“15-Minute City” Conspiracies Have It Backwards

One of the most genuinely confusing phenomena over the past few years has been the conspiracy theories surrounding “15 minute cities” that have caused people to see things we advocate for — traffic calming, quality bike infrastructure, and public transit — as government control, overreach, and even tyranny.

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References:

[Imthefake]

another point that can be made is that most car oriented suburban development have only one way in or out, making it extremely easy to control who goes in or out for an authoritarian government; urban neighborhoods on the other hand are much more permeable, and many apartment complexes even have more than one way in or out

[Apelles]

Nothing says "personal freedom" like only being able to live, work, shop, learn, and vacation where the government lays down roads. lol

[garcjr]

Living in Phoenix my definition of "Freedom" is not sitting in traffic. I'm not going to lie, I like cars, but sitting in traffic completely defeats the purpose of enjoying driving.
Building car centric cities only benefits cars (a little bit and even that's a stretch). Building transit oriented and pedestrian friendly cities benefits everybody including cars (by a lot).

[fernbedek]

Let’s not forget highways bulldozing whole neighbourhoods and serving as, effectively, government build walls to effectively divide cities into zones that would be easy to control.

[tuckerlovesbernie]

This isn’t conspiracy, it’s car dependency at work. Most people can’t conceive having everything they need within 15 minutes of where they live so they truly believe it’s constricting. I’m sure the big automakers aren’t complaining about this…

[darwinskeeper]

I'm a car nut, and I think one advantage of walkable cities with decent mass transit is that it should get a lot of bad drivers off the road.

[slangster]

3500 pounds to transport one 140 pound person. Average speed 25mph. Parked for 96.4% of its lifetime. 4.3 years inside a vehicle per lifetime, (about the same as the average person spends eating). Average cost of owning a vehicle in Canada: 12, 000 dollars per year. Efficiency is clearly one of our greatest attributes.

[Schrodinger_]

Imagine advocating for more freedom of construction options, and _removal_ of laws that force you to build sprawling suburban areas, being "government control and restriction".

[kursdragon]

One thing I wish you guys mentioned was the INSANELY OBVIOUS fact that literally just all of the roads that you drive on are controlled by the government. Like you quite literally cannot drive from one place to another unless the government has paved a road for you to get there. Walking somewhere is absolutely more freeing as there needs to be much less government involvement to provide the infrastructure for you to walk somewhere.

[erikh]

I swear half the people who are "scared of the gov't restricting where you go" don't think twice that they have to drive on gov't built roads, or regularly have to use TOLL ROADS. Roads that you literally have to pay to use, and are tracked by license plate in doing so

[mrdiego]

some urbanists were send death treats and over this conspiracy. Living 15 minutes away from work, I never paid attention to the gas prices until someone next to me complained.

[rolandxb]

This is an amazing observation! The irony is so funny, too. Never thought about it, but cars absolutely involve more government control than cycling, walking, or even public transit.

[falsificationism]

THANK YOU for addressing this! People who should know better need to get up to speed on this issue.

Most people aren't conspiracy theorists, but the '15-minute city conspiracy' anchors the conversation, so the whole idea of good urbanism begins to FEEL controversial, sowing doubt and poisoning the conversation. That's the real conspiracy.

[johanna]

Exactly. I will never understand people who say cars give them freedom. I suppose in some ways they CAN, but only when you have the CHOICE to drive vs. other forms of transport. If you can't choose, it's not freedom.

[simonkemfors]

I saw a long discussion on a picture of Kowloon Walled City over how that's what people mean when they mean "walkable cities". WHO HAS EVER, EVER, EVER ADVOCATED FOR THAT? That's like claiming that traffic engineers want to entirely bury the Serengeti, Yellowstone, and the Okavango in asphalt, it's so patently absurd that I genuinely don't understand how anyone could ever think that. The missing middle is apparently housing with density between 2 000/km2 and 2 000 000/km2

[Whatshisname]

Not to mention that a lack of transport options in car dependent areas means that children are brought up in an environment where they are dependent on others to move around. This engenders a lack of independence in children and teenagers. When they grow up and move away from home they are unable to adapt to their environment as easily as others.

One example of this is a kid of one of my friends who grew up dependent on her parents to get to school, parties, activities and later work. She moved to college and soon realized she’d never learnt how to cycle. The college is in Amsterdam!

Why would we do this to our kids? Bring them up in an environment so devoid of individual freedom that they never learn a basic life skill.

[thomaspreston-pede]

I was thinking the same thing you pointed out with regards to data collection in cars, when my sister got her new car. Her explanation as to why she bought a gas car was because she was worried that an electric car might “spy” on her. Dude they all have the same computers and capacity to monitor you, just electric cars do it slightly cleaner

[arferbargel]

You missed the bit about car centrism requiring that, in order to participate in society, you must expend a relatively large sum of money on a steadily depreciating "asset" that comes with significant ongoing costs (fuel, insurance, maintenance, sick body kits).

[Urbanhandyman]

The human capacity to resist change of any kind is infinite. The 15-minute conspiracy is just a symptom of that mindset. In order to resist change a person will accept ANY reasoning, no matter how far fetched, to "build a case" against said change. In that context, the mechanics of any conspiracy theory will make sense to an outside observer while the followers will become absolute believers. It's both bizarre and fascinating to see.

[NoobixCube]

Purely by accident, I've discovered I live in a fifteen minute city, and the craziest thing is, I can leave any time I want. I have _three_ supermarkets within a fifteen minute bike ride. Closer than any of those I have two corner stores and a fresh food market. Not that it's relevant to me, but there is a public school nearby, and two private religious ones (all of which closer than any of those supermarkets). Between the two corner stores there's a street of shops, including a bakery, a laundromat, a post office, a couple of cafes, and a whole bunch of other stuff I never cared enough about to pay attention. Right outside my door I have a tram line, and I'm a fifteen minute walk from a train station, and a five minute walk from a bus stop. My job is now a five minute bike ride away. I just got lucky that a place I applied to online just happened to be around the corner from me.

The only bad thing about my current address is it's basically at the intersection of two stroads...