15 minute cities coming to your area soon

Makes me pleased to live in a small village near a small market town.

My city, Southend isn’t going to adopt the scheme.
When we lived abroad we didn’t pay anything if we didn’t go outside the zone. If we wanted to go into the city you bought a vignette for that day/days. Or, you bought a years vignette ( road tax)

Big brother is watching you sounds very restrictive !

No I ve never heard of it and don’t like the sound if it what if you need to travel by car to a hospital or similar weekly what if you use your allowance up and a loved one becomes ill and you’re fined for visiting or something I can just see so many downfalls
I remember years ago because of pollution in their cities Greece had a scheme where people could only use their cars on alternative days I ve never heard how that went ?

Me too GSM I don't need the cities!!
But 100 times a year is quite a lot if you don't need to go into a city for work - it is twice a week!
What do workers do if there is not public transport.
The bus and train companies are going to have to up their game!

Yes, petunia I have read about this but I feel your interpretation of it sounds a bit negative to me whereas my reading about it has lead me to feel quite positively towards it as a people-centered way to live.

I don’t have a problem with big brother cctv cameras etc. I have never heard of this scheme but it does sounds futuristic like social control a kind of curfew. People living in dormer towns away from work places facilities services etc. Not sure how this could work in the wider communities large cities etc.

MerylStreep

My city, Southend isn’t going to adopt the scheme.
When we lived abroad we didn’t pay anything if we didn’t go outside the zone. If we wanted to go into the city you bought a vignette for that day/days. Or, you bought a years vignette ( road tax)

We have AC and GC your way, have been watching this closely, especially as AC & partner work out of the area and we are on hand for the GC

Unless the penalties are prohibitive I can’t see it working.

I wonder how the scheme will work for people who already rely on their cars to get to work now. There may be no viable alternative for many people, unless all the alternatives are in place ( safer cycle and walk ways, joined up and adequate public transport, park and rides, care share schemes etc. If the Citie system is already in place before people move into an area- then ( in a perfect world - with full choices!) people will already have planned where to live to take account of the travel restrictions, available public transport and where they need to work/ attend etc. With housing costs and shortages, need to move jobs many times in a lifetime- needs of children and health and welfare needs of all ( so people cannot just up and move to get be near a bus route or walking commute) - I can see that very careful planning would be needed!

BlueBelle

Big brother is watching you sounds very restrictive !

No I ve never heard of it and don’t like the sound if it what if you need to travel by car to a hospital or similar weekly what if you use your allowance up and a loved one becomes ill and you’re fined for visiting or something I can just see so many downfalls
I remember years ago because of pollution in their cities Greece had a scheme where people could only use their cars on alternative days I ve never heard how that went ?

The system in Athens was based on a even/odd number on registration plates, so you could use your car only on alternate days.

Those who could, just bought an extra car (opposite of what they already had).

Athens still has really high air pollution.

Big brother strikes again. It’s unacceptable and a way to control the population.

Councils will need to ensure that there are good and sufficient public services within each zone. I'm thinking education, medical facilities, libraries and leisure facilities etc. If you are only able to leave your zone in a car for 100 times per year, those passes would soon be used up. Imagine being stuck in a zone that was poorly supplied with shops or the shops available were pricey and the nearest supermarket was in another zone. Or having a medical complaint that entailed frequent trips to a hospital in another zone. For me, I would be concerned also if my grandchildren's school and out of school activities was in another zone(s) and I was restricted in picking them up in the car to ferry them here there and everywhere several times per week.

I used to visit my elderly mother almost every day. When she lived in her sheltered apartment I could easily walk there but when she was forced by her physical condition to live in a residential care home, I couldn’t walk there. A hundred days is only a little over three months. How would I have visited my elderly mother almost every day with this scheme? Pay big fines to visit my mother? Or just not bother to visit mother? It’s totally unacceptable!

It wouldn't really affect us except for hospital appointments at the city hospital which luckily at the moment are few and far between.

Fortunately my village has just about everything a city has, all within walking distance, except John Lewis!

I see, from this thread, that the right-wing interpretations of what is an interesting planning process, which has been around since the 1920s (although re-named and to an extent re-invigorated by Carlos Moreno in 2016), are gaining traction.

To quote Professor Moreno, describing some of the claims of critics of the idea:

“Their lies are enormous. ‘You will be locked in your neighbourhood; cameras will signal who can go out; if your mother lives in another neighbourhood, you will have to ask for permission to see her, and so on’.”

Hard to argue with him, when the Tory MP Nick Fletcher called it an ‘international socialist concept’; a GBNews presenter said ‘Creepy local authority bureaucrats would like to see your entire existence boiled down to the duration of a quarter of an hour,”said it was ‘dystopian plan’ and would create ‘a surveillance culture that would make Pyongyang envious’; the idiot Farage described the concept as ‘climate change lockdown’; and online media has reported the nonsense about roadblocks, and only being able to drive 100 days a year, which I see reported here as fact.

It’s not fact. The proposal in Oxford is for a road filtering system - not roadblocks - on just 6 routes. The filters will only operate between 7am and 7pm. There will be cameras, and those who break some rules will be fined). Cyclists, pedestrians, public transport, taxis and disabled drivers are exempt. 100 trip permits will be available for others, but if that isn’t enough, the answer is simple: even if you don’t have a permit, you will still be able to drive everywhere. You might just need to use a different route or drive around some of the ring road to avoid the traffic filters.

The Oxford scheme, to my eyes, seems to have been badged as ‘15 minute city’ when it really isn’t - although traffic filtering could be part of a 15 minute city planning process, it would not be the whole of it.

Re the Athens scheme: it was bonkers (I lived there when it was first introduced). Athens has four rush hours a day (because siesta) and immense pollution. The scheme was somehow meant to tackle this by allowing drivers to bring their cars into the city centre in alternate days, defined by your number plate. All that happened was that an awful lot of Athenians bought second, cheaper, older and more polluting cars, and registered them for their alternate days.

I was forced to comment on this on another thread Siope.
Some people seem to prefer believe any nonsense spouted by a particular "set". Thete isn't any reading around the matter and no attempt to understand.

Why not introduce more Park and Ride schemes outside cities?
But preferably not on SSSIs.

I agree, Siope. The concept is a return to a time before mass industrialisation and over-reliance on the car created urban sprawl. In it's purest sense, it will make use of new technologies to reforge a sense of community.

MIT's Kent Larson in his 2012 TED talk gives a brief synopsis of the historical context and the design innovations then in development.

www.ted.com/talks/kent_larson_brilliant_designs_to_fit_more_people_in_every_city?language=en

petunia I live just outside Oxford, and I think you exagerate a bit. Nothing I have read in the Oxford Times, which covers this issue in detail, has mentioned any restrictions on the number of times you can drive out of your zone into another. certainly not the restrictions that you suggest.

I have read the 15 minute city plans, although I understood, the intention was to apply it as widely as possible, and I can see all kinds of practical problems. It will require many more doctors surgeries, for example, with lots more facilities, lots of smaller supermarkets dotted in lots of city suburbs, rather than large ones on the outskirts. This will mean people having access to a much smaller range of food than they are used to. How do you get the weekly shop home on a bus?

I think it is a lovely idea and I hope it comes to pass, but currently it lies just on the edge of cloud cuckoo land.

Thanks notspaghetti I missed the other thread.

I think there are all sorts of questions that are relevant to 15 minute cities - issues such as how to ensure genuinely equitable communities, particularly in relation to quality of services? What about people who can’t work within 15 minutes of home? Optimum population density? And so on.

But it’s beyond me that the response from far too many (not specifically/exclusively Gransnet) is to condemn any move towards walkable, less car dominated, communities, from, as you say, a position of little knowledge.

I don't see that it is worse for people living within the City than it is for people living on the immediate outskirts commuting in.

The Oxford scheme has a deservedly bad press. The 15-minute-city and other anti-congestion measures have become hopelessly confused in the public mind.

Good bus services will make or break these schemes, so until/unless buses are properly funded and run as public utilities the results will be resentment, chaos and misery.

I would like to live somewhere with shops/doctor/dentist within walking distance.
I have to drive everywhere as I live in a tiny village with only a church and pub out in the countryside.

MerylStreep

Unless the penalties are prohibitive I can’t see it working.

Any penalty will be prohibitive to those who can't afford to pay it.

I hate the idea. It is limiting the freedom of the poor whilst allowing the rich to pollute as much as they like. I would much rather see ecological concern rewarded by investment in free or cheap public transport that is safe, reliable and clean.

I'd like to see the detail, as these bright ideas often take no account of people with restricted mobility (not necessarily registered disabled) who can't easily walk or cycle very far. Also, what about those who live in a suburb or town outside of the city limits? Do they have unlimited travel, or none at all? How would the scheme deal with people with multi-car households? Could one family member use the others' cars to go into town several times, or are there checks and balances?