this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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15 Minute City
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Discussion about the path towards 15 minute cities. Post examples and discuss about how to make this a reality!
From Wikipedia: The 15-minute city is an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit ride from any point in the city. This approach aims to reduce car dependency, promote healthy and sustainable living, and improve wellbeing and quality of life for city dwellers.
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Ok, so what’s bothering you about it? Are you gunna elaborate?
Not the person you're referring to, but I'll take a crack at it
The one of the issues is a complete lack of suitable soil to grow all the stuff that's in the diagram. Soil was stripped and compacted to create a parking lot.
You have to break up the pavement, haul it all out, and take it to a recycler or Landfill.
There is a lot of planning of where things go, how big they will be.
We have a pond so we have to design that
It also takes time for trees to grow to the size we want them
"It would have to be built" seems fairly obvious and I wouldn't call that a logistical issue.
No, but the point I'm getting at is that it's easy to make a conceptual drawing, but there's a lot of effort, time and money that goes into making that drawing a reality.
Without consultation and community buy in you also risk those efforts falling flat on their face. If I build a 'granola' (sorry) center in the middle of MAGA country, it's not going to do well.
So we've arrived at Gollum's "we're not in decent places" moment in the discourse.
I'm not sure I follow
Ok so literally none of that is exceptionally difficult. I’m an architectural technologist and have worked on some pretty large projects as well as seen what my landscape architect friend gets up to. I know how this all works. What you’ve described is trivial in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, it will take time, no fucking shit. That is all the more reason to start now. Man, I wish there was a saying for that kinda stuff, probably something to do with trees I dunno.
I also know how this works, and convert surface mines into different land uses. My background is in land reclamation, and now I cover other environmental and engineering disciplines that feed into the broader restoration/conversion process. I'm no slouch when it comes to changing landscapes and land uses.
I don't believe the items I've listed are trivial, and the point of bringing them up was to explain that there are barriers that prevent conversions like this from happening on a broader scale, and to address the original question.
It is good that you want to convert stuff. Yes we should start now. However it all boils down to risk-reward for investors, and right now (justified or not) they precieve conversion as unpalatable for the most part. Why convert or build a green shopping centre from scratch when the one I already paid xxx for is making me tons of money? If it were easy and/or profitable these things would be springing up like vape shops when they first came out.
Fair enough, though I’d like to be clearer about where I’m coming from, I think. When it comes to these projects there’s always a bunch of people who act like someone saying “wouldn’t this be neat?” hasn’t thought of these things or would otherwise think of them as something you could do over a weekend. Like, we know that it will take effort and there’s already so much effort going into objectively wrong, but familiar, projects that we can divert to doing good things. So when someone busts in trying to discourage these projects it’s kinda frustrating. We used to destroy whole neighbourhoods for god-awful highways but a little work to make a community greenspace is always “way too hard”. And while some of your points were at least factual when you said “trees take time to grow” I really had to wonder a) how stupid you think I am and b) how stupid you might be.
To address your last point how often has profit really been a terribly good motivator when it takes longer than twenty minutes to see a return even if that return is guaranteed and far greater? I see the private sector constantly doing extremely stupid things because the people who have all the money usually didn’t earn it and all too often think of themselves as geniuses who shouldn’t be questioned so bad ideas happen all the time. Highway expansions, for example, have a fucking terrible return on investment, at most only barely helping for a year, yet they’re always the go-to. Another golden example is how every single fucking time a pedestrian street is proposed the business owners get pissed off and every single time it happens anyway they actually end up making more money because of it. Just because something is or isn’t happening isn’t a super great indicator for how good an idea it is.
There’s also the point to make that if the landowners can’t be responsible with it then maybe we should do something about that. I’m not saying we need to do away with private business entirely but things paid for with taxes don’t need to be profitable but they do need to provide real value and that’s kinda awesome. Projects like this improve the lives of everyone living nearby and do real good for the people living there which can have immense indirect economic value. A golden example would be USPS, a service which serves everyone and doesn’t avoid or gouge “non-profitable areas” like a private mail service would(and don’t get me started on the theft that is the brokerage fee). Here in Canada the CBC makes sure that people all over the country have access to news and culture even when it doesn’t make them money because that’s important to us as human beings.
I have not called you stupid once, or been uncivil with you while explaining my point of view, yet you continue to be snippy with me. I can peel the flesh off a dozer operator with my word choices, and have done so in the past, but it doesn't help with discussion and only serves to cause the person you're talking to to dig their heels in further.
In this regard, I'm done talking about this topic, but I wanted to say that I get your points about people shooting down this topic. I also agree with you that we need to SUBSTANTIALLY re-evaluate our societal priorities, and not take a capitalist view on just about everything.
I don't have the tools or the knowledge to make a societal change like this, in a world of propaganda, so I'm sticking in my lane and talking about what I do know and the roadblocks that stop a solar punk society from happening. I'm technically strong, but I really suck on the social side, other than knowing that engagement must happen.
Saying it feels like you’re insulting me or otherwise talking down is not the same as saying you did use a specific word. You aren’t the victim here and I’m not saying that I am but if you react like that to someone giving you feedback well, yea, maybe it’s best this discussion is ended.
And yes, for your last bit thank you for coming to that understanding, it is appreciated to hear.
Please stay civil when talking to others, see Code of Conduct
Money. Nobody would ever foot the bill for this and even then, it would take a significant amount of overhead to keep it running. Also, you're never going to convince people to use public transportation. That's just a few things. My point is this is represented as a utopia but it could never exist. Not in the nations current state. The ideal is good in practice but it's getting there that's the issue.
Literally projects like this already exist. In my city we have so many streets that get converted into pedestrian spaces, parks that are well maintained by the city with all sorts of things(the biggest park even has an area for teaching kids how to ride a bicycle on the street), and the people love the public transport. I own a sportscar and it is almost never the best way to get around and that’s awesome. And before you get snippy about why I own it I’m going to a race track in two weeks which is a whole lot more fun than driving around doing errands that I could easily walk to.
Anyway, this is far from impossible. It’s actually astoundingly easy to do. It doesn’t require a utopia to put a fucking park in and building some mid-density communities.
We get it, you’re afraid of change and scared of a little effort. It’s ok but maybe don’t act like you know what you’re talking about when you have zero evidence to support your claims and are running entirely off feelings.
It's very possible to convince people to use public transport. Just make sure it's cheaper and easier to use than the car.