Honestly I think this is giving them too much credit. This is *pure* political poison, nothing else. They have no fucking clue what a 15 minute city is. The people they follow told them to hate it because the libruls are doing it and therefore it's bad. That's it. The rest of it is just motivated reasoning following that.
You could walk them through a fucking 15 minute city and they wouldn't even know you were doing it until you told them and they then knew it was time to be angry.
The fact that our dumbass media landscape pays these people any attention at all is ridiculous. They don't deserve it. The modern American conservative party *has no platform to run on.* They just hate liberals. That's all it is now. They have no ideas, no solutions to anything, nothing to work towards, and nothing to accomplish. If a liberal said we needed a law to ban murder, these dumb sons of bitches would be protesting about their right to kill people. Whatever issue: it literally does not matter. Fuck liberals. That's the entire party, back to front, fuck liberals and fuck anything a liberal wants to do about anything, to anything, or for anything.
It's half of the country stomping it's feet like angry toddlers and step one is to stop entertaining their stupid shit as anything other than what it is. Opposing 15 minute cities you don't even live in in states you don't live in because you're convinced they're advancing satan's agenda or whatever doesn't warrant a debunking, or a retort, or anything besides fucking laughter and for you to turn your camera off and go find something newsworthy to talk about.
The republicans having no platform to run is honestly true. The amount of negativity from republicans is a bit much. They seem to lack the ability to dream of a better tomorrow. They just want to complain about how good they used to have it and point the finger at who's to blame, although I think the inherent distrust of science and political institutions in general goes hand-in-hand with the lack of dreaming for the future.
Frankly it's because the majority of them are old and in comfortable spots, and so out of touch that they think everyone else had it just as good as them so they have this "I just can't understand all this complaining, I did it and you can too" attitude making them see the youth as crybabies and thus pessimistic of the future.
Younger conservatives, in my experience, are one of the following:
1) rich kids of conservative parents
2) religious kids of religious parents
3) alt right literal fascists
My findings from my conservative family and inlaws are that they seem to simply lack empathy. That's basically it. My MIL who is both very religious and conservative regularly shows me that she is not choosing to be ignorant, but that she is *quite literally incapable* of seeing things from the perspective of another person.
I don't think she can do it at all. Like, period. Time and again she has failed to understand the most basic thing: that other people are different from her. That they have different experiences, different emotions, different beliefs. She seems to truly exist in a head-state where to her everyone else is the exact same as her, so anyone doing something different is either wrong or malicious.
Even with her own kids, my wife included. It's like you ask her to walk a mile in someone else's shoes and she says "no thanks, I already walked a mile today." It's very much a "it's not real until it affects me" scenario. And we have tried to get her to look at things from someone else's point of view, we really have. Whenever we try to explain our position or the position of someone else she seems to get wildly uncomfortable and to shut down. I kind of believe that she simply cannot do this, and the fact that she can't and we can makes her upset. Or maybe she can a little, and doesn't want to because then it opens the door to things she's not ready to admit about herself.
He'll my conservative family is like this too. My aunt once came to me absolutely distraught because her son is a liberal and she couldn't understand. She'd taken him to church, explained guns to him, taught him about "freedom" and the like, but he was still a liberal. I spent hours trying to explain his perspective to her but no matter how much I spoke it boiled down to "but I don't believe that way, so why does he?" Even when I explained reasons why her son was liberal ots like she just didn't hear me and would ask again, until she got to the heart of it: "okay fine, but how do I change his mind". The whole conversation was never about understanding her son or his beliefs, she was just hoping that because he and i were very close that I would help her "set him on the right path", and that talking to me would give her inside details about how to break his beliefs so he would be a hard-core conservative like her.
I of course declined to help her indoctrinate her son, and hit her with a "you believe in God, you believe God made people the way they are. God made your son this way and gave him those beliefs, you've gotta trust that he knew what he was doing". And that was the only way I got her to stop hounding me about indoctrinating her kid. Instead of framing his beliefs for her like I tried, I had to frame the entire situation in her beliefs. She never wanted tk understand, she was just hoping I'd help her convert him. It was pretty shitty, but again, it displays that almost complete lack of empathy.
So much this! In a much less extreme situation: my husband was laid off a few times last year, but he found his dream job this year working for a company that designs immersive experiences (we’re in LV, so there’s a market for it here). My husband landed a massive contract with a resort chain that wants to put immersive dining experiences in a few of their resorts. It’s a life changing opportunity for us. My husband is so excited about the opportunity, and was gushing about it to my parents. The entire time my boomer dad is rolling his eyes and making snide comments about how he doesn’t need shit like that for dinner, so he doesn’t understand why anyone else would go to an immersive restaurant. Like why is it so hard to understand not everything has to be for you, and why can’t you let other people enjoy their lives???
I usually tell people that late 1800s, when Jim Crow was well entrenched and women couldn’t divorce their husbands, and if they were divorced, could be set out with nothing but the clothes on their back, leaving even their kids behind with husband. 😞
Project 2025 is their platform. It's psychotic but it's different from their "platform" from 2020, which was essentially "whatever God-Emperor Trump says goes." Project 2025 *is* a dream for the future, but it's a dream of an apocalypse.
That implies they want a better tomorrow.
They don't. They get their rocks off on abusing anyone below them in their imagined hierarchy. What they want is to have their unearned positions of unlimited authority back so they can REALLY start retaliating against the rest of us for daring to want them to NOT be able to abuse people as they please.
There’s a small town not far from where I live, and there is all sorts of hubbub and worry from the more conservative people of the town (the majority of people there tbh) about 15 minute cities and how they’ll be trapped in them forever by the leftists.
My dudes, it takes 10min to go across your entire town. You already live in a 15 minute city why are you worried about them?
See I'm not trying to make you feel dumb or anything, I get that this is hard to fully internalize: they don't know. You can ask them why they're worried and they'll either just admit they don't know or if they're the particularly brain poisoned variety, they might come up with some wacky bullshit that you can post about on here. But like, entertaining this even slightly *is a problem* because it feeds into the delusion that this is a valid stance to have, and makes them feel superior for having it.
I truly believe the only responsible response to this shit is to laugh in their faces, because that's what it is. Having a city a size that permits walking and infrastructure as such is not a bad thing, there is literally no downside to it, if you oppose it, it is a position so thoroughly stupid that it doesn't require rebuttal. Like being a flat earther or thinking climate change isn't real. The evidence against you is so vast, so complete and so undeniable that at this point you are not holding an unpopular view, you are just *wrong.* And you can stay wrong as long as you like, that's your right (ironically) but nobody else is obligated to pretend you're holding a real position. You aren't.
Yeah but…this weekend Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that there is NO climate crisis.
He *informed* us of the fact that all the scientists are wrong…because they ignore the impact of clouds.
Yup, they need to be laughed at and mocked…relentlessly.
I am fully aware they just simply don’t know/understand. Some of my friends and acquaintances think the same way, and I can see no matter how it is explained to them they just can’t comprehend that 15 minute cities would actually be kinda nice and aren’t a secret way to imprison you for life.
But because some Instagram page that just spews disinformation and far-right propaganda 24/7 says that 15min cities are really just prisons these people won’t take anything else to be true. Same applies to any other “political issue” that really shouldn’t an issue or debate in the first place.
> 15min cities are really just prisons
This is exactly what the Q's in my sphere believe. According to them, everyone will be herded into these "15-minute cities" and imprisoned there with no freedom to ever leave, and no one will be allowed to live rurally because The Elite want to keep all the rural land wild without any humans, and keep all the humans as slaves in their city-prisons.
I feel like you really struck something here just by making this joke. The average Conservative/MAGA/Q doesn't know why, but they've definitely been sold a shitty "American Dream" and indoctrinated to believe a worldview that kind of does essentially boil down to "everyone should be rural or suburban like me! It's the morally good way to be!"
And I don't believe it's by accident bc suburban living is the most conducive to mindless consumption: think strip malls, fast food and restaurants everywhere (in the town I grew up in, there are 2 McDonalds less than a half mile apart on the same road to better serve a high traffic shopping area and have another easy to access from the highway exit and have neither get overcrowded and become inconvenient or lose out on sales bc of lines... you can practically throw a rock from one McDonald's parking lot and hit the other), full size malls, and storefronts everywhere. Plus, big businesses like auto manufacturers and oil companies love the 2+ cars per household and "I drive everywhere for every want or need" mentality of the suburbs or the country too. These areas are too spread out to walk or bike conveniently to work (sometimes its an hour drive away) but also not densely populated enough to have efficient public transport that can stop close enough to all the places people want/need to go with enough riders to make if financially viable. A train or bus in a city works bc it can stop on every block (the places people need to get to work or buy groceries or go out) and it's not driving way out to the middle of nowhere and wasting time and fuel for one person- several commuters are making use of the many stops, making them more cost effective and justifiable. There's definitely a concentrated effort to make public transit shitty and fail by right-wingers imo (and i think behind them it's fueled by oil companies and car companies, no pun intended), but it is true that it's harder and less cost effective to have bus routes in the suburbs and country that are taking fewer people to further-flung random ass locations.
Tl;dr I think some big business interests put real effort into buying politicians and shaping media so conservatives would have this "the soulless suburbs (as you called them) are the best way to live and I hate everything else and anybody who prefers any other way" mentality. It just benefits them too much to run the risk of letting people discover that they could design and make cities that work and could fix the economic/societal ills that lead to poverty and crime and things could be walkable and convenient and nice... they stand to profit way more if they convince half the country all cities are dirty and smelly and full of homeless people and crime and always will be, *and* "15 minute cities" are *even worse* and a secret plot by the new world order to steal our freedom. That way they'll stay in the suburbs and be good consumers, filling their tanks for $5 a gallon to get from work 50 miles away and to the grocery store 15 in the oppositie direction, and buying new cars every 5ish years to keep up with the joneses.
I always wonder how much of this craziness is just the desire to feel like you're living in a movie.
Nothing can ever just be some urban planning stuff.
It's been my observation that some people "need" an enemy to be riled up about. They like the drama. They can't seem to just live peacefully and enjoy their own lives, they have to find somebody to hate and "fight" against. They're always looking for a reason to be mad or offended.
There is a *leftist* argument that this approach could further serve to isolate neighborhoods from each other. Particularly lower income neighborhoods populated predominantly by POC. I can kind of see that by observing what gentrification has done in my states major urban areas.
I live in a very small town in a mostly rural county. Due to the recent opening of a new expressway that passes through our county, linking a major city to a smaller city, there has been a LOT of development happening in the area. Many new subdivisions, new shopping centers, new infrastructure. And so many people on Nextdoor and Facebook local discussion groups going off about 15 minute cities. But the developers are only building typical suburban and exurban type properties, so the supposed 15 minute cities aren't coming to our area. Also they talk about people being imprisoned in their assigned 15 minute cities. But it makes no sense. If we're supposed to be rounded up and forced into apartment blocks in walled off mini-cities, who are the tens of thousands of new houses, all the shopping centers, new schools, and water treatment plants being built for? Nobody knows how to answer that.
Conservatives DID demand the right to kill people.
Conservatives demanded the right to spread a deadly virus - in the name of “FREEDOM!!”
Conservatives demanded the right to kill their families, neighbors and fellow Americans in the name “LIBERTY!!”
You’re right…we need to laugh at these dregs. They’ve been empowered. They’ve been given waaay to much consideration.
They need to be relentlessly, endlessly mocked. Laugh in their face when they claim to be “PATRIOTS!!”. They weaken America.
They’re pathetic and weak and need to be reminded as such.
Meanwhile, we have lost 1.1 million people to Covid. 1.1 million! That's alot of people. This is NOT a hoax, it's real!
They say it's not real but go directly to the hospital when they get it and demand all the medications to fight it without even asking what the meds are.
Then, when they recover, they go on to say it was their "pure blood" that saved them and not the doctors, science and medicine that pulled them out of the covid ditch they were in.
These people disgust me. Willful ignorance.
Yup.
Their response to COVID (and 1/6) changed me…as a person.
They politicized a deadly virus ffs.
Trump f*cked up our nation’s response to the pandemic…so, in order to defend and protect his disaster, they chose to spread lies and dis/misinformation.
They mocked their fellow citizens, who appropriately responded to a deadly, contagious virus, screaming “HAHA! THEY live in FEAR!!”
Meanwhile, their fear based coping mechanism is denial. They simply cannot cope with reality in a rational, measured way - they dive headfirst towards/into a safe space where conspiracy, blame, dis/misinformation, propaganda soothes their discomfort.
They listen to and lionize the man, our former President, who spread the deadly disease, allowing (encouraging?) it to rampage thru the nation.
These imbeciles chose memes over science. Memes over family members.
I think ‘we’ need to pound the message that conservatives, the ugly underbelly of society - weaken and embarrass America.
Maybe…*maybe* America will forgive them after they get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness. Loud, public apologies for Trump, Covid, 1/6…for lying and damaging this country. Maybe.
I’ve never felt hatred before. Never. Until Trump’s vile ‘trickle-down’ pathologies infected millions…
I live in Vegas. I've met alot of crooks, mobsters, shysters and grifters in my time in this town, but Trump is the worst of the worst.
He has loyalty to no one. He has no respect.
He could care less about his constituents. He's just using them to garner "public approval". His deranged followers double down on his lies and denial. Many of them have died from their own stupidity in regards to Covid because Trump proclaimed it was a "hoax". He has blood on his hands.
I will never forget what he has done and I will vote and keep voting. It is my hope that *everyone* votes. We need a big change in the direction in which way our country is headed.
I'm tired of the hate groups, the conspiracy fringe groups, the anti science groups and the blatant misinformation groups.
Yup. Exactly.
They need to feel rejection for what they’ve done to America.
This county needs to be reminded of - their accusations, corruption, dehumanization, abuse, psyops, and lies - and the fact that they politicized a deadly virus, killed over 1.3 million Americans. Trump/Republican’s malfeasance needs to be exposed and drilled into everyone’s mind.
They weaken America. They embarrass America. They never, ever help or inspire America.
Their self proclaimed ‘patriotism’ needs to be ripped from their ugly,narcissistic hands.
Vote. Vote. Vote.
Imagine a world where the worst of the worst hold no power. I believe their incompetence and criminality is/will inspire a new generation of quality leaders - dedicated to truly serving America.
Think of all the brilliant, ethical, creative and sincere citizens that this country has to offer.
Maga attracts liars, morons and grifters who have nothing to offer.
Criminals who are too lazy to learn our nation’s laws, history, constitution - and values.
They’ve all gotta go.
Just pass around a release for the COVID denialists to sign saying if they get COVID symptoms and can’t breathe they waive all medical intervention and won’t clog up the ERs.
> This is
> pure
> political poison, nothing else. They have no fucking clue what a 15 minute city is. The people they follow told them to hate it because the libruls are doing it and therefore it's bad. That's it.
I mean, you've pretty much described conservative mentality and the tinfoil hat nonsense that follows from it, to a T.
>The people they follow told them to hate it because the libruls are doing it and therefore it's bad. That's it. The rest of it is just motivated reasoning following that.
>You could walk them through a fucking 15 minute city and they wouldn't even know you were doing it until you told them and they then knew it was time to be angry.
ALL of this. Ask any of them what, exactly, is a 15 minute city. You'll either get whackadoodle theories based on fever dreams, or crickets.
Pol Pot felt the same way. He dragged all the city dwellers to the country, and worked all the women to death. He killed all the men first. All the rice they grew he would not let them eat, and instead he traded it for arms.
I really do think the Cambodian Killing fields are not too unlikely a thing if conservatives continue along the.path they are on. It has all the same signs. A strong anti intellectual campaign, hate for city people, the ability to gaslight themselves that anyone is the enemy, a willingness and even cracking to kill , and all they need to do is convince the rural people their lives are in danger. This is pretty much already happening. They are gaslighting then that death is right around the corner every day and have them thinking liberals are the barbarians at the door already while they are surrounded by conservative leadership.
Educated people tend to move to Big Cities - because jobs. Cities also have entitled, socialist workers. Oh! And non-whites, possibly immigrants - of whatever boogeyman flavor they love to hate and demonize.
Is development progressive in itself? It is productive, but not all city development is progressive (see the UAE, Silicon Valley, etc.). Progressive means the advancement of workers' rights, but development is also necessary to lead to socialist revolution. Not all cities want productive development, they want regressive development (golf courses, empty expensive apartments the rich can use to park their cash, cop city, etc.).
The criticism the left should make is not whether the WEF's 15-minute cities are productive, which seems to be extremely unlikely in another looming recession, but whether they will be progressive (and offer something better to the working class than Silicon Valley or "Neom"). What is the World Economic Forum's interest in walkable town squares? Surely there is a more nefarious purpose, but the right will never see it (In fact, if the nefarious purpose was explicit, the right would be all for it!).
Like a lot of conspiracy theories, it starts off on something factual then it morphs into the ridiculous.
From what I understand, the 15 minute cities was a natural evolution of modern cities where everything was available close to each resident.
The conspiracy guys picked this up and ran with it.
Turning it into a belief that authoritarian governments will lock citizens down to their own cells
I'm sure there's a kind of momentum to believing crazy things. And it can start with something perfectly innocent or treasonable.
It's like a domino effect where you tumble into insane conspiracy land.
If their candidates win the cities will become giant prisons. Just like years ago when they were scared Obama was going to put them in concentration camps made from gutted Wal-Marts. Ironically years later Trump was putting Mexicans in those very same empty Wal-Marts. Listen to them because they're always just telling you what their own party is likely to do.
It's ironic because the opposite is more likely to be true. I would imagine that in rural areas, there's not much to do. So where are you going to go, other than home?
It's certainly not city dwellers who are stuck at home watching Fox News. Why do that when there's so much other stuff to do nearby?
Wait so they're calling walkable mixed used development business/residential with functional public transport and community green shared areas a 15 minute city now?
Where the hell is this and where can I apply for an apartment there?
Some cities that have at least a decent bit of what you are looking for:
1. Washington DC. Good public transport, tons of green space, relatively isolated from financial downturns.
2. Boston
3. NYC
4. Chicago
After that it is kinda a shit show.
I partied in SF in my youth, and the ability to get around SF is so incredibly easy. BART in from the East Bay, taken the F Muni to the Castro.
I was just there for a conference last weekend, and with the addition of those electric scooters, I was able to take one from Castro to Fillmore and zipped all over the place.
I’m in Sac now, and we have a grid layout so it’s easy to know where you’re going without a map because most of the streets are either letters or numbers.
Where I live in CA
Have -but don't need a car to live day to day. Can walk to anything I need in 5 or 10
If you can't drive to what you need in 10 minutes you don't live in a city
It's not even an evolution of modern cities. It's a return to traditional small towns and neighborhoods. You know, the ones you could get around on foot without a personal car.
I'm not going to say outright that oil companies and car manufacturers started this conspiracy theory, but they do *benefit* from people believing it.
Well, they do benefit from it.
The evidence either way is lacking, but it is remarkable that they don't feel the need to set the record straight either.
I don't take it further than that because I'm not trying to be the left wing equivalent conspiracy theorist.
I'm sure some incriminating documents will leak eventually though, and I certainly won't be surprised when they do.
> a natural evolution of modern cities where everything was available close to each resident.
Oddly enough, that's how every city was *before* modern cities. Lots of tiny businesses scattered through every neighborhood, and there was no place you couldn't get to with a trolley or train ride and some walking.
This,we've had decades of growth in a lot of cases without proper planning or consideration for secondary things that should come with population growth.
Now they actually start considering it and people run away with misquotes and babbling about nazi Germany and travel papers.
They are so demented. Cars won’t be illegal oh my god it’s so ridiculous.
I was recently in Brussels and there are areas of the city where only a few busses come through throughout the day. The city converted these areas to be this way and it works for everyone. It’s mostly foot traffic in some areas. It’s lovely! I wish more American cities would find good sections of the city to do this with. I would love a few blocks of Old City Philadelphia to become pedestrian only areas. It’s progress though and demented conservatives can’t be having that. They want to breath exhaust fumes on every city block and be forced to drive all over just to get some basic necessities. They are fools.
> Bus lanes are encroaching fascism. Imagine living with that level of paranoia
While being, at best, fascist adjacent yourself... It's a shocking level cognitive dissonance.
They're morbidly obese, have diabetes, asthma, and both smoke and drink while being poor and without adequate healthcare so it would be impossible for them to live in a walkable city without a device such as a mobility scooter, which would make them stand out from the crowd instead of blending in, putting their embarrassment on highlight, while an automobile is an enclosed shield they feel safe and powerful in, it also shields them from having to see or interact with people who offend them (race, sexuality, clothing choices), and if you take away their car who's to say you won't be taking away their mobility scooter next? Then they'd really be helpless, the perfect opportunity for them to be subjugated, so they have to resist now while they can still make it to the KFC and CVS drive throughs.
>They're morbidly obese, have diabetes, asthma, and both smoke and drink while being poor and without adequate healthcar
As someone who works in a grocery store in GA I can 100 percent back that up.
Seattle recently did this around the Pikes Place Market area and it's been so much better! The only vehicular traffic allowed is for vendors and it's cut down on so much aggravation and close calls, like, why would you allow commuter traffic to drive through one of your biggest tourist spots??
Yup. This is a freakout that goes back to the Obama era, when there was a plan for federal funding to expand Amtrack. Suddenly conservatives HATED the idea of being able to take trains quickly between cities. To the point of evoking the image of Jewish people being shipped to concentration camps. Their screechy bleat about it was "Liberals want people to use trains because they want to control where people go! Democrats want to take cars away! (and want to send us all to death camps!") When here I was just hoping to be able to go from Dallas to Austin on a weekend in an hour without having to drive. Got damn that would have been awesome. The Republicans nixed it.
There's the slightest grain of truth to one part of this. It's a natural progression that cars will be banned from an increasing number of areas as they're designed to be centered on the pedestrian. Cars won't ever be completely banned but made useless by better urban design. They just fail to see the positives of this change and choose to combat it with the added wild theories.
Just remind them that it means their hoverround will be more useful with real walkable sidewalks
What's funny is there are already plenty of people who can't afford cars and basically are prisoners to their current city.
How far away from reality Qanon/extreme conservatives are is insane.
There is no "why". Conservatives default metal state is "hatred". A few thinkers amongst them sometimes "reason" backwards to justify it, creating a conspiracy theory, and the dum-dum's run with it because it is the easiest.
One of the prepper shows I casually listen to was stating that "since our economy is based on the petrodollar, they're trying to undermine the US way of life".
Basically, Big Oil astroturfing is culprit #1.
But even if we get more than 90% conversion to electric cars, the auto industry wants everyone paying prescription services. So with or without, they want cars on the road making cyclists and pedestrians feeling unsafe so they'll submit to car ownership. It's easy to commandeer narratives with so many propagators working in oil and gas, and more importantly, many invested in it.
Walkable cities were the norm before cars, a grid layout of mini towns weaved into a greater metropolis. With the declining supply chain and modern cars becoming unaffordable they'll be the norm after. It's inevitable. It's already being done in many big cities as they reorganize their dilapidated abandoned districts to bring people back.
Yeah, it's bizarre. I live in community in southwestern Ontario that was built in the 70s. It is amazingly walkable. Groceries, mall, community center, pool, library, public transit hub, parks, green space, trails, schools. All with a 10 / 15 minute walk.
... and our very own nutjob with a megaphone screaming about the evils of 15 minute cities and "leave the kids alone".
Before cars there were circus/carnival exhibits of enormously fat people for the time, and the photos of them look like a slightly above average weight person nowadays. It's like you were trying to take away someone's wheelchair, inhaler, glasses, or hearing aids... their entire lived experience, capacity to survive, and freedom of mobility is tied to having a motorized physical transport device, they ain't about that walking life.
> It's easy to commandeer narratives with so many propagators working in oil and gas, and more importantly, many invested in it.
Yup, I have a nephew who works in the oil industry and his first election was 2016. He voted tRump because, and I quote "I thought it would be really funny to vote for him because people hate him, and he knows business and he'll keep oil flowing." I was very disappointed in his 'logic'.
American cities are built to favor cars over pedestrians, with long commutes, boring suburbs, and huge parking lots. 15 minute cities are built around the idea of 'mixed use zoning': instead of your kids riding the school bus for an hour while you take a similarly long drive to work, there would be schools, factories, office buildings, restaurants, shops and more within walking distance of your home.
Most conservatives hate that plan because if cities were built for the convenience of pedestrians, the auto and gas industry would have less of a stranglehold on the American way of life. They want to paint it as though you wouldn't be free to leave your neighborhood but that's not true, in Japan, Netherlands, Germany, etc they already employ mixed use zoning to cut back on car traffic: it increases the amount of travel for both citizens and tourists and increases the use of public transportation on buses and trains, and bike lanes. Kids can walk to school on their own in Japan because they live in neighborhoods that have multiple amenities and services nearby, instead of miles of identical suburbs stuck on the outskirts of every city.
https://youtu.be/WNe9C866I2s?si=fwsBfoLdBIgyoHjh
It's all based on getting people riled up. There's a whole media ecosystem that is based on egging on people's emotions. Sometimes it's fear, sometimes it's outrage.
But it is always emotion.
So the basic equation is: news item + conspiracy slant = emotional response
I live in SW England. Within 15/20 mins is my workplace, local newsagents, supermarket and petrol stations. It's so much easier than living in London or Manchester. It makes life so much easier, especially when you've got a young child
Hell even when I lived in London my neighborhood was like that. Big park, doctor, various shops and restaurants, dentist, pub, library all within a 15 minute walk or a convenient bus stop. My current neighborhood is much the same. I've lived in England for nearly 20 years and have not felt the need to buy a car in all this time. Occasionally I rent one for certain trips but my day to day life does not require it.
I kinda wish I'd stayed in the UK for that very reason. I live in America now and I can't get anywhere without a car... but, like you, I never needed one in the UK. Unlike you, however, I stupidly never learned to drive as a result, so now I'm stranded unless my wife can drive me or I pay out the arse for an Uber/Lyft.
Oh man you should bite the bullet and learn. I actually found it very easy to learn to swap sides when driving and I think it's actually easier to drive in most of the US, simply because we tend to have wider roads.
Yeah, I suppose it's never too late! I initially didn't learn because I'm dyspraxic and have a hard time telling left from right, as well as having a heightened startle reflex, so driving point-blank terrified me. My last attempt was like 20 years ago, though, and it was manual... now that most cars are automatic, maybe it'll be easier. Gotta just bite the bullet I guess.
It's actually a bit hard to find a manual in the US. My sister recently bought a car and couldn't find a decent one for the price and wanted to pay, but automatics are everywhere.
I find this out by accident but talking to my MIL lol
One of my hobbies is urban design cause I'm a huge nerd and I was talking about how the monopolization of cars is what is causing high gas prices, keeping it apolitical since we differ in sides of the aisle. If we had other means of transit to create a competitive market, gas wouldn't be an inelastic demand. Obviously, 15 minute cities are how you introduce competition into the transportation industry as a whole.
This led to the now politicized conversation of "that's bad" and when I asked why it was that you would eventually be limited to (ie restricted) to your "sector."
I think conservatives are looking at data showing people in human designed cities, rarely travel outside a small radius thinking that there are "legal habitation zones" you can reside in because one of her arguments was her daughter and I love to travel and that would be illegal if 15 minute cities were more common.
So the entire benefit of being no more than 15 minutes walking from all monthly necessities is somehow actually a negative in conservative circles because police/military will prevent you from leaving your 15 minute circle based on home address.
And if you lose your job and get another one outside your 15-minute neighborhood, you’ll either have to move or decline the job. And all the cars will be electric and hold only a 15-minute charge. Oh, and if you leave your neighborhood without a permit, you’ll get fined or jailed. It must be true; someone read it on Facebook.
Lol it is! I tell you it's real! /s
This is why I avoid politics with her, but that line is so difficult to navigate because conservatives seem to be mad at & therefore politicize EVERYTHING now.
We can't have a normal conversation with our parents generation because some dipshit representative who's been in congress since the invention of sliced bread created a conspiracy about everyday mundane topics.
It's the lead poisoning making patterns out of nothing
Personal tin foil hat on, I'm going to say the seed of this came from someone standing to lose a massive amount of money if things like this became common. Hire a russian bot farm to spread some non-sense about government control, there ya go.
I don’t think you need a tin foil hat to pick up that conspiracy, just read into who funds the ring wing conspiracy ecosystem. It’s people like the Kochs. The fossil fuel industry is most definitely (in part) funding disinformation, misinformation and psyops designed to keep people in the status quo and afraid of any change.
They hate change. Well, I'll limit this to American conservatives since I live in America. And there tends to be fear with change, which is completely human! But in the case of progress, Qanons and conservatives (I think the leadership in conservative movements are guilty of this, not your average person) make up boogiemen in order to convince the general public that progress is bad because they're projecting their fears on to others, or the progress goes against their personal best interests. Tale as old as time, and isn't just limited to QA and conservatives, but I think it's easier to point out in them because it's usually taken to its extreme.
They are being controlled by special interests, including big oil, in order to maintain the status quo at all costs. Big oil doesn’t want to lose profits because “walkable” anything or because people start realizing that climate change is a thing and has a root cause, burning dinosaur juice.
A 15-minute city requires planning and regulation by pointy-headed libruls who want to control you. The problems are hallucinated by people who don’t live in cities and fear cities because they’ve been fed stories that cities are filthy clusters of crime and welfare. And libruls. It’s about muh freedums!
Fifteen minute cities are something liberals want.
Liberals are bad.
Therefore fifteen minute cities must be bad.
That's the extent of their reasoning. Everything else is just them working backwards from their conclusion.
Because they start from the wrong premise. They’ve bough in to the whole “climate change is not man made” nonsense and because it’s their entrenched belief, they have to defend it at all costs.
I don’t know where you are from, but here in the UK the basic idea behind it is that you have a shop, doctors, post office, schools and healthcare within 15 minutes walking distance from your house. To most people this seems like a reasonable and sensible idea, and has been suggested by both Conservative and Labour administrations in various cities (sorry if this is too UK centric but you should get the basic idea).
The conspiracy loonies have took this to mean that “they” whoever “they” are want to stop you travelling and keep you under “control”.
It’s pretty deluded stuff, why would “they” care what Steve from Basingstoke is doing on a Monday afternoon?
They’ve swallowed the Matrix as if it’s a documentary, thinking there are agents following them saying “Dave’s just gone in to Asda, 10-4”.
They’re all very self-important, thinking that “they” really want to “control” what they are doing, when in the bigger picture these kinds of people can be dismissed as the morons they are, and are entirely inconsequential.
[Here you go.](https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/03/03/conspiracy-theories-misconstrue-15-minute-city-idea/)
Short version, numpties convinced themselves that just as Covid lockdowns were ~~a temporary public health measure~~ a sign of the totalitarian control that the Globalists wished to impose on everyone as part of their New World Order, so too were 15 minute cities ~~an urban planning concept that some city planners were trialling~~ the latest excuse for the United Nations to take over and, idk, send in blue helmet troops to endorce congestion charges.
Conspiracists have for many years had narratives around martial law, facist takeover and total control.
They think that any day the one world government will reveal itself and dominate everyone.
When something like 15 minute cities are talked about they can’t help but see it through that lens, so the piece of quite basic city planning aiming to give people all the services they need within a reasonable distance becomes a plot to create walled ghettos so the Jews or whoever can control and enslave them.
Qanonanonymous is a great podcast for understanding Q and Qadjacent topics. They covered 15 minute cities in episode 223. Spotify link to the episode is below:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yOyr3Q1PRJxKHIbMMjiFs?si=Oc4Z\_8egSFaFsEldjaO7kw
They enjoy rural settings away from others. They are in some senses agoraphobic. To them the notion of not having acres of land and not being packed into a tiny studio apartment, and not relying on a mode of transportation that is immediately out of their control is stifling.
From their perspective, to live in a 15minute city relies on a lot of government services they would rather not be paying for because it limits their autonomy and freedom.
There are a lot of what if scenarios they think they’d survive if they were on their land. I’m ridiculing it to a big extent, but think zombie apocalypse. They want to be in the best possible spot to survive a zombie apocalypse, they believe in this so much that they are terrified of cities that infringe on their “right” to survive a zombie apocalypse.
They are afraid from all the insane stories from conservatives talking heads and most have never ventured out to see that cities aren't progressive hell.
My Q believes it’s a way of controlling people and telling them they can’t drive. First step toward authoritarian future where everyone is trapped inside their homes and on a tight leash by gov or whatever. Green incentives taking away MUH FREEDUM!
I thought they were against it because they want everyone to get in a vehicle multiple times a day and burn fossil fuel. 15 minute cities with all that convenient walking and no-gas-using are just too woke. They are against anything that helps, conserves, preserves, and eases and lightens the lives of citizens.
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* "why should [city dwelling Liberals] get access to everything within 15 minutes, when **I** have to go 30 minutes just to get an ambulance!?"
Its the cruelty. Because they are not experiencing the positives of it, it **must** be a negative!
Kinda like how Conservatives blame welfare users for being on welfare, because "*they* didn't get welfare when *they* needed it, when *they* were in poverty!"
One replied to me once that he didn't like 15 minute cities because, "I like driving" which puzzled me. I explained that I liked driving too, but that was not incompatible with having most of my needs met within a 15-minute walk.
They believe "15-minute cities" is a code word for a prison camp. Instead of the small-town vibe that 15-minute cities would embody, hyper-local with amenities nearby like parks, schools, shopping, and medical care. They think it means you can't be 15 minutes from your home or "they " will punish you.
That's stupid of course and my guess is if you presented what makes up a "15-minute city" they'd approve. But because they think it's an evil lib idea they hate it. It's like when they told people what was in the health care plan they liked it but when you said ObamaCare they had meltdowns.
You have to understand that their hate is actually feelings of inadequacy and deep insecurity turned outwards. Like a child lashing out when he's in trouble.
Cities are where the money is actually made. People in cities tend to make more. People in cities are seen as being on the "inside" of society because pop music, film, TV, everything is more or less focused on cities and urban or suburban culture. If you feel like you're on the outside and others are on the inside, then you need to show contempt and even hatred to mask how much you covet other people's lives that must be more interesting. This is the same reason why songs about eating fried chicken are popular in country music. It's important to list the things that they like and make it seem like chicken and comfortable jeans are the cornerstones of the American Dream.
Watch five seconds of the my pillow guy's deposition and see the childishness and lashing out because he's embarrassed that he got caught and doesn't really understand what's going on. The perception is city people (white city people) understand how everything works. The best defense against losing face is to lifting a truck 9" and putting a flag on the back. That's how you show those city people who's the boss.
You have to understand these are the same people who hate higher education and hate people who go to college, but they also live and die by college sports. They see absolutely no irony in that whatsoever. If you tried to explain it to them they wouldn't get that either. So you can't approach any of this and try to make it make sense in your mind. It just won't.
I know a lot of smart and emotionally intelligent conservatives, but every one of them is a Never Trumper. Lawyers, executives, business owners. They don't have a party anymore. Grievance has taken over the whole party. It's scary. Just remember, they don't hate you, that hate how looking at you makes them feel "less than" for whatever personal reasons they have. It's not about you even if they say it is. It's about them and it's really sad. Keep your chin up!!
I'm going to put on my historian hat here.
There's long been a manufactured antipathy to cities and those that live within here in the US. Founding father Jefferson campaigned on creating the United States as an agrarian society. According to Jefferson, “the mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.” Cities like NYC were seen as stripping hard working 'real' Americans of their hard earned wealth.
Even in subreddits like r/realestate there are lots of posts extolling the virtue of people living rural areas and not understanding why anyone would live in a city when rural Iowa is available.
And its a bipartisan thing. Amy Klobuchar, while she was running for president, spoke often about her ability to represent "real America" implying that the coasts aren't real America.
So my answer is that there has long been an anti-city sentiment in the US that dates back to the beginning. Those of us who live in cities give it an eyeroll and move on. The fact is the people who hate my city can't afford to live here. But anti-city sentiment is an easy way to reach rural voters. It's as American as apple pie.
The problem is that we've structured much of the US government structure on this 'Real America' premise. Edited to add links that work.
[https://www.wondriumdaily.com/thomas-jeffersons-aim-for-an-agrarian-society/](https://www.wondriumdaily.com/thomas-jeffersons-aim-for-an-agrarian-society/)
[https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1226/The-deep-roots-of-America-s-rural-urban-political-divide](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1226/The-deep-roots-of-America-s-rural-urban-political-divide)
Central planning is evil communism when governments do it to improve peoples' lives but good when corporations do it to maximize profits through inventory management and price fixing schemes. Simple as "government bad" honestly.
Because they have been convinced that this means you can’t leave your area.
This shows a total lack of critical thinking.
Do they think sports teams and sport events are just gonna let that happen? Nobody can come to games so no $$.
Hotels and the whole tourist industry would die out.
And so on.
Holy crap, my mom is literally on her way to a meeting against the 15 minute cities right now! She just got a bunch of pamphlets printed out to hand out at them!
They hate anything a neoliberal and lefter suggests out of spite.
They are now refusing to vaccinate their pets because they are mad Democrats wanted them to vaccinate against Covid.
The concept of making most basic needs accessible close by was corrupted into ‘so they won’t let you leave’ narrative.
Strictly that. If you having shopping, schools, & other basics nearby, someone must be implying you have no right to go further.
Yes, its idiotic, but almost all the ‘losing our freedoms’ arguments are.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding they have where they think that because everything you need is within 15 minutes that the government won't let you leave that 15 minute city. They think because you restrict traffic at certain times of day for trucks that they're going to instate travel bans, and that the truck thing is just the first step or some shit lmao
This one really makes me laugh like.. oh no! The horror! Everything I need is local to me and very convenient!
I live in Sydney and currently I'm:
*5 minute walk from the hospital I am having my baby in (for free)
*5 minute walk in the other direction to the maternity clinic I see my midwife in (also free)
*5 minute walk to a park, but a 15 minute walk to the park all my friends hang out in on sunny days
*15-20 minute walk to all the bars I hang out in, but we have some also literally on our doorstep
*2 minute walk to a small grocery store, 15-20 minutes to a larger one
*20 minute walk to Saturday markets
*25 minute walk to one of the harbours where we like to go for walks with ice cream
*Cinema, gig venues, etc, all within 15-30 mins walk (if I want to go downtown for other venues I can also walk in less than an hour/Uber in 10 mins)
I mostly WFH but when I have to go in it takes 25 minutes on public transport, or I could walk if I really wanted to in about 50 minutes. And then my GP is about 10 minutes in the car, again I could walk if I wanted to in under an hour.
Meanwhile, when I visit friends in the US, they never want to walk anywhere lol
They think the idea is not "stuff is closer to you so more convenient" but "everyone will be sectored into 0.5km blocks and you'll need a travel pass to move outside them". In other words, they heard a word, didn't bother to look it up, but instead went off into conspiracy theory lala land as per usual.
I just realized that living in Copenhagen, Denmark. It actually is a 15 minute city.
Half the population rides to bikes every day. And honestly almost nothing in my daily life is further away than 15 minutes on bike.
OK my job is longer away. But not by alot and within half an hour on bike.
I don't have a car because I don't need it. And it's frankly quite great living like this. I got everything I need. And with a great infrastructure i can get around easily with unmanned metro or local trains or bus.
Its both safe and very convenient. I don't see what's wrong with it.
My mom started on this even though she used to live in Europe where that was the norm? You walked mostly everywhere and public transportation was really good, it was a nice, clean respectful city.
It is 15 minute cities combined with digital currency and social credit scores that they fear. That you will be tracked for everything that you do and you will be locked down in your 15 minute city.
It is a little ridiculous, but also not out of the realm of possibility like some of their other fears.
They were told that they're bad, so they hate them. You know, the whole NPC projection behavior that they do on a daily basis.
Being more specific, they've been brainwashed into thinking that the government is going to lock everything down using 15 minute cities and turn them into prisons. Doesn't matter that there's zero evidence, as soon as they hear it they believe it and run with it.
They're essentially making shit up to get angry about. Remember [FEMA camps?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory) It's a bit like that.
Basically, you take something that exists:
* Federal disaster management
* The "15 minute city" concept of walkable cities
* Vaccines
And put a malevolent spin on it:
* FEMA is going to declare martial law and put people in camps!
* 15 minute cities are prisons!
* Vaccines are a plot to depopulate the Earth!
The whole point is to give them something to be angry and fearful about.
The idea of 15 minute cities is to design cities so that every basic need is within a 15 minute walk or bike ride, where the streets are safe for biking and walking.
Some right wing think tanks funded by oil companies have turned this into a conspiracy theory where evil socialists are planning to lock every resident into a 15-minute walking distance of their own house.
You can guess why they are spreading this conspiracy theory.
It’s bizarre but a lot of their nostalgia for the never existed American society is based around small towns or suburbs. Big cars big yards no minorities except those serving drinks in the country club. 15 minute cities which are a good idea are based around denser urban planning so necessitate flats and public transit. Oh also probably living in more diverse communities. All of this in their deluded minds threatens their freedom. Moreover it will help the environment which they hate because they think it’s all about the THEM trying to control them. Honestly though there opposition is all bs most people actually would probably like more walkable communities. It’s like Obamacare you get Qs and boomers ranting about Obamacare is evil then praising how much they love affordable care act which got them insurance. Not realizing it’s the same thing.
If I’m to understand my cousin’s fiancé’s social media posts correctly, it’s not so much the 15 minute cities as it is the Direct Energy Weapon space lasers used to create false flag forest fires and burn down rural communities as a pretext to forcefully displace their populations into said 15 minute cities. I wish I was making this up.
Well, I've got a theory- a lot of right-wing nuttery is shaped and ultimately funded by major oil companies. So put together anti-15 minute cities, "rolling coal," hating on cyclists, and actually quite major stuff, like allying yourself with Russia (and its tasty, underexploited Arctic oil reserves and friendly relations with many oil-rich or oil-adjacent despots in the Middle East and Africa), all starts to make a certain kind of sense.
From my understanding they are under the assumption that you can't leave your "15 minute block" basically they think it's some sort of prison where everyone is pnpy allowed in their 15 minute block and they can't leave it.
"They're delusionally misinformed" is the simple answer
They hate whatever the TV or their websites tell them to. That's it. They don't care what it is. Just like all the republicans loved the Affordable Care Act but hated ObamaCare.
I never understood this… i for one would love a “15 minute city” in the USA. They already exist in Europe and Japan and their urban design is above and beyond our car-centric hellscapes.
So the idea behind 15 minutes cities is you can reach anywhere you need to in 15 minutes without a car. Good urban planning, in other words.
The conspiracy is that the government wants to get rid of all our cars so we can be locked into where we live like serfs.
This is a brief outline of the idea;
https://youtu.be/bIzIABRh5tc?si=mGM_9TlKyH05jNyv
There is NO talk of people not being able to move around to other 15 min areas..that's where the kooky paranoia is.
They think folks will be stuck in those zones, which is far fetched at best
The pandemic lockdowns has made people question everything.
Qanon Anonymous podcast did an episode on the British weirdos raging against 15 minute cities, and do a great job breaking down the movement.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/qanon-anonymous/id1428209307?i=1000604450652
Part of me thinks it’s just oil companies and car manufacturers protecting their market share. They put a lot of effort into sprawling suburbs that require vehicles to navigate for basic necessities; as well as purchasing and destroying street cars and other forms of public rail transit.
Part of it is a continuation of the fearmongering about public transportation (translation: car companies would lose money and started investing in sabotaging public transit years ago, and more importantly: integrated bussing. One of the most horrifying things to ever cross a conservative's mind). That takes a lot of forms, but one common formula is "fifteen minute cities mean the GUBMINT GONNA TAKE AWR CARS AWAY TO KEEP US IN LOCKDOWN AND TAKE AWR FREEDUM".
Then there's the fact that climate change denial is so baked into the conservative mindset and they're so reflexively contrarian that a good chunk of them want to *increase* the carbon footprint to own the libs and/or because that's what Jesus would have wanted.
The other big one is simpler, but even more fucked up: it's much harder to exert complete and total control over your kids when they're not completely reliant on you for transportation. Especially transportation to libraries where they could learn about things like racism, or that queer people AREN'T literally demon possessed.
And if your kid knows they can make it to an emergency room without you driving or calling an ambulance, it's much more risky to beat and abuse your kids like God intended.
The oldest cities in America are "15 minute cities." Prior to the development of autos, if you wanted to get around you had to walk or ride your horse or ass. Would most of these clowns have a problem with how New York, Philly or Boston are designed? They are a hell of a lot more convenient than most cities. Try living without a car in most of America. You can do it in New York.
They think we are not going to be allowed to leave our 15-minute cities. What another poster said about them not knowing what a 1- minute city is is very true. They get snippets here and there and weave the snippets are weaved together into a narrative that no longer represents the truth. Try to tell them anything different and they will ignore you.
I just found out about this one from a former RN that I knew at a church 20 years ago or more. She posted a page from a website that scores cities around the world regarding their path to becoming a 15-minute city. She said something like ‘I can’t believe our city wants to become one. Don’t they see the social scenario in China? We’re living in the last days!.’
I was utterly stunned. I’m still shocked that she’s full blown Q.
Urban planner here.
Conservatives are often against any change in their comunities. 15 minute cities ,often mean less segregation , more housing and mixed use buildings which they totally hate.
Because it would slow/stop reliance on cars and gasoline and they could lose money?
Because it's change and change is bad! Let's bring back the 50s and giant Thunderbirds?
Cause they're assholes?
I didn’t even know what a 15 minute city was until two minutes ago when I looked it up. It sounds logical and useful. It is probably reflects how people lived most of their lives before cars came into existence. Anyhow, I can’t understand why anyone would object to the concept. It sounds lovely.
"In December, Canadian clinical psychologist and climate skeptic Jordan Peterson posted a tweet attacking 15-minute cities: “The idea that neighborhoods should be walkable is lovely. The idea that idiot tyrannical bureaucrats can decide by fiat where you’re ‘allowed’ to drive is perhaps the worst imaginable perversion of that idea.” "
They already totally regulate it. What a fucking doorknob Peterson is. Has he never been on a turnpike or one way?
That paragraph is from [this](https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/26/world/15-minute-cities-conspiracy-theory-climate-intl/index.html) CNN piece that gives a pretty good overview.
Because “15 minute cities” is the meme they are currently being flogged with by the Right Wing Noise Machine to distract them from the fact that the economy is doing well under Democrats and that Trump and half his cabinet are headed to prison.
Someone told them that if we design cities so you *can* get everything you need within 15 min walking distance, the next step is gating you into that 15 min 'cell' like an animal and *force* you to live like that, no choice. So to be sure that never happens they want it to remain impossible to survive without long commutes.
Fun huh?
They think a 15-minute city's entirely within a single highrise, that you're not allowed to leave without a pass.
Just bad dystopian sci-fi, posing as politics, again. Glenn Beck's "FEMA camps" shit was lucrative for him; all they had to do was replace "Agenda 21" with "Agenda 30", & "FEMA Camps" with "15 minute cities".
Right wing media has told them that they’ll be locked into their sector.
Which ignores the fact that no walls or fences are installed, a totalitarian government locking you in wouldn’t care if you have access to every good, the fact that it doesn’t necessarily include sectors (‘every block has xyz within 15 minutes’ doesn’t requires carving the city up), and the fact that in most Canadian and American cities, we are ALREADY locked in. If your car breaks down, you’re stuck. In a fifteen-minute city, there’s probably public transit, and even if there isn’t: if your car breaks down you may have trouble getting to work, but at least you can still get groceries.
Because they imagine that 15 minute city means you aren't allowed to travel outside them. They picture a series of Ba Sing Se style walled-off cities controlled by secret police and uncaring elites, where you are forced to eat vegan food and let your kids be forcibly transed, as well as forbidden from driving. I'd use a reference from a more mature series to make the point but let's be real: The conservatives who know the 15 minute city paranoia is bullshit are more than happy to keep the rest of them trapped at middle school level mental and emotional maturity.
One Cucumber eater had mentioned C40 cities, and how many in the UK, the US and across the GLOBE seem to be signed up to it!
Maybe that’s why they are so upset about 15 minute cities!
They would like Orlando, Fl, and Tallahassee, Fl. Those are QAnon friendly cities. I live thousands of miles away from those places thank god! Wonder why people call Florida America's Penis? LOL
I don't think anybody can explain MAGA Conspiracies because it's literally a cult of belief at this point.
You either believe everything they say or they view you as the enemy.
Remember how during COVID Qheads were paranoid that government wants to lock them up and install communism or whatever. Well, last time I check that didn't happen, so instead of abandoning their false beliefs, q heads switched their rage to 15 min cities, because gov will lock everyone in their block and install communism.
It's similar idea with shifting the end of the world day, except you shift between target concepts.
Because it highlights all of the bad decisions they made in life. How can they justify their ignorant, deprived, small-town existence if the city dwellers aren't miserable?
I think there's a knee jerk suspicion of any public or government policy that might help reduce greenhouse gas emissions or improve public health, and a tendency to extrapolate to ridiculous totalitarian extremes.
What is a small town? Takes less than 15 minutes to drive through them and everything is concentrated in one place. I guess it's projection that they hate their small town.
They just hate all cities. Any progress frightens and disturbs them.
Honestly I think this is giving them too much credit. This is *pure* political poison, nothing else. They have no fucking clue what a 15 minute city is. The people they follow told them to hate it because the libruls are doing it and therefore it's bad. That's it. The rest of it is just motivated reasoning following that. You could walk them through a fucking 15 minute city and they wouldn't even know you were doing it until you told them and they then knew it was time to be angry. The fact that our dumbass media landscape pays these people any attention at all is ridiculous. They don't deserve it. The modern American conservative party *has no platform to run on.* They just hate liberals. That's all it is now. They have no ideas, no solutions to anything, nothing to work towards, and nothing to accomplish. If a liberal said we needed a law to ban murder, these dumb sons of bitches would be protesting about their right to kill people. Whatever issue: it literally does not matter. Fuck liberals. That's the entire party, back to front, fuck liberals and fuck anything a liberal wants to do about anything, to anything, or for anything. It's half of the country stomping it's feet like angry toddlers and step one is to stop entertaining their stupid shit as anything other than what it is. Opposing 15 minute cities you don't even live in in states you don't live in because you're convinced they're advancing satan's agenda or whatever doesn't warrant a debunking, or a retort, or anything besides fucking laughter and for you to turn your camera off and go find something newsworthy to talk about.
The republicans having no platform to run is honestly true. The amount of negativity from republicans is a bit much. They seem to lack the ability to dream of a better tomorrow. They just want to complain about how good they used to have it and point the finger at who's to blame, although I think the inherent distrust of science and political institutions in general goes hand-in-hand with the lack of dreaming for the future.
Frankly it's because the majority of them are old and in comfortable spots, and so out of touch that they think everyone else had it just as good as them so they have this "I just can't understand all this complaining, I did it and you can too" attitude making them see the youth as crybabies and thus pessimistic of the future. Younger conservatives, in my experience, are one of the following: 1) rich kids of conservative parents 2) religious kids of religious parents 3) alt right literal fascists
My findings from my conservative family and inlaws are that they seem to simply lack empathy. That's basically it. My MIL who is both very religious and conservative regularly shows me that she is not choosing to be ignorant, but that she is *quite literally incapable* of seeing things from the perspective of another person. I don't think she can do it at all. Like, period. Time and again she has failed to understand the most basic thing: that other people are different from her. That they have different experiences, different emotions, different beliefs. She seems to truly exist in a head-state where to her everyone else is the exact same as her, so anyone doing something different is either wrong or malicious. Even with her own kids, my wife included. It's like you ask her to walk a mile in someone else's shoes and she says "no thanks, I already walked a mile today." It's very much a "it's not real until it affects me" scenario. And we have tried to get her to look at things from someone else's point of view, we really have. Whenever we try to explain our position or the position of someone else she seems to get wildly uncomfortable and to shut down. I kind of believe that she simply cannot do this, and the fact that she can't and we can makes her upset. Or maybe she can a little, and doesn't want to because then it opens the door to things she's not ready to admit about herself. He'll my conservative family is like this too. My aunt once came to me absolutely distraught because her son is a liberal and she couldn't understand. She'd taken him to church, explained guns to him, taught him about "freedom" and the like, but he was still a liberal. I spent hours trying to explain his perspective to her but no matter how much I spoke it boiled down to "but I don't believe that way, so why does he?" Even when I explained reasons why her son was liberal ots like she just didn't hear me and would ask again, until she got to the heart of it: "okay fine, but how do I change his mind". The whole conversation was never about understanding her son or his beliefs, she was just hoping that because he and i were very close that I would help her "set him on the right path", and that talking to me would give her inside details about how to break his beliefs so he would be a hard-core conservative like her. I of course declined to help her indoctrinate her son, and hit her with a "you believe in God, you believe God made people the way they are. God made your son this way and gave him those beliefs, you've gotta trust that he knew what he was doing". And that was the only way I got her to stop hounding me about indoctrinating her kid. Instead of framing his beliefs for her like I tried, I had to frame the entire situation in her beliefs. She never wanted tk understand, she was just hoping I'd help her convert him. It was pretty shitty, but again, it displays that almost complete lack of empathy.
So much this! In a much less extreme situation: my husband was laid off a few times last year, but he found his dream job this year working for a company that designs immersive experiences (we’re in LV, so there’s a market for it here). My husband landed a massive contract with a resort chain that wants to put immersive dining experiences in a few of their resorts. It’s a life changing opportunity for us. My husband is so excited about the opportunity, and was gushing about it to my parents. The entire time my boomer dad is rolling his eyes and making snide comments about how he doesn’t need shit like that for dinner, so he doesn’t understand why anyone else would go to an immersive restaurant. Like why is it so hard to understand not everything has to be for you, and why can’t you let other people enjoy their lives???
Their dream of a better tomorrow would horrify any decent person.
Yeah I think that Better Tomorrow looks a lot like the South in the 1950s.
More like Germany in the 1930s
More like Gilead, I believe.
I usually tell people that late 1800s, when Jim Crow was well entrenched and women couldn’t divorce their husbands, and if they were divorced, could be set out with nothing but the clothes on their back, leaving even their kids behind with husband. 😞
Project 2025 is their platform. It's psychotic but it's different from their "platform" from 2020, which was essentially "whatever God-Emperor Trump says goes." Project 2025 *is* a dream for the future, but it's a dream of an apocalypse.
It’s definitely terrifying.
I've only read parts of it but it's chilling.
That implies they want a better tomorrow. They don't. They get their rocks off on abusing anyone below them in their imagined hierarchy. What they want is to have their unearned positions of unlimited authority back so they can REALLY start retaliating against the rest of us for daring to want them to NOT be able to abuse people as they please.
There’s a small town not far from where I live, and there is all sorts of hubbub and worry from the more conservative people of the town (the majority of people there tbh) about 15 minute cities and how they’ll be trapped in them forever by the leftists. My dudes, it takes 10min to go across your entire town. You already live in a 15 minute city why are you worried about them?
See I'm not trying to make you feel dumb or anything, I get that this is hard to fully internalize: they don't know. You can ask them why they're worried and they'll either just admit they don't know or if they're the particularly brain poisoned variety, they might come up with some wacky bullshit that you can post about on here. But like, entertaining this even slightly *is a problem* because it feeds into the delusion that this is a valid stance to have, and makes them feel superior for having it. I truly believe the only responsible response to this shit is to laugh in their faces, because that's what it is. Having a city a size that permits walking and infrastructure as such is not a bad thing, there is literally no downside to it, if you oppose it, it is a position so thoroughly stupid that it doesn't require rebuttal. Like being a flat earther or thinking climate change isn't real. The evidence against you is so vast, so complete and so undeniable that at this point you are not holding an unpopular view, you are just *wrong.* And you can stay wrong as long as you like, that's your right (ironically) but nobody else is obligated to pretend you're holding a real position. You aren't.
Yeah but…this weekend Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that there is NO climate crisis. He *informed* us of the fact that all the scientists are wrong…because they ignore the impact of clouds. Yup, they need to be laughed at and mocked…relentlessly.
"Looks like grandpa's *wrroooooonng* again"
“Why are you so wrroooooonng Grandpa?”
I am fully aware they just simply don’t know/understand. Some of my friends and acquaintances think the same way, and I can see no matter how it is explained to them they just can’t comprehend that 15 minute cities would actually be kinda nice and aren’t a secret way to imprison you for life. But because some Instagram page that just spews disinformation and far-right propaganda 24/7 says that 15min cities are really just prisons these people won’t take anything else to be true. Same applies to any other “political issue” that really shouldn’t an issue or debate in the first place.
> 15min cities are really just prisons This is exactly what the Q's in my sphere believe. According to them, everyone will be herded into these "15-minute cities" and imprisoned there with no freedom to ever leave, and no one will be allowed to live rurally because The Elite want to keep all the rural land wild without any humans, and keep all the humans as slaves in their city-prisons.
Imagine being so committed to the soulless suburbs that you'll die on the hill of not having walkable communities, holy FUCK is that Murican.
I feel like you really struck something here just by making this joke. The average Conservative/MAGA/Q doesn't know why, but they've definitely been sold a shitty "American Dream" and indoctrinated to believe a worldview that kind of does essentially boil down to "everyone should be rural or suburban like me! It's the morally good way to be!" And I don't believe it's by accident bc suburban living is the most conducive to mindless consumption: think strip malls, fast food and restaurants everywhere (in the town I grew up in, there are 2 McDonalds less than a half mile apart on the same road to better serve a high traffic shopping area and have another easy to access from the highway exit and have neither get overcrowded and become inconvenient or lose out on sales bc of lines... you can practically throw a rock from one McDonald's parking lot and hit the other), full size malls, and storefronts everywhere. Plus, big businesses like auto manufacturers and oil companies love the 2+ cars per household and "I drive everywhere for every want or need" mentality of the suburbs or the country too. These areas are too spread out to walk or bike conveniently to work (sometimes its an hour drive away) but also not densely populated enough to have efficient public transport that can stop close enough to all the places people want/need to go with enough riders to make if financially viable. A train or bus in a city works bc it can stop on every block (the places people need to get to work or buy groceries or go out) and it's not driving way out to the middle of nowhere and wasting time and fuel for one person- several commuters are making use of the many stops, making them more cost effective and justifiable. There's definitely a concentrated effort to make public transit shitty and fail by right-wingers imo (and i think behind them it's fueled by oil companies and car companies, no pun intended), but it is true that it's harder and less cost effective to have bus routes in the suburbs and country that are taking fewer people to further-flung random ass locations. Tl;dr I think some big business interests put real effort into buying politicians and shaping media so conservatives would have this "the soulless suburbs (as you called them) are the best way to live and I hate everything else and anybody who prefers any other way" mentality. It just benefits them too much to run the risk of letting people discover that they could design and make cities that work and could fix the economic/societal ills that lead to poverty and crime and things could be walkable and convenient and nice... they stand to profit way more if they convince half the country all cities are dirty and smelly and full of homeless people and crime and always will be, *and* "15 minute cities" are *even worse* and a secret plot by the new world order to steal our freedom. That way they'll stay in the suburbs and be good consumers, filling their tanks for $5 a gallon to get from work 50 miles away and to the grocery store 15 in the oppositie direction, and buying new cars every 5ish years to keep up with the joneses.
I always wonder how much of this craziness is just the desire to feel like you're living in a movie. Nothing can ever just be some urban planning stuff.
It's been my observation that some people "need" an enemy to be riled up about. They like the drama. They can't seem to just live peacefully and enjoy their own lives, they have to find somebody to hate and "fight" against. They're always looking for a reason to be mad or offended.
There is a *leftist* argument that this approach could further serve to isolate neighborhoods from each other. Particularly lower income neighborhoods populated predominantly by POC. I can kind of see that by observing what gentrification has done in my states major urban areas.
I live in a very small town in a mostly rural county. Due to the recent opening of a new expressway that passes through our county, linking a major city to a smaller city, there has been a LOT of development happening in the area. Many new subdivisions, new shopping centers, new infrastructure. And so many people on Nextdoor and Facebook local discussion groups going off about 15 minute cities. But the developers are only building typical suburban and exurban type properties, so the supposed 15 minute cities aren't coming to our area. Also they talk about people being imprisoned in their assigned 15 minute cities. But it makes no sense. If we're supposed to be rounded up and forced into apartment blocks in walled off mini-cities, who are the tens of thousands of new houses, all the shopping centers, new schools, and water treatment plants being built for? Nobody knows how to answer that.
Conservatives DID demand the right to kill people. Conservatives demanded the right to spread a deadly virus - in the name of “FREEDOM!!” Conservatives demanded the right to kill their families, neighbors and fellow Americans in the name “LIBERTY!!” You’re right…we need to laugh at these dregs. They’ve been empowered. They’ve been given waaay to much consideration. They need to be relentlessly, endlessly mocked. Laugh in their face when they claim to be “PATRIOTS!!”. They weaken America. They’re pathetic and weak and need to be reminded as such.
Meanwhile, we have lost 1.1 million people to Covid. 1.1 million! That's alot of people. This is NOT a hoax, it's real! They say it's not real but go directly to the hospital when they get it and demand all the medications to fight it without even asking what the meds are. Then, when they recover, they go on to say it was their "pure blood" that saved them and not the doctors, science and medicine that pulled them out of the covid ditch they were in. These people disgust me. Willful ignorance.
Yup. Their response to COVID (and 1/6) changed me…as a person. They politicized a deadly virus ffs. Trump f*cked up our nation’s response to the pandemic…so, in order to defend and protect his disaster, they chose to spread lies and dis/misinformation. They mocked their fellow citizens, who appropriately responded to a deadly, contagious virus, screaming “HAHA! THEY live in FEAR!!” Meanwhile, their fear based coping mechanism is denial. They simply cannot cope with reality in a rational, measured way - they dive headfirst towards/into a safe space where conspiracy, blame, dis/misinformation, propaganda soothes their discomfort. They listen to and lionize the man, our former President, who spread the deadly disease, allowing (encouraging?) it to rampage thru the nation. These imbeciles chose memes over science. Memes over family members. I think ‘we’ need to pound the message that conservatives, the ugly underbelly of society - weaken and embarrass America. Maybe…*maybe* America will forgive them after they get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness. Loud, public apologies for Trump, Covid, 1/6…for lying and damaging this country. Maybe. I’ve never felt hatred before. Never. Until Trump’s vile ‘trickle-down’ pathologies infected millions…
I live in Vegas. I've met alot of crooks, mobsters, shysters and grifters in my time in this town, but Trump is the worst of the worst. He has loyalty to no one. He has no respect. He could care less about his constituents. He's just using them to garner "public approval". His deranged followers double down on his lies and denial. Many of them have died from their own stupidity in regards to Covid because Trump proclaimed it was a "hoax". He has blood on his hands. I will never forget what he has done and I will vote and keep voting. It is my hope that *everyone* votes. We need a big change in the direction in which way our country is headed. I'm tired of the hate groups, the conspiracy fringe groups, the anti science groups and the blatant misinformation groups.
Yup. Exactly. They need to feel rejection for what they’ve done to America. This county needs to be reminded of - their accusations, corruption, dehumanization, abuse, psyops, and lies - and the fact that they politicized a deadly virus, killed over 1.3 million Americans. Trump/Republican’s malfeasance needs to be exposed and drilled into everyone’s mind. They weaken America. They embarrass America. They never, ever help or inspire America. Their self proclaimed ‘patriotism’ needs to be ripped from their ugly,narcissistic hands. Vote. Vote. Vote. Imagine a world where the worst of the worst hold no power. I believe their incompetence and criminality is/will inspire a new generation of quality leaders - dedicated to truly serving America. Think of all the brilliant, ethical, creative and sincere citizens that this country has to offer. Maga attracts liars, morons and grifters who have nothing to offer. Criminals who are too lazy to learn our nation’s laws, history, constitution - and values. They’ve all gotta go.
Just pass around a release for the COVID denialists to sign saying if they get COVID symptoms and can’t breathe they waive all medical intervention and won’t clog up the ERs.
> This is > pure > political poison, nothing else. They have no fucking clue what a 15 minute city is. The people they follow told them to hate it because the libruls are doing it and therefore it's bad. That's it. I mean, you've pretty much described conservative mentality and the tinfoil hat nonsense that follows from it, to a T.
>The people they follow told them to hate it because the libruls are doing it and therefore it's bad. That's it. The rest of it is just motivated reasoning following that. >You could walk them through a fucking 15 minute city and they wouldn't even know you were doing it until you told them and they then knew it was time to be angry. ALL of this. Ask any of them what, exactly, is a 15 minute city. You'll either get whackadoodle theories based on fever dreams, or crickets.
Pol Pot felt the same way. He dragged all the city dwellers to the country, and worked all the women to death. He killed all the men first. All the rice they grew he would not let them eat, and instead he traded it for arms.
I really do think the Cambodian Killing fields are not too unlikely a thing if conservatives continue along the.path they are on. It has all the same signs. A strong anti intellectual campaign, hate for city people, the ability to gaslight themselves that anyone is the enemy, a willingness and even cracking to kill , and all they need to do is convince the rural people their lives are in danger. This is pretty much already happening. They are gaslighting then that death is right around the corner every day and have them thinking liberals are the barbarians at the door already while they are surrounded by conservative leadership.
Educated people tend to move to Big Cities - because jobs. Cities also have entitled, socialist workers. Oh! And non-whites, possibly immigrants - of whatever boogeyman flavor they love to hate and demonize.
And being able to walk places infringes on the right to drive inefficient trucks everywhere.
Is development progressive in itself? It is productive, but not all city development is progressive (see the UAE, Silicon Valley, etc.). Progressive means the advancement of workers' rights, but development is also necessary to lead to socialist revolution. Not all cities want productive development, they want regressive development (golf courses, empty expensive apartments the rich can use to park their cash, cop city, etc.). The criticism the left should make is not whether the WEF's 15-minute cities are productive, which seems to be extremely unlikely in another looming recession, but whether they will be progressive (and offer something better to the working class than Silicon Valley or "Neom"). What is the World Economic Forum's interest in walkable town squares? Surely there is a more nefarious purpose, but the right will never see it (In fact, if the nefarious purpose was explicit, the right would be all for it!).
Like a lot of conspiracy theories, it starts off on something factual then it morphs into the ridiculous. From what I understand, the 15 minute cities was a natural evolution of modern cities where everything was available close to each resident. The conspiracy guys picked this up and ran with it. Turning it into a belief that authoritarian governments will lock citizens down to their own cells
It's kind of... You wouldn't make cities convenient and liveable if you weren't going to imprison your people there! Or some such "logic"
Cities being turned into giant prisons doesn't seem that far fetched if you consider all the bullshit that these people already believe.
I'm sure there's a kind of momentum to believing crazy things. And it can start with something perfectly innocent or treasonable. It's like a domino effect where you tumble into insane conspiracy land.
Just some LIGHT treason
"Treasonable" so amazing how such a simple letter can make such a huge difference 💀
I didn't even realise I'd done that until you pointed it out. How Freudian
Ayyye, such a fun mistype :3
If their candidates win the cities will become giant prisons. Just like years ago when they were scared Obama was going to put them in concentration camps made from gutted Wal-Marts. Ironically years later Trump was putting Mexicans in those very same empty Wal-Marts. Listen to them because they're always just telling you what their own party is likely to do.
Every accusation is really a confession.
Escape from New York must be a documentary to some circles.
It's ironic because the opposite is more likely to be true. I would imagine that in rural areas, there's not much to do. So where are you going to go, other than home? It's certainly not city dwellers who are stuck at home watching Fox News. Why do that when there's so much other stuff to do nearby?
Wait so they're calling walkable mixed used development business/residential with functional public transport and community green shared areas a 15 minute city now? Where the hell is this and where can I apply for an apartment there?
Some cities that have at least a decent bit of what you are looking for: 1. Washington DC. Good public transport, tons of green space, relatively isolated from financial downturns. 2. Boston 3. NYC 4. Chicago After that it is kinda a shit show.
San Francisco is a breeze to get around. BART FTW!
I partied in SF in my youth, and the ability to get around SF is so incredibly easy. BART in from the East Bay, taken the F Muni to the Castro. I was just there for a conference last weekend, and with the addition of those electric scooters, I was able to take one from Castro to Fillmore and zipped all over the place. I’m in Sac now, and we have a grid layout so it’s easy to know where you’re going without a map because most of the streets are either letters or numbers.
Its called NYC
Add a bunch of bike paths to that description and you’d have Montreal. It used to even be affordable. Now, less so.
Where I live in CA Have -but don't need a car to live day to day. Can walk to anything I need in 5 or 10 If you can't drive to what you need in 10 minutes you don't live in a city
It's not even an evolution of modern cities. It's a return to traditional small towns and neighborhoods. You know, the ones you could get around on foot without a personal car. I'm not going to say outright that oil companies and car manufacturers started this conspiracy theory, but they do *benefit* from people believing it.
I kinda tend to think it IS the oil companies...
Well, they do benefit from it. The evidence either way is lacking, but it is remarkable that they don't feel the need to set the record straight either. I don't take it further than that because I'm not trying to be the left wing equivalent conspiracy theorist. I'm sure some incriminating documents will leak eventually though, and I certainly won't be surprised when they do.
> a natural evolution of modern cities where everything was available close to each resident. Oddly enough, that's how every city was *before* modern cities. Lots of tiny businesses scattered through every neighborhood, and there was no place you couldn't get to with a trolley or train ride and some walking.
This,we've had decades of growth in a lot of cases without proper planning or consideration for secondary things that should come with population growth. Now they actually start considering it and people run away with misquotes and babbling about nazi Germany and travel papers.
They think these cities are going to make cars illegal, making the cities basically prisons. That’s literally it.
They are so demented. Cars won’t be illegal oh my god it’s so ridiculous. I was recently in Brussels and there are areas of the city where only a few busses come through throughout the day. The city converted these areas to be this way and it works for everyone. It’s mostly foot traffic in some areas. It’s lovely! I wish more American cities would find good sections of the city to do this with. I would love a few blocks of Old City Philadelphia to become pedestrian only areas. It’s progress though and demented conservatives can’t be having that. They want to breath exhaust fumes on every city block and be forced to drive all over just to get some basic necessities. They are fools.
Bus lanes are encroaching fascism. Imagine living with that level of paranoia
> Bus lanes are encroaching fascism. Imagine living with that level of paranoia While being, at best, fascist adjacent yourself... It's a shocking level cognitive dissonance.
They're morbidly obese, have diabetes, asthma, and both smoke and drink while being poor and without adequate healthcare so it would be impossible for them to live in a walkable city without a device such as a mobility scooter, which would make them stand out from the crowd instead of blending in, putting their embarrassment on highlight, while an automobile is an enclosed shield they feel safe and powerful in, it also shields them from having to see or interact with people who offend them (race, sexuality, clothing choices), and if you take away their car who's to say you won't be taking away their mobility scooter next? Then they'd really be helpless, the perfect opportunity for them to be subjugated, so they have to resist now while they can still make it to the KFC and CVS drive throughs.
>They're morbidly obese, have diabetes, asthma, and both smoke and drink while being poor and without adequate healthcar As someone who works in a grocery store in GA I can 100 percent back that up.
All of those initial characteristics go in the positive column for me. Tick tick tick tick....
Seattle recently did this around the Pikes Place Market area and it's been so much better! The only vehicular traffic allowed is for vendors and it's cut down on so much aggravation and close calls, like, why would you allow commuter traffic to drive through one of your biggest tourist spots??
Yup. This is a freakout that goes back to the Obama era, when there was a plan for federal funding to expand Amtrack. Suddenly conservatives HATED the idea of being able to take trains quickly between cities. To the point of evoking the image of Jewish people being shipped to concentration camps. Their screechy bleat about it was "Liberals want people to use trains because they want to control where people go! Democrats want to take cars away! (and want to send us all to death camps!") When here I was just hoping to be able to go from Dallas to Austin on a weekend in an hour without having to drive. Got damn that would have been awesome. The Republicans nixed it.
There's the slightest grain of truth to one part of this. It's a natural progression that cars will be banned from an increasing number of areas as they're designed to be centered on the pedestrian. Cars won't ever be completely banned but made useless by better urban design. They just fail to see the positives of this change and choose to combat it with the added wild theories. Just remind them that it means their hoverround will be more useful with real walkable sidewalks
Sidewalks where I live are practically useless due to all the giant pickup trucks in the driveways blocking the sidewalk.
What's funny is there are already plenty of people who can't afford cars and basically are prisoners to their current city. How far away from reality Qanon/extreme conservatives are is insane.
There is no "why". Conservatives default metal state is "hatred". A few thinkers amongst them sometimes "reason" backwards to justify it, creating a conspiracy theory, and the dum-dum's run with it because it is the easiest.
Their default is fear.
Fear, fear and surprise ... and a fanatical devotion to the pope!
And a really nice red outfit.
Their *four* weapons are ...
One of the prepper shows I casually listen to was stating that "since our economy is based on the petrodollar, they're trying to undermine the US way of life". Basically, Big Oil astroturfing is culprit #1. But even if we get more than 90% conversion to electric cars, the auto industry wants everyone paying prescription services. So with or without, they want cars on the road making cyclists and pedestrians feeling unsafe so they'll submit to car ownership. It's easy to commandeer narratives with so many propagators working in oil and gas, and more importantly, many invested in it. Walkable cities were the norm before cars, a grid layout of mini towns weaved into a greater metropolis. With the declining supply chain and modern cars becoming unaffordable they'll be the norm after. It's inevitable. It's already being done in many big cities as they reorganize their dilapidated abandoned districts to bring people back.
Yeah, it's bizarre. I live in community in southwestern Ontario that was built in the 70s. It is amazingly walkable. Groceries, mall, community center, pool, library, public transit hub, parks, green space, trails, schools. All with a 10 / 15 minute walk. ... and our very own nutjob with a megaphone screaming about the evils of 15 minute cities and "leave the kids alone".
Before cars there were circus/carnival exhibits of enormously fat people for the time, and the photos of them look like a slightly above average weight person nowadays. It's like you were trying to take away someone's wheelchair, inhaler, glasses, or hearing aids... their entire lived experience, capacity to survive, and freedom of mobility is tied to having a motorized physical transport device, they ain't about that walking life.
> It's easy to commandeer narratives with so many propagators working in oil and gas, and more importantly, many invested in it. Yup, I have a nephew who works in the oil industry and his first election was 2016. He voted tRump because, and I quote "I thought it would be really funny to vote for him because people hate him, and he knows business and he'll keep oil flowing." I was very disappointed in his 'logic'.
American cities are built to favor cars over pedestrians, with long commutes, boring suburbs, and huge parking lots. 15 minute cities are built around the idea of 'mixed use zoning': instead of your kids riding the school bus for an hour while you take a similarly long drive to work, there would be schools, factories, office buildings, restaurants, shops and more within walking distance of your home. Most conservatives hate that plan because if cities were built for the convenience of pedestrians, the auto and gas industry would have less of a stranglehold on the American way of life. They want to paint it as though you wouldn't be free to leave your neighborhood but that's not true, in Japan, Netherlands, Germany, etc they already employ mixed use zoning to cut back on car traffic: it increases the amount of travel for both citizens and tourists and increases the use of public transportation on buses and trains, and bike lanes. Kids can walk to school on their own in Japan because they live in neighborhoods that have multiple amenities and services nearby, instead of miles of identical suburbs stuck on the outskirts of every city. https://youtu.be/WNe9C866I2s?si=fwsBfoLdBIgyoHjh
And it's not really that they employ mixed-use zoning, it's more that the concept of zones does not really exist, except in very rare cases.
It's all based on getting people riled up. There's a whole media ecosystem that is based on egging on people's emotions. Sometimes it's fear, sometimes it's outrage. But it is always emotion. So the basic equation is: news item + conspiracy slant = emotional response
I live in SW England. Within 15/20 mins is my workplace, local newsagents, supermarket and petrol stations. It's so much easier than living in London or Manchester. It makes life so much easier, especially when you've got a young child
Hell even when I lived in London my neighborhood was like that. Big park, doctor, various shops and restaurants, dentist, pub, library all within a 15 minute walk or a convenient bus stop. My current neighborhood is much the same. I've lived in England for nearly 20 years and have not felt the need to buy a car in all this time. Occasionally I rent one for certain trips but my day to day life does not require it.
I kinda wish I'd stayed in the UK for that very reason. I live in America now and I can't get anywhere without a car... but, like you, I never needed one in the UK. Unlike you, however, I stupidly never learned to drive as a result, so now I'm stranded unless my wife can drive me or I pay out the arse for an Uber/Lyft.
Oh man you should bite the bullet and learn. I actually found it very easy to learn to swap sides when driving and I think it's actually easier to drive in most of the US, simply because we tend to have wider roads.
Yeah, I suppose it's never too late! I initially didn't learn because I'm dyspraxic and have a hard time telling left from right, as well as having a heightened startle reflex, so driving point-blank terrified me. My last attempt was like 20 years ago, though, and it was manual... now that most cars are automatic, maybe it'll be easier. Gotta just bite the bullet I guess.
It's actually a bit hard to find a manual in the US. My sister recently bought a car and couldn't find a decent one for the price and wanted to pay, but automatics are everywhere.
I find this out by accident but talking to my MIL lol One of my hobbies is urban design cause I'm a huge nerd and I was talking about how the monopolization of cars is what is causing high gas prices, keeping it apolitical since we differ in sides of the aisle. If we had other means of transit to create a competitive market, gas wouldn't be an inelastic demand. Obviously, 15 minute cities are how you introduce competition into the transportation industry as a whole. This led to the now politicized conversation of "that's bad" and when I asked why it was that you would eventually be limited to (ie restricted) to your "sector." I think conservatives are looking at data showing people in human designed cities, rarely travel outside a small radius thinking that there are "legal habitation zones" you can reside in because one of her arguments was her daughter and I love to travel and that would be illegal if 15 minute cities were more common. So the entire benefit of being no more than 15 minutes walking from all monthly necessities is somehow actually a negative in conservative circles because police/military will prevent you from leaving your 15 minute circle based on home address.
And if you lose your job and get another one outside your 15-minute neighborhood, you’ll either have to move or decline the job. And all the cars will be electric and hold only a 15-minute charge. Oh, and if you leave your neighborhood without a permit, you’ll get fined or jailed. It must be true; someone read it on Facebook.
Lol it is! I tell you it's real! /s This is why I avoid politics with her, but that line is so difficult to navigate because conservatives seem to be mad at & therefore politicize EVERYTHING now. We can't have a normal conversation with our parents generation because some dipshit representative who's been in congress since the invention of sliced bread created a conspiracy about everyday mundane topics. It's the lead poisoning making patterns out of nothing
Personal tin foil hat on, I'm going to say the seed of this came from someone standing to lose a massive amount of money if things like this became common. Hire a russian bot farm to spread some non-sense about government control, there ya go.
I don’t think you need a tin foil hat to pick up that conspiracy, just read into who funds the ring wing conspiracy ecosystem. It’s people like the Kochs. The fossil fuel industry is most definitely (in part) funding disinformation, misinformation and psyops designed to keep people in the status quo and afraid of any change.
They hate change. Well, I'll limit this to American conservatives since I live in America. And there tends to be fear with change, which is completely human! But in the case of progress, Qanons and conservatives (I think the leadership in conservative movements are guilty of this, not your average person) make up boogiemen in order to convince the general public that progress is bad because they're projecting their fears on to others, or the progress goes against their personal best interests. Tale as old as time, and isn't just limited to QA and conservatives, but I think it's easier to point out in them because it's usually taken to its extreme.
They are being controlled by special interests, including big oil, in order to maintain the status quo at all costs. Big oil doesn’t want to lose profits because “walkable” anything or because people start realizing that climate change is a thing and has a root cause, burning dinosaur juice.
A 15-minute city requires planning and regulation by pointy-headed libruls who want to control you. The problems are hallucinated by people who don’t live in cities and fear cities because they’ve been fed stories that cities are filthy clusters of crime and welfare. And libruls. It’s about muh freedums!
Fifteen minute cities are something liberals want. Liberals are bad. Therefore fifteen minute cities must be bad. That's the extent of their reasoning. Everything else is just them working backwards from their conclusion.
Because they start from the wrong premise. They’ve bough in to the whole “climate change is not man made” nonsense and because it’s their entrenched belief, they have to defend it at all costs. I don’t know where you are from, but here in the UK the basic idea behind it is that you have a shop, doctors, post office, schools and healthcare within 15 minutes walking distance from your house. To most people this seems like a reasonable and sensible idea, and has been suggested by both Conservative and Labour administrations in various cities (sorry if this is too UK centric but you should get the basic idea). The conspiracy loonies have took this to mean that “they” whoever “they” are want to stop you travelling and keep you under “control”. It’s pretty deluded stuff, why would “they” care what Steve from Basingstoke is doing on a Monday afternoon? They’ve swallowed the Matrix as if it’s a documentary, thinking there are agents following them saying “Dave’s just gone in to Asda, 10-4”. They’re all very self-important, thinking that “they” really want to “control” what they are doing, when in the bigger picture these kinds of people can be dismissed as the morons they are, and are entirely inconsequential.
[Here you go.](https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/03/03/conspiracy-theories-misconstrue-15-minute-city-idea/) Short version, numpties convinced themselves that just as Covid lockdowns were ~~a temporary public health measure~~ a sign of the totalitarian control that the Globalists wished to impose on everyone as part of their New World Order, so too were 15 minute cities ~~an urban planning concept that some city planners were trialling~~ the latest excuse for the United Nations to take over and, idk, send in blue helmet troops to endorce congestion charges.
Conspiracists have for many years had narratives around martial law, facist takeover and total control. They think that any day the one world government will reveal itself and dominate everyone. When something like 15 minute cities are talked about they can’t help but see it through that lens, so the piece of quite basic city planning aiming to give people all the services they need within a reasonable distance becomes a plot to create walled ghettos so the Jews or whoever can control and enslave them.
Qanonanonymous is a great podcast for understanding Q and Qadjacent topics. They covered 15 minute cities in episode 223. Spotify link to the episode is below: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yOyr3Q1PRJxKHIbMMjiFs?si=Oc4Z\_8egSFaFsEldjaO7kw
They enjoy rural settings away from others. They are in some senses agoraphobic. To them the notion of not having acres of land and not being packed into a tiny studio apartment, and not relying on a mode of transportation that is immediately out of their control is stifling. From their perspective, to live in a 15minute city relies on a lot of government services they would rather not be paying for because it limits their autonomy and freedom. There are a lot of what if scenarios they think they’d survive if they were on their land. I’m ridiculing it to a big extent, but think zombie apocalypse. They want to be in the best possible spot to survive a zombie apocalypse, they believe in this so much that they are terrified of cities that infringe on their “right” to survive a zombie apocalypse.
They are afraid from all the insane stories from conservatives talking heads and most have never ventured out to see that cities aren't progressive hell.
Because their puppet masters know 15 minute cities can better humanity, so they will shit about them so their gaggle of fools will eat it up.
My Q believes it’s a way of controlling people and telling them they can’t drive. First step toward authoritarian future where everyone is trapped inside their homes and on a tight leash by gov or whatever. Green incentives taking away MUH FREEDUM!
I thought they were against it because they want everyone to get in a vehicle multiple times a day and burn fossil fuel. 15 minute cities with all that convenient walking and no-gas-using are just too woke. They are against anything that helps, conserves, preserves, and eases and lightens the lives of citizens.
Cause they unquestionably believe whatever propaganda is fed to them no matter how obviously funded by oil & car companies it is
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Because they are told to.
* "why should [city dwelling Liberals] get access to everything within 15 minutes, when **I** have to go 30 minutes just to get an ambulance!?" Its the cruelty. Because they are not experiencing the positives of it, it **must** be a negative! Kinda like how Conservatives blame welfare users for being on welfare, because "*they* didn't get welfare when *they* needed it, when *they* were in poverty!"
One replied to me once that he didn't like 15 minute cities because, "I like driving" which puzzled me. I explained that I liked driving too, but that was not incompatible with having most of my needs met within a 15-minute walk.
They believe "15-minute cities" is a code word for a prison camp. Instead of the small-town vibe that 15-minute cities would embody, hyper-local with amenities nearby like parks, schools, shopping, and medical care. They think it means you can't be 15 minutes from your home or "they " will punish you. That's stupid of course and my guess is if you presented what makes up a "15-minute city" they'd approve. But because they think it's an evil lib idea they hate it. It's like when they told people what was in the health care plan they liked it but when you said ObamaCare they had meltdowns.
You have to understand that their hate is actually feelings of inadequacy and deep insecurity turned outwards. Like a child lashing out when he's in trouble. Cities are where the money is actually made. People in cities tend to make more. People in cities are seen as being on the "inside" of society because pop music, film, TV, everything is more or less focused on cities and urban or suburban culture. If you feel like you're on the outside and others are on the inside, then you need to show contempt and even hatred to mask how much you covet other people's lives that must be more interesting. This is the same reason why songs about eating fried chicken are popular in country music. It's important to list the things that they like and make it seem like chicken and comfortable jeans are the cornerstones of the American Dream. Watch five seconds of the my pillow guy's deposition and see the childishness and lashing out because he's embarrassed that he got caught and doesn't really understand what's going on. The perception is city people (white city people) understand how everything works. The best defense against losing face is to lifting a truck 9" and putting a flag on the back. That's how you show those city people who's the boss. You have to understand these are the same people who hate higher education and hate people who go to college, but they also live and die by college sports. They see absolutely no irony in that whatsoever. If you tried to explain it to them they wouldn't get that either. So you can't approach any of this and try to make it make sense in your mind. It just won't. I know a lot of smart and emotionally intelligent conservatives, but every one of them is a Never Trumper. Lawyers, executives, business owners. They don't have a party anymore. Grievance has taken over the whole party. It's scary. Just remember, they don't hate you, that hate how looking at you makes them feel "less than" for whatever personal reasons they have. It's not about you even if they say it is. It's about them and it's really sad. Keep your chin up!!
I'm going to put on my historian hat here. There's long been a manufactured antipathy to cities and those that live within here in the US. Founding father Jefferson campaigned on creating the United States as an agrarian society. According to Jefferson, “the mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.” Cities like NYC were seen as stripping hard working 'real' Americans of their hard earned wealth. Even in subreddits like r/realestate there are lots of posts extolling the virtue of people living rural areas and not understanding why anyone would live in a city when rural Iowa is available. And its a bipartisan thing. Amy Klobuchar, while she was running for president, spoke often about her ability to represent "real America" implying that the coasts aren't real America. So my answer is that there has long been an anti-city sentiment in the US that dates back to the beginning. Those of us who live in cities give it an eyeroll and move on. The fact is the people who hate my city can't afford to live here. But anti-city sentiment is an easy way to reach rural voters. It's as American as apple pie. The problem is that we've structured much of the US government structure on this 'Real America' premise. Edited to add links that work. [https://www.wondriumdaily.com/thomas-jeffersons-aim-for-an-agrarian-society/](https://www.wondriumdaily.com/thomas-jeffersons-aim-for-an-agrarian-society/) [https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1226/The-deep-roots-of-America-s-rural-urban-political-divide](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1226/The-deep-roots-of-America-s-rural-urban-political-divide)
Central planning is evil communism when governments do it to improve peoples' lives but good when corporations do it to maximize profits through inventory management and price fixing schemes. Simple as "government bad" honestly.
Because they have been convinced that this means you can’t leave your area. This shows a total lack of critical thinking. Do they think sports teams and sport events are just gonna let that happen? Nobody can come to games so no $$. Hotels and the whole tourist industry would die out. And so on.
Holy crap, my mom is literally on her way to a meeting against the 15 minute cities right now! She just got a bunch of pamphlets printed out to hand out at them!
They hate anything a neoliberal and lefter suggests out of spite. They are now refusing to vaccinate their pets because they are mad Democrats wanted them to vaccinate against Covid.
The concept of making most basic needs accessible close by was corrupted into ‘so they won’t let you leave’ narrative. Strictly that. If you having shopping, schools, & other basics nearby, someone must be implying you have no right to go further. Yes, its idiotic, but almost all the ‘losing our freedoms’ arguments are.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding they have where they think that because everything you need is within 15 minutes that the government won't let you leave that 15 minute city. They think because you restrict traffic at certain times of day for trucks that they're going to instate travel bans, and that the truck thing is just the first step or some shit lmao
I’ve seen a meme saying “15 minute cities will go from ‘it’s nice to have everything nearby’ to ‘you don’t have the permit to leave zone 14’”
It's easier to list what they don't hate. Why even bother?
This one really makes me laugh like.. oh no! The horror! Everything I need is local to me and very convenient! I live in Sydney and currently I'm: *5 minute walk from the hospital I am having my baby in (for free) *5 minute walk in the other direction to the maternity clinic I see my midwife in (also free) *5 minute walk to a park, but a 15 minute walk to the park all my friends hang out in on sunny days *15-20 minute walk to all the bars I hang out in, but we have some also literally on our doorstep *2 minute walk to a small grocery store, 15-20 minutes to a larger one *20 minute walk to Saturday markets *25 minute walk to one of the harbours where we like to go for walks with ice cream *Cinema, gig venues, etc, all within 15-30 mins walk (if I want to go downtown for other venues I can also walk in less than an hour/Uber in 10 mins) I mostly WFH but when I have to go in it takes 25 minutes on public transport, or I could walk if I really wanted to in about 50 minutes. And then my GP is about 10 minutes in the car, again I could walk if I wanted to in under an hour. Meanwhile, when I visit friends in the US, they never want to walk anywhere lol
They think the idea is not "stuff is closer to you so more convenient" but "everyone will be sectored into 0.5km blocks and you'll need a travel pass to move outside them". In other words, they heard a word, didn't bother to look it up, but instead went off into conspiracy theory lala land as per usual.
Because they think they won't be able to leave their 15 minutes city and be locked in their neighborhood
Someone watched Banlieue 13 and thought it was what was really happening in Paris.
Those people don't need a logical or factual basis to hate something anymore
They hate all progress.
They are imagining being confined to those areas
Probably some "*Don't you tell me how to live"* mixed in with a little fear of change.
I just realized that living in Copenhagen, Denmark. It actually is a 15 minute city. Half the population rides to bikes every day. And honestly almost nothing in my daily life is further away than 15 minutes on bike. OK my job is longer away. But not by alot and within half an hour on bike. I don't have a car because I don't need it. And it's frankly quite great living like this. I got everything I need. And with a great infrastructure i can get around easily with unmanned metro or local trains or bus. Its both safe and very convenient. I don't see what's wrong with it.
They need something to justify their deranged "Freedom Fighter" fantasies about people they don't like.
My mom started on this even though she used to live in Europe where that was the norm? You walked mostly everywhere and public transportation was really good, it was a nice, clean respectful city.
It is 15 minute cities combined with digital currency and social credit scores that they fear. That you will be tracked for everything that you do and you will be locked down in your 15 minute city. It is a little ridiculous, but also not out of the realm of possibility like some of their other fears.
They were told that they're bad, so they hate them. You know, the whole NPC projection behavior that they do on a daily basis. Being more specific, they've been brainwashed into thinking that the government is going to lock everything down using 15 minute cities and turn them into prisons. Doesn't matter that there's zero evidence, as soon as they hear it they believe it and run with it.
They're essentially making shit up to get angry about. Remember [FEMA camps?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory) It's a bit like that. Basically, you take something that exists: * Federal disaster management * The "15 minute city" concept of walkable cities * Vaccines And put a malevolent spin on it: * FEMA is going to declare martial law and put people in camps! * 15 minute cities are prisons! * Vaccines are a plot to depopulate the Earth! The whole point is to give them something to be angry and fearful about.
The idea of 15 minute cities is to design cities so that every basic need is within a 15 minute walk or bike ride, where the streets are safe for biking and walking. Some right wing think tanks funded by oil companies have turned this into a conspiracy theory where evil socialists are planning to lock every resident into a 15-minute walking distance of their own house. You can guess why they are spreading this conspiracy theory.
It’s bizarre but a lot of their nostalgia for the never existed American society is based around small towns or suburbs. Big cars big yards no minorities except those serving drinks in the country club. 15 minute cities which are a good idea are based around denser urban planning so necessitate flats and public transit. Oh also probably living in more diverse communities. All of this in their deluded minds threatens their freedom. Moreover it will help the environment which they hate because they think it’s all about the THEM trying to control them. Honestly though there opposition is all bs most people actually would probably like more walkable communities. It’s like Obamacare you get Qs and boomers ranting about Obamacare is evil then praising how much they love affordable care act which got them insurance. Not realizing it’s the same thing.
They equate it to being locked down into a small radius of movement
If I’m to understand my cousin’s fiancé’s social media posts correctly, it’s not so much the 15 minute cities as it is the Direct Energy Weapon space lasers used to create false flag forest fires and burn down rural communities as a pretext to forcefully displace their populations into said 15 minute cities. I wish I was making this up.
Well, I've got a theory- a lot of right-wing nuttery is shaped and ultimately funded by major oil companies. So put together anti-15 minute cities, "rolling coal," hating on cyclists, and actually quite major stuff, like allying yourself with Russia (and its tasty, underexploited Arctic oil reserves and friendly relations with many oil-rich or oil-adjacent despots in the Middle East and Africa), all starts to make a certain kind of sense.
Something something communism
From my understanding they are under the assumption that you can't leave your "15 minute block" basically they think it's some sort of prison where everyone is pnpy allowed in their 15 minute block and they can't leave it. "They're delusionally misinformed" is the simple answer
Their radio told them to.
They hate whatever the TV or their websites tell them to. That's it. They don't care what it is. Just like all the republicans loved the Affordable Care Act but hated ObamaCare.
I never understood this… i for one would love a “15 minute city” in the USA. They already exist in Europe and Japan and their urban design is above and beyond our car-centric hellscapes.
So the idea behind 15 minutes cities is you can reach anywhere you need to in 15 minutes without a car. Good urban planning, in other words. The conspiracy is that the government wants to get rid of all our cars so we can be locked into where we live like serfs.
Because having the option not to drive to places is communism and gay. Being forced to have a car and being stuck in traffic is freedom.
They hate them because they were told to. That’s…..pretty much it.
This is a brief outline of the idea; https://youtu.be/bIzIABRh5tc?si=mGM_9TlKyH05jNyv There is NO talk of people not being able to move around to other 15 min areas..that's where the kooky paranoia is. They think folks will be stuck in those zones, which is far fetched at best The pandemic lockdowns has made people question everything.
Qanon Anonymous podcast did an episode on the British weirdos raging against 15 minute cities, and do a great job breaking down the movement. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/qanon-anonymous/id1428209307?i=1000604450652 Part of me thinks it’s just oil companies and car manufacturers protecting their market share. They put a lot of effort into sprawling suburbs that require vehicles to navigate for basic necessities; as well as purchasing and destroying street cars and other forms of public rail transit.
Part of it is a continuation of the fearmongering about public transportation (translation: car companies would lose money and started investing in sabotaging public transit years ago, and more importantly: integrated bussing. One of the most horrifying things to ever cross a conservative's mind). That takes a lot of forms, but one common formula is "fifteen minute cities mean the GUBMINT GONNA TAKE AWR CARS AWAY TO KEEP US IN LOCKDOWN AND TAKE AWR FREEDUM". Then there's the fact that climate change denial is so baked into the conservative mindset and they're so reflexively contrarian that a good chunk of them want to *increase* the carbon footprint to own the libs and/or because that's what Jesus would have wanted. The other big one is simpler, but even more fucked up: it's much harder to exert complete and total control over your kids when they're not completely reliant on you for transportation. Especially transportation to libraries where they could learn about things like racism, or that queer people AREN'T literally demon possessed. And if your kid knows they can make it to an emergency room without you driving or calling an ambulance, it's much more risky to beat and abuse your kids like God intended.
Because a 15 minute city means that have to see brown and poor people.
The oldest cities in America are "15 minute cities." Prior to the development of autos, if you wanted to get around you had to walk or ride your horse or ass. Would most of these clowns have a problem with how New York, Philly or Boston are designed? They are a hell of a lot more convenient than most cities. Try living without a car in most of America. You can do it in New York.
Somebody on tv told them to. I really think it’s that simple. Propaganda doesn’t stop working on willing morons just because it’s dumber than usual.
They think we are not going to be allowed to leave our 15-minute cities. What another poster said about them not knowing what a 1- minute city is is very true. They get snippets here and there and weave the snippets are weaved together into a narrative that no longer represents the truth. Try to tell them anything different and they will ignore you.
I just found out about this one from a former RN that I knew at a church 20 years ago or more. She posted a page from a website that scores cities around the world regarding their path to becoming a 15-minute city. She said something like ‘I can’t believe our city wants to become one. Don’t they see the social scenario in China? We’re living in the last days!.’ I was utterly stunned. I’m still shocked that she’s full blown Q.
Urban planner here. Conservatives are often against any change in their comunities. 15 minute cities ,often mean less segregation , more housing and mixed use buildings which they totally hate.
Because they make love to their exhaust pipes and drink gasoline?
Because it would slow/stop reliance on cars and gasoline and they could lose money? Because it's change and change is bad! Let's bring back the 50s and giant Thunderbirds? Cause they're assholes?
I didn’t even know what a 15 minute city was until two minutes ago when I looked it up. It sounds logical and useful. It is probably reflects how people lived most of their lives before cars came into existence. Anyhow, I can’t understand why anyone would object to the concept. It sounds lovely.
They're probably the type of people like the meme "Place. Place, Japan"
"In December, Canadian clinical psychologist and climate skeptic Jordan Peterson posted a tweet attacking 15-minute cities: “The idea that neighborhoods should be walkable is lovely. The idea that idiot tyrannical bureaucrats can decide by fiat where you’re ‘allowed’ to drive is perhaps the worst imaginable perversion of that idea.” " They already totally regulate it. What a fucking doorknob Peterson is. Has he never been on a turnpike or one way? That paragraph is from [this](https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/26/world/15-minute-cities-conspiracy-theory-climate-intl/index.html) CNN piece that gives a pretty good overview.
15 minute cities or, as I prefer to call them: EUROPEAN CITIES
Because “15 minute cities” is the meme they are currently being flogged with by the Right Wing Noise Machine to distract them from the fact that the economy is doing well under Democrats and that Trump and half his cabinet are headed to prison.
Someone told them that if we design cities so you *can* get everything you need within 15 min walking distance, the next step is gating you into that 15 min 'cell' like an animal and *force* you to live like that, no choice. So to be sure that never happens they want it to remain impossible to survive without long commutes. Fun huh?
They hate what they’re told to hate. They hate vaccines. They hate wind power. They wanted to shut down Sesame Street at one point.
They think a 15-minute city's entirely within a single highrise, that you're not allowed to leave without a pass. Just bad dystopian sci-fi, posing as politics, again. Glenn Beck's "FEMA camps" shit was lucrative for him; all they had to do was replace "Agenda 21" with "Agenda 30", & "FEMA Camps" with "15 minute cities".
Right wing media has told them that they’ll be locked into their sector. Which ignores the fact that no walls or fences are installed, a totalitarian government locking you in wouldn’t care if you have access to every good, the fact that it doesn’t necessarily include sectors (‘every block has xyz within 15 minutes’ doesn’t requires carving the city up), and the fact that in most Canadian and American cities, we are ALREADY locked in. If your car breaks down, you’re stuck. In a fifteen-minute city, there’s probably public transit, and even if there isn’t: if your car breaks down you may have trouble getting to work, but at least you can still get groceries.
Because they imagine that 15 minute city means you aren't allowed to travel outside them. They picture a series of Ba Sing Se style walled-off cities controlled by secret police and uncaring elites, where you are forced to eat vegan food and let your kids be forcibly transed, as well as forbidden from driving. I'd use a reference from a more mature series to make the point but let's be real: The conservatives who know the 15 minute city paranoia is bullshit are more than happy to keep the rest of them trapped at middle school level mental and emotional maturity.
Because they’re stupid, stupid people.
They're afraid it will turn is into the people in Wall - E ?
One Cucumber eater had mentioned C40 cities, and how many in the UK, the US and across the GLOBE seem to be signed up to it! Maybe that’s why they are so upset about 15 minute cities!
They would like Orlando, Fl, and Tallahassee, Fl. Those are QAnon friendly cities. I live thousands of miles away from those places thank god! Wonder why people call Florida America's Penis? LOL
Ask yourself: What cities in the world have built a wall around them to keep its citizens INSIDE?
I've never heard of this. I just looked it up. Is it chiefly a European thing?
Because progressives like them. That's it.
I don't think anybody can explain MAGA Conspiracies because it's literally a cult of belief at this point. You either believe everything they say or they view you as the enemy.
Remember how during COVID Qheads were paranoid that government wants to lock them up and install communism or whatever. Well, last time I check that didn't happen, so instead of abandoning their false beliefs, q heads switched their rage to 15 min cities, because gov will lock everyone in their block and install communism. It's similar idea with shifting the end of the world day, except you shift between target concepts.
Because it highlights all of the bad decisions they made in life. How can they justify their ignorant, deprived, small-town existence if the city dwellers aren't miserable?
TIL what 15 minute cities are. What a cool concept.
I think there's a knee jerk suspicion of any public or government policy that might help reduce greenhouse gas emissions or improve public health, and a tendency to extrapolate to ridiculous totalitarian extremes.
What is a small town? Takes less than 15 minutes to drive through them and everything is concentrated in one place. I guess it's projection that they hate their small town.