We live in an age when the most unobjectionable and necessary ideas for progress can give rise to paranoia and fear. If the most innocuous, unoriginal possible idea can fuel paranoia, how can we hope to have a sensible discussion about the future of our places?
Doesn’t seem like the author really offers any possible reasons for the rights reaction to responsible urban planning, so perhaps I will offer some.
Conservatism isn’t solely a political philosophy that a person decides to adopt. There are personally traits that feed into a person’s susceptibility to right wing thought. People who have low openness tend to be conservative. To paraphrase Buckley, their brains wired up to tell them to stand athwart history and yell STOP.
These people all grew up in a car centric world, where dad commuted in to the city from the suburbs and mom drove them to the school everyday. That, to them is the comfortable, natural order of things. Their psychology begs them to preserve that order at all costs.
Even though that model of planning is really new, only going back about 70 or 80 yrs, to them it is the natural way. Any alternative looks like change and progress, which they are psychologically predisposed to be suspicious of. All change to them, can be reduced to something that is being taken away from them. Something that disrespects their forefathers.
Not all change is good and some conservative thought is useful when a society is planning its future. But, it’s really dangerous when we have made mistakes.
In our modern political landscape, there are charlatans like Peterson and Jones who know how to pick at their audience’s psychology and pull dollars out of it. They cynically use the fears of their audience and package up any “new” ideas as existential threats.
The key when discussing progress with conservatives is to opening them up to the idea that we are going back. In this case specifically, 15min cities sounds scary but “returning to the urban planning ideas that motivated our great grandparents” might sound great. Same change different reaction.
Conservative cruelty cannot be accepted or forgiven but the psychology that drives it must be understood and accounted for when developing communication strategies.
as I’ve grown older, one of the things I’ve realized is that the primary driving force behind a lot of people’s beliefs is, as pratchett put it, ‘the overwhelming desire that tomorrow should be pretty much like yesterday was’. It takes a lot, like a lot Lot LOT, to get people to be willing to risk the unknown. people have this weird ability to look back at all of history, see how much things have grown and changed, and think to themselves “thank god that I live here and now, where things operate in the only possible correct way that was ordained by god. the past is nothing but barbarians dying of infections and the future is a dystopia that no one could possibly want or understand, but the way I grew up with is comfortable and makes sense. it’s the natural order.” this isn’t a terribly unique thought, but the ability to think it without realizing that every generation that came before you also believed that very same thing with as much conviction as you did is…let’s say it’s uniquely human.
This is wonderfully put. That pratchett quote is new to me. It is a perfect pairing with the buckley quote when it comes to understanding conservative thought and personality.
Your wording here clarified some of this stuff for me. My brain works like…if anyone suffered preventably yesterday, and change can improve total well-being, put me on the change train. I read about people thinking that way, but it’s really hard for me to conceptualize. Thanks.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. One of my favorite philosophers/psychedelic enthusiasts/all-around crazy people, Robert Anton Wilson, gave me a bit of a gift in understanding this. He said that you can gain a lot of insight if you’re willing to sort people into two buckets: neophiles, who are excited and drawn to new things, and neophobes who are inherently afraid of new things and will reject them, often with violence. Of course this doesn’t work 100% of the time and it falls under what he would call a “useful fiction”, but it does seem to add value to the discussion even if it is imperfect.
When I was a kid, the future was supposed to be awesome and full of amazing technologies and solutions to all our present-day problems. Now I feel like these right-wingers have taken that all away, and now the future is, yeah, dystopian. I’m glad I don’t have any children…
But the present is full of amazing technologies: we have smartphones, and we have Facebook, and Wikipedia, and mass state surveillance, and toy quadcopters dropping bomblets… ok, so maybe all of that creates problems at the same pace as it solves others… but the tech is amazing!
this is a great post, thanks for sharing. i’ve always been aware of this for the most part, but the application of that is something i hadn’t considered-- but instead was just frustrated with. i appreciate the scene you painted for me at the end there.
Very good point, thank you for this
These people all grew up in a car centric world, where dad commuted in to the city from the suburbs and mom drove them to the school everyday. That, to them is the comfortable, natural order of things. Their psychology begs them to preserve that order at all costs.
How are 15-minute cities a threat to them and their way of life? As far as I know, there’s nothing about a 15-minute city that precludes anyone from driving a car in it.
All change to them, can be reduced to something that is being taken away from them. Something that disrespects their forefathers.
What about the changes they themselves are causing? Women in their forefathers’ time had access to legal abortion, and now they have taken that away. That’s a change. A rather drastic and menacing change.
They believe that the long-term intent is to force people to remain within their designated “15 minute” zones.
For what purpose?
To be evil, I guess.
How are 15-minute cities a threat to them and their way of life?
More compact cities tend to have more people on the streets (stranger danger!), less space for the cars in which they feel safe, and often force them to park and leave (!) their car minutes (!!) away from their destination. Let’s not even speak of public transportation, where dozens (!!!) of strangers get crammed into the same box.
Women in their forefathers’ time had access to legal abortion
Ah, but what about their fore-forefathers’ time? Anyway, that’s not menacing… for those who can’t get pregnant (men, and celibate, post-menopausal, etc. women).
More compact cities tend to have more people on the streets (stranger danger!)
I thought that’s why they carry guns?
less space for the cars
Okay, that’s a problem if you need to drive somewhere.
often force them to park and leave (!) their car minutes (!!) away from their destination.
That’s a serious problem if you’ve got a bum knee or something. Not everyone who’s disabled can afford to get a diagnosis and placard, nor will they get one in a timely fashion even if they can afford it.
Let’s not even speak of public transportation, where dozens (!!!) of strangers get crammed into the same box.
That’s also a serious problem if there’s a deadly airborne disease going around. We just had one of those, and another one could happen at any time.
That didn’t stop people from flying during the pandemic, though…
Ah, but what about their fore-forefathers’ time? Anyway, that’s not menacing… for those who can’t get pregnant (men, and celibate, post-menopausal, etc. women).
That, however, I will not sympathize with. They are horrible people if they believe that.
The key when discussing progress with conservatives is to opening them up to the idea that we are going back
Yesss, a kind of Positive Scripting, especially when tailored to a certain group of people,
But what do you do when you’re not trying to go back to anything? ~Strawberry
What do we do in situations where we aren’t going back? ~Strawberry
I love transit and I live less than 15-minutes from a bus stop, but last night it took 2 hours and 15 minutes to get home by the bus that would have been around 30 minutes of a drive. Just having a bus stop isn’t enough to make people consider switching. It needs to be at least reasonably competitive in time or price.
Also car advocates always are sure to bring up their disgust with sharing their commute with nasty people or the homeless. That’s a tried and true method to drum up fear against a working, affordable transportation system.
if your public transportation has enough people living below the poverty line on it that it becomes distasteful to be on, then that’s separate issue and a disgusting reflection of the standard of living in the area. a person shouldn’t get a bus and feel like a social worker. however, this isn’t antithetical to good public transportation! it just recognises another social injustices that also need addressing.
15 minute cities can and should be seen separately to public transportation though, in that everything a person NEEDS is limited to a 15 minute walk/cycle. a person hopes that public transportation is almost redundant for any daily travel you make (for most people), and that it is still to a high standard for when we do need it.
Why does a lot of people who are below the poverty line using public transportation make it distasteful in the first place? They’re people like everyone else. ~Strawberry
We should have fast and slow buses. One bus that stops at every stop along a route, another which goes a distance in a city only stopping at a few. That would greatly speed up transportation in my area.
As for poverty, everyone should be able to go on the bus. IMO they should be free and taxpayer funded. I have no idea what to do about “undesirables” except that we need to fix homelessness and poverty.
We already do in many places, they sound good in theory, but in practice aren’t much better. The problem with “express buses” is that they still have to sit in traffic. Really we need different modes of transportation, such as light rail, subways, dedicated bicycle paths, and so on, which do not share the road with cars. Otherwise, it’s much more difficult to make a value proposition for public/alternative transportation to those who can afford cars.
Bus rapid transit (lanes/roads entirely for buses) is cheaper than a subway, but provides many of the same benefits.
I wonder what it would be like if we planned out cities to have underground transport from the get-go? Basically leveled an entire area, built tunnels for all sorts of infrastructure in a meaningful way (imagine building the perfect city in sim-city approach) and then built everything on top of that again. Basically instead of digging tunnels we’d basically let the ground floor be tunnels and build on top.
Obviously wholly infeasible, but if you were to build a city for 1-3 million people it wouldn’t be unreasonable.
Agreed, a mix is absolutely the way to go. Dedicated bus lanes and signalling are also a great lower cost alternative to new hard infrastructure. There’s often extra driving lanes that can, for the cost of a quick paint job, become a bus lane bypassing all that traffic. Pair that with a safe and smart bike network and places to park bikes near where folks want to go and you’ve got a great core built ready for heavy rail, light rail, etc!
I mean, in the US there’s an entire movement of people whose sole driving ideology is objecting to everything that a different group of people is for in order to “own” them
Nick Fletcher, a Conservative member who represents part of Yorkshire, in northern England, called for a debate about “the international socialist concept” of 15-minute cities, which, he said, “would take away your personal freedoms.”
Yeah right, like the freedom to have people, places and stuff u need out of reach.
Nice read OP, thanks.
Everyone who is confused by why conservatives are opposed to 15-minute cities, there’s one simple thing to understand:
Conservatives think that city=scary ethnic people, and suburb=nice white people.
Anything that appears to disrupt the urban/suburban divide, they see as another attempt to de-segregate, which they hate.
And they think all of this because why??? ~Strawberry
I can only imagine how awesome it would be to live in an area like they describe towards the beginning where it’s easily walkable and you can get to almost everything you need easily, safely, and without a vehicle. I’m so jealous of people who live anything close to being like that!
P.S. I always love seeing your posts here. You share such great articles! You’ve been killin’ it for quite a while now. I appreciate you!
Glad you enjoy the content. 👍
i didn’t know there was objections to this, i read about this concept about 4/5 years ago and i’ve been obsessed with the idea ever since. i even moved to a sort-of 30 minute city. i was doing some searches online after reading this and without adding anything inflammatory to my search terms i saw a predominantly negative response to this in the UK. im baffled. british MP Mark Dolan called this a “socialist” and “dystopian” idea and said it would create “a surveillance culture that would make Pyongyang envious”.
15 minute cities don’t make an enemy out of anyone. being afraid of this is baffling to me.
You’re 100% right to be baffled. Where I live we’ve seen extreme push back against the concept. The anti-vaxxers from the pandemic have latched onto the message in my area, and are saying that it will create ghetto’s where it makes governments more able to enforce lock downs and restrict our freedoms. I don’t see how they connected those dots together. It’s actually crazy.
The first time I ever heard of 15-minute cities was through conspircy theories (I like learning about them) and you’re right that it is actually crazy. It’s the exact same anti-vaxx crowd, who also believe 5G is harmful and similar “theories”, lead by right-wing pundits and grifters whipping up outrage over nothing.
The right wing is afraid of a totalitarian dystopia? Uhhhh what? Republicans have become more and more authoritarian, but the line being drawn is…letting people walk to places instead of drive?
Baffling.
The right wing is afraid of a totalitarian dystopia?
Lol, no they’re not. They salivate at the thought of having a totalitarian dystopia where they’re on top. This is just more projection shit on their part. If anything, 15 minute cities deradicalize people by putting them in proximity to more diversity, make people friendlier by making them get to know their neighbors better, and financially better off because they’re not forced to buy and maintain a vehicle to live a healthy life.
But fascists can’t put the boot on your neck as easily if you have more wiggle room with money or solidarity with the working class, so of course they’re afraid of it.
Why do they want to put boots on people’s necks in the first place? ~Strawberry
Power? Control? Indoctrination and lack of critical thinking skills to escape it? Some kind of latent fear where they think if they don’t come out on top someone will, treating life as a zero sum game? There’s lots of potential reasons for people to act this way but it probably depends on the individual. I’m not comfortable painting with a super wide brush here because its dehumanizing, and these people are human. Reprehensible? Perhaps, but still human.
We can wax philosophic about why anyone does the things they do, but in the end it doesn’t matter why they do what they do, it matters what they do and what actions we can take to try and improve our own lives and the lives of the people we care about.
It would certainly be an improvement if we could get them, at least a lot of them, to stop choosing to be like this… ~Strawberry
One thing I noticed when travelling through the states is how many American cities have no city centre with just pedestrian traffic. Everything is made with cars in mind, everything is a thoroughfare. In the city where I live in the Netherlands, I can get on my bike and be in the city centre within fifteen minutes. It’s faster to get there by bike, than it is by car. and the city is better for it.
I like going to the market on foot, visiting the city centre on foot, going to pubs, and restaurants, and everything you want out of a city on foot, bike or public transit. You guys would like it too if you convinced city planners to give it a try.
Unfortunately auto manufacturers have lobbied billions of dollars to make sure that never happens. Plenty of us would love to try it, but as long as money rules politics it will never happen.
This is the first time I’ve heard of this concept. lemme check
EDIT: I’m confused, this sounds like a normal city? Like, there’s a school, residential areas, convenience stores, a mall, a hospital, a forest, and green grocers just surrounding my workplace right now.
EDIT2: Browsing the thread made me realize that this is about US cities. Now it makes sense. But it’s still confusing why this is a debate, life is much more fulfilling, more eventful with this kind of city.
This definitely to be a US problem as anywhere i’ve been in Europe every city has reachable necessities within 15 minutes. I assume it’s the same in Asia. I also don’t understand why would anyone except automotive company CEOs be against having everything necessary in close reach.
except automotive CEOs
There’s your answer
My understanding is that reactionary lunatics of the Q type have gotten hold of the idea and are convinced that it is part of a plan to limit people within particular zones, enforced by digital surveillance, as part of some grand Orwellian plot. I believe that is how the weird right-wing reaction to this started, anyways.
It’s another scare tactic scape goat for the right wing.
I live in Canada and from my anecdotal experience we had a group protesting 15 minute cities pop up where I live. (our city has tons of sprawl. Very impractical to get around without a vehicle of some sort).
They ended up just making everyone aware of the concept and there seems to be more support for 15 minute cities and redefining zoning laws now. So hopefully things continue to improve
I think most people who object to 15-minute cities also object to cities themselves, so it’s easy to convince them that anything that happens in urban areas (and especially anything that benefits city-dwellers) is evil.
As i understand it, the objections are because in some articles they are afraid you won’t be able to move out of your 15m radius. 1st it’s a concept and then they are pushing for you to stay in your 15m neighborhood or you are criticized and in time you’re just not allow to leave if there’s an epidemic and stuff like that
Not saying I agree, just trying to explain the reasoning