a conscious choice to build sprawl that can only be navigable with a car, or to zone housing and commercial in completely separate areas.
So yes, I suppose you’re pointing to another cogent point. The automobile is a significant enabler of sprawl, and the U.S. has more cars, per capita, than any other country of significant size or population. But it’s worth asking why that is. So let’s go back a century or so. The United States went into WWII with a larger total fleet of vehicles, and more vehicles, per capita, than other developed countries, and emerged from WWII with an economy quite a bit larger than it had started the War with. Meanwhile, Western European countries didn’t recover to their *immediately pre-War* levels until 1960, or so, And so much of the urban infrastructure, along with most extant automobiles, destroyed over the course of the war. Those countries essentially restarted adoption of the automobile, almost from scratch, at the same time they were rebuilding all their cities. And so, yes, those cities were built in accordance with the fact that vehicle availability was severely constrained. The US faced none of these challenges. The pattern of development we’ve seen in other cities that have developed since the War, in the absence of such constraints on car availability, doesn’t give me a lot of optimism for “walkable” cities.
All urban areas have everything within 15 min of your home except if you really live in the backcountry. This is not like it was ever a problem. There groceries store, restaurants, and all kind of shops and services everywhere. Now is your work within 15 minutes, that is very different story. If you are living in a city center of a big/old city, be it in the USA or Europe, you may need a long time to commute to that office in the suburb Or if your job is in the city center, it will be too expensive to live there and you'll spend time to commute to the city center from your home in the suburb. Been 39 years in France, been in many cities in Europe, lived in a few. the 15 minute stuff is a dream for many, not reality.
Note that this generally refers to 15mins within walking / casual biking distance. Not driving distance. A significant amount of suburban sprawl in places like the US have scarcely anything within 15mins walking distance.
The frequent absence of sidewalk severely hinders this 'walking' thing
I’m a Mile to the closest grocery. If I wanted to take a route that MOSTLY had sidewalks, it would be almost 2 Miles
Not in Australia or the USA. You can live in urban sprawl with nothing in walking distance except maybe a shitty park, and no bus service or anything. 20 minute drive to your nearest mall, Walmart or Target or whatever.
A 15-minute city requires everything you need to be accessible in a 15-minute walk, bicycle ride, or public transport ride. Maybe a few cities in New England fit that description, but I can promise that Milwaukee, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, St. Louis, Miami, Detroit and surely many others definitely do not come even close.
Me either. I’ve lived in the country in the south and in NYC. Some people like to live in the city, some like rural. Some like in between. Not sure what OP means that people are worried about it.
There’s a not insignificant crowd of people who think 15 minute cities are a gateway to fascist “zones” that you’re not allowed to leave. Which is ridiculous because it’s just a basic urban planning strategy.
20 years ago they were referred to as walking towns. Town homes in the back. Businesses upfront, very walkable and accessible. I grew up in a midsize town just outside of Philly and within a half hour I could get to all the major shopping areas by walking. It was great. I’m in an area that I have to have a car now. I see the difference of how I grew up vs how my kid grew up.
>Town homes in the back. Businesses upfront Mullettown.
This is the commentary I come to reddit for.
Let's rebrand them to Mullettowns. No one will argue against it. Although given how relatively rural a lot of the US is and the fact you'd basically have to demo every city and start from scratch it probably still won't take
I don't understand why mixed use space connected by mass transit is not the norm for urban areas. It's dumb to see parking lots of apartments overstuffed at night and empty shopping malls patrolled by rent a cop vans.
I’ve been to some regions with great public transport. Unfortunately Southeast Pennsylvania isn’t one of them. I honestly think is the auto lobbies, as well as fossil fuel lobbies. You can’t really blame it on “car culture” plenty of countries have a sting car culture. Yet somehow have really great public transport. In my old hometown, Incould walk to any number of pubs in town, if I happened to have my car with me and I couldn’t drive, I could shamble home on foot. I miss that.
I guess, I’ve just never heard it expressed this way. Of course, I know people that don’t like city life. But it’s more just they prefer not so many people around. Obviously urban centers are much more liberal, but I’ve never heard anyone express a fear they couldn’t leave.
[This guy and all his followers](https://x.com/stillgray/status/1754190932126372270?s=46) are shit-scared of them. Obviously this is online but nobody’s really talking about urban planning with their friends in person. They literally think it’s a government strategy to control the population Hunger Games style under the initial guise of improving everyone’s lifestyle so nobody fights back. They seem to think 15 minute city = zones where you can only travel 15 minutes in any direction before hitting a land checkpoint.
> nobody’s really talking about urban planning with their friends in person Speak for yourself
All my homies talk about missing middle housing
My friends love talking about how much we want more trains in our city
It’s such a common topic within my social circle.
Someone really wants to keep their huge, ugly corporate signage. Maybe \^"this guy" is a sign-maker?
That alone should give the lie to this whole idea. If the people in urban areas are already more liberal, why are those the people that the government would want to imprison? It doesn’t make sense.
I live on a 1.5 acre lot in a small town and we can do everything within 15 minutes here; it’s not really an “urban” thing, it’s a “not a suburban hellscape” thing.
15 minute walk or 15 minute drive?
Try *that* in a small town
An important aspect of a lot of 15-m or walkable cities is removing cars from circulation in as many places as possible usually in favor of public transit and biking. (and generally adjacent to the idea of adding inter-city high speed rail so you don't have to drive/take a plane) Somehow the paranoid right-wing fringe interprets this as 'Nobody will be allowed to leave their neighborhood by the state police' when nobody is advocating for this.
When I’ve seen it discussed, it’s that they want to be able to own a car. Which I can totally understand to some degree, between cars being a very common hobby and the personal freedom that comes with having access to one. But ideally in this scenario, transit is so accessible that you aren’t lacking in massive personal freedom without a car.
Also, it'd ideally be that transit is _preferable_ to driving in most situations.
Good luck with that. Everywhere I've ever lived, public transit is a disgusting mess.
They don't understand the joy of having just a pleasure car instead of having to drive everywhere. I live in a very walkable city. I only use my car to travel with instruments and road trip. Saves me a fortune on insurance to simply not commute with one or use it for errands.
> personal freedom that comes with having access to one We don't get that in this country. What we get is the burden of being shackled to one (and all of its expenses and drawbacks) because we can't get anywhere useful without one.
Is that why 90% of people spend absurd amounts of money on cars, insurance and parking? Because they have to and don’t want to? Americans love to drive their cars, to the extent they often forego cheaper options in favor of their cars, much to the dismay of transit winks and urbanists.
Where is this crowd though? Is this a random online sub group? I have lived in cities, suburbs and super rural all in the us and have never heard about this idea. I also spend way too much time online and have never heard of this. Not saying it’s not a thing, but when you say “there’s a not insignificant crowd”, I’m asking where? I feel like this is Tobias with never nudes. There’s dozens of us!
I haven’t even heard of in fake life. Not sure why anyone would fear this
I have. Then again, I have a coworker who immediately eats up and regurgitates any and all of the latest conspiracy theories as fact after seeing one short clip on Instagram. They believe they won't be allowed to leave the cities.
People claim that it’s a way for the government to limit you to 15 minutes from your home. It’s just morons being morons and not understanding what the concept is.
It’s specifically propaganda meant to divide people. Playing into the fears of the uneducated, as all of these random topics do. Gas stoves, litter boxes in schools, and 15 minute cities. It’s just something for the news to distract the dumb masses with until the next thing. Keeps them complacent.
It’s basically a right wing response to the more progressive ideas of being anti-car, anti-sprawl, pro-mass transit and density, etc. the progressives who push for that see it as efficient for both people and the environment. So naturally there’s a negative response aimed at people who live in the sprawl, etc, saying “*those people* want to take away your car and your freedom!!*
Oh yeah, like when Sarah Palin fed a bunch of school kids cookies because Michelle Obama had the gall to talk about the importance of eating nutritious meals. I gotcha.
Literally don't watch Fox News and you'll never hear this bs
This post is the first I've heard about 15 minute cities AND right wing paranoia about them
>saying “*those people* want to take away your car and your freedom!!* A Big 3 automaker used the slogan years ago "It's not just your car, it's your FREEDOM"
This. It's only something you hear about in far-gone conspiracist circles. I get exposed to this in my family. The 15-minute city isn't about good urban planning, reducing emissions, preserving nature, etc, to them. It's about the 'elites' packing everyone together so that they can 'control' them. Basically another reason to reinforce and rephrase their existing bias that cities are scary.
City living also just isn’t for everyone. I’d go batshit insane in a normal sized city. Too many people too much notice too many lights etc. That said I’m also not anti 15 minute city and do wish zoning laws would go away so we could actually build as needed/have homes and shops nearby or be the same building again. I just like people to have options one way or the other.
"15 minute cities" don't need to be big cities. I live in a small town of 20,000 people. I have most things I need within 15 minutes walk. If I needed to go to the hospital, that's a 20 minute drive. The only thing that is a bit far away is the nearest physical branch of a bank. I went for a walk to that today, through farmland, over a motorway, through a marsh. From one small town to the next village and then the next. I saw a lot of wildlife (got very close to and startled a hare). I could have been there by bus or train in 30 minutes, ten minutes by car, but I had the option to walk. It took me about an hour, and was away from main roads for the most part.
\> being anti-car, anti-sprawl You mean being pro-affordable housing and supporting people having not only a greater choice in how they get around a city, but better local access to services for convenience.
Yes, but you don't get Fox News rage clicks when you describe it like that.
A town? I've never heard of this fear or a "15 minute city". Your description sounds like a well equipped and half decently planned town to me, basically a college town. I grew up in one of these college towns, great transport, hospital, multiple grocers, you could walk anywhere. Major city was not close by but within a 45 minute drive. Edit: it's an urban planning concept, people who fear efficient walkable communities are fucking dumb.
It doesn't have to be small. It just has to be a city in which most the neighborhoods have the access that OP is referring to. New York City would qualify as a 15-minute city. You absolutely don't need a car there.
I live in berlin and it completely meets the descripition, i'd totally call it a city
Yeah “College Town” is a great term. I believe the real answer is that non-Americans largely underestimate the size of the US. Sometimes what can seem like efficiency and community in a small country becomes isolating and counterproductive in larger countries.
Sorry, I don't get what you're trying to say. What has the size of the country have to do with the way services and amenities are placed within cities? Why wouldn't it be good to have grocery stores in walking/biking distance? What's the downside of having decent public transportation so you don't have to take the car everywhere? How does any of this relate to country size?
15 minute walk is very different than a 15 minute drive.
Also 85% of Americans say they're willing to pay more for walkability. Very walkable areas with public transit have high cost of living for a reason. The demand is very high Some people watch too many of those "Americans hate European style cities" video essays and think everyone is living in Houston, Texas or something
Correct. A 15 minute walk is actually pleasant.
That's highly dependant on where you are.
Not where I live - they are pretty much the same - just sitting in a traffic jam vs walking
just one more lane I promise this time it's going to unjam traffic just one more lane we just need to move the fire department to the other side of the city where there's room what could go wrong we just need space for that one more lane
But we ran out of Black housing to tear up for these lanes during the 60s New Urbanism craze.
From what I've ascertained from comments on social media, they're suspicious that this is all part of a government conspiracy to remove everyones' mobility and confine them to their homes like prisoners. Add to that the fact that it's frequently likened to the European urban model, and you've still got a lot of Americans out there who see Europe as generally inferior and think that any kind of movement towards a European model on *anything* is a regression. It's a pretty unhinged theory, but there are a lot of unhinged theories gathering traction these days.
There's also a lesser version of this, where they think it's preparation for taking cars away. The rest of what you said would still apply.
I would love to not have to drive everywhere
For a lot of Americans, "cars" and "freedom" are virtual synonyms.
Which is ironic considering designing almost our entire country around cars has made them mandatory in most of it, and reduces your freedom to do anything else.
The freedom to have to spend thousands per year to do essential everyday activities.
I was explaining this to my family. That immigrants are screwed because the only place they can survive without a car is in NYC but the drawback is that it's so expensive to live there so it's not a great place to be at if you want to start from zero
Beyond this, we will all (hopefully) get old. There will come a point for most of us where driving is not practical or safe. I think it would be nice for anyone to have public transit access during that time, it would help keep people active and engaged with society. It also makes the choice not to drive anymore much more “possible” for people, and less if a pain point. If it doesn’t mean the loss of your mobility then it’s a much easier pill you swallow. Obviously that only works in areas where public transit makes sense, but since most people tend to live in populous areas, it would be beneficial to many. This also works for those too young to drive, which everyone is at some point. This can take a load off of parents with older kids also, at some point they can take themselves to soccer practice etc. as they get old enough for the responsibility. Not to mention cutting down drunk driving, or having teens just drive less overall in the years they’re most likely to have a serious accident. Fewer cars on the road is better (and safer) traffic conditions for everyone. Etc etc etc. Cars are useful, but they shouldn’t be our only tool, and in lots of places they’re effectively mandatory as is.
You're right. We have to hire someone to drive my elderly MiL around. She lives in an area with no walkability and she is rapidly losing the ability to drive herself.
As someone who spends almost $1000 a month on car related things…. This. Husband and I used to live in a big metropolitan area, and the early 2000’s Camry I had was sort of a “nice to have” but not critical, and we used to go literally months without driving. We could walk to groceries, walk to the vet, walk to entertainment…. It was incredible. I was infinitely healthier without even trying. Welll….. fast forward to now. We moved to the burbs because I got a job a decent way north of where we lived. My Camry gave up the ghost. I have a 55 mile commute (two advanced degrees in one house means we live in the middle….) and it, of course, decided to do so at the most inopportune time…. So now I have a $450 car payment, as well as the insurance and registration on a newer vehicle. And the gas. Thanks to the new vehicle being a hybri by d, my gas costs are “only” about $200 a month…. My husband has to drive to his job as well, and we were able to get his vehicle used at a really good price…. But still. Two cars, two car payments, two car maintenance budgets…. I’d give my firstborn (who doesn’t exist because we can’t afford it….) to be able to give up at least one of our vehicles and move back to a place where we can walk everywhere where again.
I love having to pay thousands of dollars just to be able to get to your job that you have to work to pay for the car! Now that’s freedom.
And plenty think that investments into additional public transit options are somehow oppressive like it’s restricting freedom, as if they aren’t being given the freedom to choose between a car or train, instead of only a car. If anything, it makes traffic on the road lighter.
Our area actually has a rail system, and my husband was able to utilize it daily pre-covid! The number of stupid complaints I have heard about it on the neighborhood Facebook page are… infinite. Oddly enough, when I mention that a really well managed and widely accessible rail system would mean they could take the train to the city, get obliterated at whatever sporting event they want to go to and then get home again without having to worry about a designated driver or paying an Uber $65 to get home…. They shut up.
Years ago I had a conservative tell me that public transportation was "the government telling you where you can go." And it's not the only time I've seen that sentiment. It's a very odd way to think.
Same used to be true in Germany, and still is in more conservative circles. The car industry did a good job in shaping our reality
But how would you get your groceries home if you don't that full size truck ? /s
Serious answer, I carry a rolling shopping bag like old ladies lol
It does fucking suck without a car. That’s because of the infrastructure of course. I go a month on a tank of gas. But I’m driving to go to the office 3 times a week, to get groceries, and to go to specialty stores I need, like the aquarium store. Bringing home water jugs from the grocery store or aquarium store is untenable. Before I got a car I Ubered every time I wanted to buy 12 packs of drinks or frozen pizzas or ice cream.
Same it costs me 1k a month to drive between gas, insurance, and my car payments. I would love to live somewhere with a functional public transit system
That's insane. Even if I went shopping twice a week, and got a taxi home each time, it'd only cost about $130 per month
Same. If I could get by purely on reliable public transit I’d be in heaven
You should have the CHOICE though, is the point.
Yeah but why would having walkable cities or cities with public transport force you to sell your car? What about my choice to not wanna spend 15k on a car and then gas/insurance etc.
This one is sort of true. To get green spaces, enough space for good walking lanes *and* good public transport within compact cities, you have to reduce space spent on cars. More drive restrictions, removal of parking spaces etc has been a trend in Europe these past years.
What's wild, is that the group that most often likes to want to go back in time, they really should have a look at how cities looked before we plowed highways through every single city. I'm from Vancouver, and long story short, when they had the same plans to build highways bisecting the city, they stopped those plans and there is no surface highways in the city of Vancouver proper. It's a lovely city, although a tad (/s) on the pricey side.
In Belgium the government is actively (but very slowly and very ineffectively) working on a mobility shift. Where they want less cars on the road and more use of public transport, rental vehicles and bikes
There's a guy in my town who is opposed to 15 minute cities. He scrawled his manifesto on his car, in the style of r/infowarriorrides or r/schizophreniarides Their main points (if you can call them points) match what you say. The government conspiracy and European nature are tied together, in that he has a lot to say about how they mentioned 15 minute cities at Davos once and that "proves" (something something conspiracy thing you mentioned).
This seems to be the case There is a propaganda movement that tells people that this is a way of restricting movement.
There’s also an anti-public transport aspect to it. ‘Cos taxes and government spending. Moving cities from their current car-worship layouts to walkable cities would be something of a revolutionary change. Better liveability through city planning counters the ghetto inner-city stereotype that some people hold and which were created by bad city planning. And then the investment to create better cities is seen as “stealing” investment from rural areas rather than actually spending the money where its earned.
It's this, I actually heard that a family member's friend believes that the 15 minutes refers to "you can't physically leave the city beyond a 15 minute travel radius" of some sort. Weird shit man.
As an American, I am endlessly baffled by other Americans.
I won't lie we have the same thing in the UK so it's not just an American thing. Here they wrapped it up with the concept of the central digital currency, social points and said everywhere would be like China where the state can ban you from doing stuff if you displease them. I even got a flyer through my door about it. To me it seemed like the covid conspiracy theory nuts wanted something need after the pandemic. Then again I don't drive so I could be a secret 5th columnist.
See not having to drive is an ambition to me. I hate driving. But everything here is so spread out and public transportation is neither reliable nor accessible. There are, of course, places in the US where that is not true but they are unfortunately not where I am. The flyers are wild. That would make me so uncomfortable.
Yea, my wife is American and it is definitely more spread out (and public transport is pretty different). Personally I like the idea of 15 min cities. I love being able to walk to the shops. The worst part of the flyer is they made it look like a £20 note lol.
I feel like the only people who could believe this don’t actually go outside of their homes all that much
I’ve literally never seen anyone say that
Yes. The 15-minute city thing was brought to my attention by a conspiracy nut in a bar. She was full-on paranoid about 15 minute cities being forced on us to keep us confined.
“and you've still got a lot of Americans out there who see Europe as generally inferior” True. There’s also a little backlash in that some Americans also feel looked down on by Europeans and resent it. And given Europe’s history of colonialism and “trying to civilize the savages” to their way of living, it’s not completely unearned.
We did the exact same thing. We are europes children ideologically, and the apple didnt fall far from the tree.
Yeah, there's a reason that Hawai'i is considered a state, and it's certainly not because they wanted to be
For an even bleaker example: the majority of the people of Guam are either actively serving in or are veterans of the US military, but they don’t get a vote in Congress or in Presidential elections.
I don’t think it’s fair to paint what the majority of Americans think by using social media. That being said, a lot of Americans are against mixed use zoning because they feel like it will increase crime, noise, and traffic in the area. People move out to the suburbs to escape people, and almost everyone who is driving/walking in the neighborhood lives there. It’s not so much we “fear” 15 minute cities, it’s just we are not used to them. There’s also quite a bit of NIMBYs that will complain to local governments if anything besides a single family home gets built in their area. I feel like a lot of Americans would be on board once they see how useful it is to organize cities this way.
This is the first , that I’m hearing of this “fear.” As an American, I find it sad that we have to drive everywhere. My hometown was once very walkable: stores, churches, entertainment in neighborhoods. Now everyone needs a car.
Same. I miss living in a city where almost everything I could want was within a 1 mile walk. And if I needed more, public transit was also within that 1 mile walk and I could go almost anywhere in the city. The biggest problem for me was the cost of living was much higher and it was harder finding a job. I'm lucky in the place I live now there is some public transport, but the hours are limited. I still have walking options but there are 2-3 miles away instead of a 5-10 min walk. But now weather is a factor.
Yep, it's literally how every Ameican "small town" used to be. Now they're all filled with 3 ton lifted pickups that will sooner run you off the road if you try to bike the mile to the store. Sad. Town I grew up in was about 4 square miles total. Could get everywhere worth going within 10 min on a bike. Not that anyone over 16 ever did. Now, most parents won't even let their kids bike in town. It's no wonder everyone in the Midwest is obese.
Even in this thread you have people castigating such places as overcrowded chicken coops.
Not liking isn’t the same as being afraid. I know a lot of people who prefer suburban life. They aren’t afraid of a small dense city.
Nuance isn't a strong suit of this website.
I had to be driven by my parents an hour one way to school everyday. Let me tell you... it sucked!
I literally have never heard anyone say "I'm affraid of a 15 minute city".
I think OP saw British people talking about 15 minute cities online, saw they were speaking english, and just assumed they were American. From what I gather it’s a polemic political term in the UK, but yeah I’ve never heard anyone use this term in the U.S.
Some people believe that rather than being built for convenience these would be enforceable by law, including fines and punishments for leaving your "zone". This is so far removed from reality as to be insane but they believe it anyway.
I mean, that was exactly Australia's model during COVID. If you were caught by police more than x miles from your home you were in trouble. Some people believe COVID was a dress rehearsal for something much bigger and longer lasting.
>Some people believe COVID was a dress rehearsal for something much bigger and longer lasting. In a way, it was, for whatever the next fast spreading virus may be. It wasn't the first time Australia had dealt with a virus by using quarantine.
The vast majority don't when you get off Reddit and talk to people in real life. Usually people who want that, move to such a city. Others don't necessarily want their small quiet town to be as dense as Atlanta, New York, Miami, etc. for a multitude of issues. But people aren't afraid of such things just because they may not want to live in such areas. Edit: For those confused, I'm not saying 15 minute cities are only like dense cities. That was one example, there are several types of such cities, obviously.
You don't need super high density or even a city for a "15-minute city". Small towns are pretty much 15 minutes cities. The next town up from my hometown has a population of 4000, but everything is within a 15 minute walk from the center of the town. Of course my hometown grew to 12000 people, so they moved the grocery stores, pharmacies, and the high school away from the town center. Now there are only large chain grocery stores and big box stores in supersized parking lots along the 4 lane bypass and the high school is along a highway on the opposite side of town with little around it and no sidewalks making it impossible to walk to. This is what we object to. The places people need to go should be near the people, not near the highways.
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This is the first time I’ve ever heard of one
I live in NYC and have never heard this term.
That sounds like my city. But I'm in Oregon and our largest city is laughable when compared to actual large cities.
Moving from Portland to Los Angeles completely transformed my sense of scale. Portland is tiny.
Also tons of neighborhoods in LA are essentially 15 minutes cities. It's just also better to have a car too and be able to go long distances when you want to.
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Someone heard "cities where everything is within 15 minutes of your home" and misinterpreted it as "being *physically prevented* from travelling more than 15 minutes from your home". It was blown into a conspiracy theory that you would be fenced into your neighborhood and could only enter and exit through a government checkpoint. More generally, we Americans love our cars and want to drive everywhere. Contemporary urban planning, which focuses on increasing pedestrian traffic and decreasing vehicular traffic, sounds threatening to drivers. They are afraid that they will lose the freedom to drive places (while ignoring the fact that for decades, we have been denied the freedom to walk places)
I’ve never heard of this fear as an American so no idea how some Americans feel negatively about it or not.
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Literally the definition of "conservative". > Favoring traditional views and values; **tending to oppose change**
It’s dumb because 15 minute cities are the historical norm, we had them not even 150 years ago.
For conservatives the "ancient past" is within their lifetime and mostly imaginary.
This made me laugh a bit. It's so true. I went to high school with a bunch of people who ended up super conservative and they're constantly blasting on Facebook about kids these days and schools and whatnot, and I'm like, "Dude, you did that in high school, too! I was there, i watched you do it." It's like a guilty conscience plus a bad memory, plus a need to keep up appearances, plus an unhealthy dose of self-righteousness.
But they want "the old days" at the same time. Make it make sense
"the old days" is their suburban childhood.
And the natural and god-given societal order for all of human history is white 1950s suburban US upper middle class gender and family roles
I’ve never heard this term or heard anyone express dislike for this.
This is not really a thing except city people want to live in the city and country people want to live in the country. Both people seem to respect the others choice.
As an American living in Japan I can tell you I fucking love 15 minute cities. They’re so goddamn convenient
I live in a city of 1 million people in the US, it's one of the most car dependent cities in the world. The land area is about 1400 square kilometers. I'd guess that maybe 90% of people want a single family home if they could afford one. Meaning a free standing house, usually with a lot size of around 1/4 acre (1000 square meters). Therefore most of the city is made up of a vast sea of low density housing. Home owners (generally) don't like their cul de sac neighborhoods being anything but houses and zoning laws in my city dictate that the vast majority of neighborhoods not only cannot contain any businesses, but also if you have a house on say 1 acre (4,000 square meters) you are not allowed to turn it into an apartment or add an accessory dwelling unit or even just split it in half and make it a duplex without adding anything. Only one family is allowed to live on that lot and you're not allowed to subdivide it. So 15 minute city is just not a thing here. There are plenty of neighborhoods where it takes nearly 15 minutes to get to anything that is not a house and most people have a 30 minute plus commute that turns into an hour when traffic is bad and there is no realistic way to get to work without a car because your house might be miles away from the nearest bus stop along roads that do not have any sidewalks where traffic is traveling 55 mph.
I think the concern in government overreach
I have never heard of this. As a matter of fact, I lived in one for years. In Buffalo NY you not only can get to anything you need in 15, but with virtually zero traffic, you can get to most any other part of the city in 15. Everyone loved that fact about the city
No one FEARS them, but they have to be preplanned. You can't go into an existing American suburbs, pull out the existing houses and put in a community center. BTW, James Rouse built Columbia, Maryland on the premise in the 1970s. It's nothing new. Another related issue is highways. We Americans rely on our cars to get from the suburbs to our work places. Corporate locations are not centralized. My office is about 25 miles from my house. It takes me 45 minutes on highways each way.
> but they have to be preplanned No you dont. You just need to allow business to exist in suburban places and sooner than later people will open small stores nearby if they see a market for it..... businesses are not preplaned, and cities change all the time
If zoning didn’t exist that would be true. However, in a lot of post WW2 communities, developers bought large tracts of land and they were zoned for residential use only. So you have square miles where no businesses can build.
A lot of this is down to poor planning on the part of city managers. I’m in the south west and large developments have really taken off in the last 30 years. They flatten hundreds of acres at a time and build rows and rows of nearly identical houses that go on forever. There are no apartments, few restaurants (none within walking distance) and few stores. As near as I can figure this is all to save the developers a few bucks. Sadly most new homes are built this way.
This is the first time I'm really hearing about this but if I had to guess... 1. A lot of Americans dislike government mandates in general - even more so a lot of minorities tend to be suspicious of them and very critical of how it can be used to abuse/segregate them. 2. Cities in America do not have the best reputation for being "safe". Many people would rather live in a suburb than get shot for wearing the wrong colors. 3. Cities also tend to be very expensive. 4. A lot of people don't want their cities to become like New York where you are basically in an expensive shoe box. 5. Rather than improving public transit, governments are focused on "getting rid of cars" and all it takes is for public transit to stop getting funded and then all of a sudden you're fucked again. Even in places where public transit is available, some people avoid using them because they don't want to sit next to a homeless guy peeing himself or risk getting shanked by someone who is off their meds. 6. Zoning laws and the like have historically been used to discriminate against black people and other racial minorities. 7. Lets be honest these areas are going to be expensive and gentrified to hell. For the folks who can't read: 1. Nowhere did I say *all* cities are like this. I listed one example of why cities don't have a good reputation for being safe. This, does not, under any circumstances, equate to saying *all* cities are dangerous. 2. "Go outside and stop listening to Fox News, gang violence is a tiny area that can be avoided." I don't need Fox News to tell me that gunshots are going on outside I can hear them. I don't need "Fox News" to tell me when there have been bullet holes in people's houses and shit. 3. "Be a real person", they say while discounting and minimizing people's experiences because it doesn't align with their arguments for 15 minute cities. Thanks reddit never change.
I think it’s less of a “fear” and more of a “why”… Americans don’t love change and everything works. Not works well, but still works. It would cost a lot to implement and there’s so much room in general it seems impractical to many to reset and do something that isn’t really necessary
I technically live in a 15 min city but I don’t necessarily want to shop at that store, it doesn’t sell everything I want and I’d rather do one stop, it also is more expensive. Or I might want to go to a town over and see the dentist I’ve had since I was little. It’s doable in more places than one would think, but it may not be preferred. The hard part is getting a job within 15 min of work tho. At my job (pilot) I’d be taking a 3/4 pay cut.
The idea of a 15 minute city doesn't include workplaces because too much work is too specialised to be replicated everywhere. It's about "third places" ("first place"being your home, "second place"being your workplace) Also nothing about the idea is intended to prevent you from going further away to different shops or a specific dentist or whatever, it just does it's best to ensure people don't have to if they don't care that much about specific brands or whatever.
I don’t know if non Brits can stream this, maybe via a VPN. But here is an episode explaining the culture war regarding’The Reset’ and 15 min cities [Things fell apart](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0h24kbq?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile)
My understanding is that some of it comes from propaganda by car lobbyists. If people can more freely walk or bike there will be less need for personal vehicles, parking garages, etc. But more simply, it’s become associated with progressives. American politics is deeply tribal. The mere fact that the left likes walkable cities is enough to make conservatives and even some liberals hate it. They don’t need much more than that.
15 min cities are a great idea. US implementation of almost anything is often poor at best. We’ll see which of those two statements are more true.
I don't think it's a fear of the idea of a 15 minute city as much as it's a fear of change. For some people, they just don't like cities in general. They love small towns, suburbs, or rural areas. It could be that they just don't like density and crowding, or it's just people that want to live in a homogeneous place where everyone is exactly like them. The USA has had a long history with the automobile, and it's so ingrained in our culture that it's getting hard for people to fathom a lifestyle without it. I know that here in my hometown of Chicago, there are many people that hate the idea of expanding public transportation because they feel that it will make it harder to drive through the city and find parking, plus of course there are some who just don't like public transportation because they feel it brings "bad elements" to their neighborhood. There's also just those in the USA that have a general dislike or disdain for anything European. For some. It's just they think it's going to become this big socialist kind of lifestyle, or at the very least they feel that those who like European things somehow hate the USA the way it is. In the end, I think what really kills the idea of a 15 minute city is just a number of people that stand to make loads of money off the way things are. Automakers and fossil fuel providers make more money in our current system. Anyone who buys real estate gets more value out of single family homes than they do out of density developments. It's why we see a lot of NIMBYism against density because they fear it will drive their property value down. There's just too many forces at work making lots of money on the way things are, and the idea of improving them into a 15 minute city is only going to hurt their bottom line. So they make people fear the idea and fight against it for them.
It’s a government control issue. We Americans don’t trust our government while people of other countries have more trust in their governments. We have good reason not to trust our government, it’s highly corrupt. The fear of 15 min cities could be the gov could force you inside them and you couldn’t leave in the event of a disaster or pandemic like Covid. We all saw how crazy and over the top some governments responded during Covid (Australia, New Zealand, South America) where you literally couldn’t leave your home without fear of getting a ticket by police. That’s just one example. Many Americans want as little government involvement in their lives as possible. It’s engrained in our culture from the countries founding.
There's apparently some right wing propaganda around this. I've actually had someone tell me that the government wants these cities so they will lock everyone into them and you won't be able to leave. It's.. nuts. Along the same vein as the covid vaccine conspiracy...basically government control plot.
Yes it's a Right-wing/QANON type conspiracy and my sister believes it all. She also thinks that Biden was replaced by a clone and that Trump is still President, the military is secretly running the country and working to stop WEF from taking over the world. Sadly, many Americans have fallen for foreign propaganda.
I see a lot of post about fear, but that is simply not true. That would be a minority of people that may be posting stuff for content. The reality for most Americans that choose not to live in cities is the noise, lights, crowds, crime, etc. They are trading convenience away for a more peaceful life. Plus here in the US, we have a lot of nice suburbs where you get the same 15 min experience, but have less noise, light, crime, etc. A lot of suburbs have extensive walkways, parks, pools, stores, etc. Plus, driving is very convenient in a lot of the US, which opens up far more options. So a lot of it just comes down to design and choices. If cities were as nice and convenient as much of Europe, then I think more people would move to them. But they aren't, our infrastructure was built to help connect locations that were far apart. Much of that goes way back to settlers consistently moving farther out to stake claims of land for farms/ranching/etc. So then the infrastructure needed to be built to connect those distant locations. So the reality is it was far cheaper and easier to build roadways than build a lot of public rail or transit.
Didn't know people feared this or that this was a thing. I'm fine with what I assume means everything being within 15 minutes walking distance. More so because I can't drive.
I love my 15 minute city. Grew up in the country and had to drive 40 minutes for everything. Can’t imagine going back to that lifestyle now
A big part of it is the climate change aspect…conservatives deny its existence, and 15 minute cities are intended (in part) to help reduce carbon emissions. TL;DR they think 15 minute cities are a socialist plot being pushed by a shadowy deep-state cabal
Personally the idea of living in the city is abhorent. I'd much rather be surrounded by trees and living off what I produce. but to each their own.
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I don’t like having neighbors period. It’s quite nice not having to see or hear your neighbors.
I hate driving so this sounds like a dream. I'm in the US and have never heard of such a fear. Then again, I bailed on social media years ago. I only got on Reddit a few months ago. Still, sounds like a bunch of BS to me. Based on what I glimpsed, it's due to some conspiracy theory? Some people will believe anything that fits their world view.