That's okay then. You are absolutely sure you have been politeness itself and only others are in the wrong.
Don't you think you have taken this far enough off topic now? All about Galaxy isn't its title. But then you don't actually want to discuss the subject if people don’t agree with you, do you?
Gransnet forums
News & politics
Rishi Sunak and other Tories attack 15 minute cities
(176 Posts)A Sorbonne professor, Carlos Moreno, has formulated the idea of 15 Minute Cities. These will be somewhere where " where inhabitants have access to all the services they need to live, learn and thrive within their immediate vicinity - and shares ideas for making urban areas adapt to humans, not the other way around"
According to the NY Times Moreno is now Public Enemy No 1 because of the widespread belief that he wants to ban cars. He does not but he hopes that by people being able to walk or cycle for 15 minutes to get to what they need dependency on cars will be reduced.
This is taken from Forbes Magazine:
After coining the term “15-minute city” Moreno was invited to give talks internationally. But with this growing profile—and the swift acceptance of his simple-to-grasp defining concept—he became the target of hate. He is often on the receiving end of personal abuse on social media.
“They insult me, call me human trash, Neo-fascist or a rotten Latino,” he told me by email last year. He has critics from the left and the right, but in an all too typical Venn diagram of tinfoilhattedness they share climate denial, downplay of Covid harms, and anti-vaxxer beliefs.
“Their lies are enormous,” he exclaimed.
“You will be locked in your neighborhood; cameras will signal who can go out; if your mother lives in another neighborhood, you will have to ask for permission to see her and so on.”
He added, in disgust, they “sometimes post pictures of concentration camps.”
“The conspiracists see a big global agreement,” he said.
“As the UN-Habitat, the World Economic Forum, the C40 Global Cities Climate Network, and the Federation of United Local Governments, among others, have supported the [15-Minute-City] concept, it feeds their fantasies that I am involved in the ‘invisible leadership’ of the world.”
Moreno has been shocked to see his concept derided by the U.K. government, with the U.K. transport secretary trashing 15-Minute Cities in his speech today at the annual Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
“Right across our country, there is a Labour-backed movement to make cars harder to use, to make driving more expensive, and to remove your freedom to get from A to B how you want,” Transport Secretary Mark Harper told the conference.
“I am calling time on the misuse of so-called 15-minute cities,” he added.
“What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate, is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and that they police it all with CCTV,” Harper said.
According to The Sun, Prime Minister Sunak “takes aim at so-called ‘“15 Minute Cities’” to make everyday essentials bike friendly - vowing to make sure drivers are not ‘aggressively restricted’.”
“Associating the 15-Minute City again with so-called liberty-restricting measures is tantamount to aligning with the most radical and anti-democratic elements of this movement.”
This is from Politico:
Broadly, the idea is to cut down on long commutes and car emissions, and improve people's quality of life by ensuring they have access to quality services where they live.
That's not the way it's being seen in Oxford.
News that the city council adopted a plan to embrace the 15-minute city model prompted fierce backlash, with local groups and public figures alleging that authorities planned to restrict residents to their immediate neighborhoods and strictly police their movements. A rally attend by thousands in Oxford last month claimed to be protesting plans to reconfigure the city as a "Stalinist-style, closed city" and the eventual enslavement of local citizens.
The outrage has been fanned by popular right-wing media figures and politicians, who seized on the issue as an outrageous example of government overreach.
"You will only have 15 minutes of freedom here in the U.K.," said the far-right media personality Katy Hopkins, who compared the scheme to pandemic-era lockdowns and claimed authorities will use facial recognition technology to police residents.
News commentator Mark Dolan denounced the plan as "dystopian," and similarly warned that the city planned to use "numberplate recognition cameras, installed everywhere" to create "a surveillance culture that would make Pyongyang envious."
The issue even made its way to the House of Commons, where Tory MP Nick Fletcher described 15-minute cities as an "international socialist concept" whose ultimate purpose was to "take away personal freedoms."
Although these alarmist claims of mass surveillance and loss of individual freedom are indeed far-fetched, the anxiety and unrest unleashed in Oxford fits into a broader picture of local pushback across Europe against green measures that are perceived as an attack on personal freedoms — particularly when they affect personal car use.
Given that most people are used to our high streets becoming deserts with only charity shops and cafes and not much else, surely the idea of the facilities that we need being much closer to our homes, surely the 15 minute city is a good idea?
What do you think?
What on earth are you on about. I have mentioned the real benefits I could see from having facilities within easy reach, I have mentioned the impact that not driving has on the families I work with, I have vaguely discussed the under use of some of my local services. If I was only happy to talk to those who agree with me I would have to find someone as content to sit on the fence as I am, and someone who was just thinking through this issue. That would be quite tricky so I think I will avoid it.
DaisyAnneReturns
You will be, if you keep saying that I may not call those who are a long way to the right of me, and even further to the right of those on here on the left, "far-right".
🤔
That may be your perception but it does not make it true.
Disagreeing with such a concept does not make anyone far-right. Not even if it means that they agree with a Conservative Prime Minister on this one issue.
It just means they have a different viewpoint.
Quite Callistemon.
Ah, yes, "the {Leeds} council went for gearing the putting of shops and services in communities and within walking distance of people’s homes." unlike my local one. That is the kind of thoughtful planning we need, not allowing speculative builders to put up vast estates of housing with at most a small "corner shop" as a gesture to the provision of the shops and services that a community needs.
The houses are mostly "luxury townhouses" or two-storey at least, never any single-storey ones suitable for older or disabled people, and never including anywhere for the GP practice, the dentist, the library, the community centre, the day nursery, the bus route accessible within 5 minutes of every home (including the single storey ones for the elderly or disabled) all the "shops and services" that a community needs.
That is the kind of thoughtful planning we need,
I agree Eldgran.
However, the article talks about the fierce backlash ... fanned by popular right-wing media figures and politicians, who seized on the issue as an outrageous example of government overreach.
Perhaps this thread will have quelled some of the fears deliberately stirred up by ... ... ... (I have been told I may not use descriptions similar to the article) and allowed those not understanding the simple-to-grasp defining concept another chance to see the facts without the far-right rhetoric.
I feel very sorry for Carlos Moreno, who just seems to have had a straight-forward good idea. Another sample of the down-side of the internet.
(I decided to ignore the local censorship 
)
It’s ok saying you are ‘not going to use the descriptions similar to the article’ but you have done exactly that by omission. Why so aggressive (passive or otherwise)?
I don’t understand. I am not arguing against 15 minute cities, although I have doubts about their viability, but why has a discussion about town planning become adversarial and how is an opinion one way or the other right or left wing? This is a very strange thread.
Doodledog just tell me, truthfully and factually, what the OP is about.
Doodledog
It’s ok saying you are ‘not going to use the descriptions similar to the article’ but you have done exactly that by omission. Why so aggressive (passive or otherwise)?
I don’t understand. I am not arguing against 15 minute cities, although I have doubts about their viability, but why has a discussion about town planning become adversarial and how is an opinion one way or the other right or left wing? This is a very strange thread.
I did not say I was not going to use the descriptions similar to the article
I did say I have been told I may not use descriptions similar to the article.
Why write a lie, the twisting of my words?
Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.
Your meaning most certainly wasn't the same and no I don't "see what you mean".
I am not being aggressive. You simply don't like people not agreeing with you. I am talking to the OP. Something you seem to find unreasonable. Why?
DaisyAnneReturns
Your meaning most certainly wasn't the same and no I don't "see what you mean".
I am not being aggressive. You simply don't like people not agreeing with you. I am talking to the OP. Something you seem to find unreasonable. Why?
You are being aggressive, DAR. You may not recognise it but other people do.
Anyway, you've probably killed this thread now. Well done...
If people are able to reach facilities such as shops and surgeries, and find jobs, within a 15-minute walking or cycling distance, fewer people will need to drive for their everyday needs. If better and cheaper public transport is available, again, fewer people will need to drive to reach the big stores and hospitals. I live in a suburb where there is a parade of shops within 10 minutes' walk - and accessible to users of wheelchairs and mobility scooters, thanks to the network of pathways round the central 'village green'. We had a branch library, closed because of funding cuts, and still have a church and community centre. (This is a 1960s estate). The plan for the 15-minute cities does not aim to force people to stay in their neighbourhoods.
It seems that being factual and truthful is now called aggressive *Maisie.
I will ask you the same question. What was the OP about?
Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.
vintage1950 We live in a completely diffeent landscape to that even 50 years ago. Then people left school got a job locally and that was that. All the filities they could need were in their local town.
Nowadays people train for thousand's of jobs that do not exist locally, although they may exist in a wider area. As I said up thread, doctors practies have amalgamated, no more sole practioners scattered round an area. Major retail units are on the periphery of towns, not the centre, as are commercial, industrial and science parks. People change jobs regulalry and while a house may be close to one job, it may not be close to where their job has moved to, but they do not want to move house, so stay put.
15 minute cities will work when we have completely redesigned and rebuilt our existing communities, Demolished out of town retail parks and got big retalilers to move back to the small units they abandoned in order to have bigger units on the outskirts. decentralised medical care in its many forms, rebuilt secondary schools so they go back to one or two streams only.
Its got nothing to do with force, but everything to do with practicalities. It can be done but do we really want to go round demolishing pertfectly good buildings: factories, shops, schools, hospitals, to replace them with lots of little facilities, where is the land to build on?
It is like so many things that get floated about, lovely ideas, but no one has actually had a good look round and worked out aand explained how it can be done - and, of course worked out the cost, in money and in the environemental cost, emissions, demolishing good functional buildings.
I agree Monica the UK and how we live our lives here has changed dramatically since then.
I would like to see some new towns built in the right places with all the facilities if possible, but that doesn’t mean people will use them and not go elsewhere.
A wonderful new community was planned in my area, where everyone would walk to work, haave everything local and car ownership would be restricted because of this. But the site was close to a motorway junction and less than 10 miles from the many science parks, industril parks etc etc that surround Oxford. It didn't go ahead, but how those floating the idea thought they would get everyone working locally in the community was never explained.
A housing estate was built next to a major research park, the idea was that those working on the park would buy the houses (they were affordable on the salaries being earned. 5 years after the estate was built a survey was done and only one in ten houses contained anyone working at the science facility. The occupants of the other 9 houses worked elsewhere. Again it was near a busy dual carriage way and many people lived there because of the easy access and because the housing was cheaper than in the big towns where they worked.
Tory gaslighting. Just ignore them.
Who's 15 minute walk are these to be based on? The distance travelled by a 20 year old is a lot greater than this pair or oldies could manage on a good day
That’s a fair point 😂
I've always tried to live in an area where as much as possible is available locally, near the kids schools, friends, shops, GP, dentist, park, sports facilities and pubs/restaurants/live music venues and so on... I like to walk and cycle to everywhere I need to go on an everyday basis. Oddly, it sounds like I've been looking for or enjoying 15 minute neighbourhoods most of my adult life! After growing up in a very rural area with poor bus services and the lingering aftershock and isolation that followed the Beeching cuts, this sounds like a very sensible idea. Good to have the car for longer journeys where we have to carry a lot of stuff but could certainly cut down on the driving if this sort of scheme goes through and informs planning - no more new estates with no shops, schools or doctors..... Why are some people so opposed to real structural change like this? It's not all done to imprison us and take away our rights and there are plenty of better things to object to if we want to try and hang on to individual freedoms - mass surveillance, cashless societies, Public Order Bills, potential exit from European Court of Human Rights.
EEJit
Who's 15 minute walk are these to be based on? The distance travelled by a 20 year old is a lot greater than this pair or oldies could manage on a good day
Not mine, by the time I got there the shops would be shut again.
Jess20 I don't think it is the concept of neighbourhoods with everything nearby that people are concerned about, it is the speed with which some councils seem to think it can all happen, the order in which the various parts of it are implemented (not setting up the infrastructure of new facilities and transport before they destroy the old travel patterns), and the brutal way in which applying the principle. They don't seem, either, to be catering for those who won't get very far in their 15 minute walk - the old, the disabled, and the sick.
EEJit
Who's 15 minute walk are these to be based on? The distance travelled by a 20 year old is a lot greater than this pair or oldies could manage on a good day
The areas will vary from city to city EEJit . We already have some looking at 20 minute neighbourhoods and some at 15 minute neighbourhoods. The councils will plan them by involving the people who live there.
It's local democracy and it has been around for some time. Its a lot more about place than politics.
Join the conversation
Registering is free, easy, and means you can join the discussion, watch threads and lots more.
Register now »Already registered? Log in with:
Gransnet »