The 15-minute city is a working-class nightmare | A car-free lifestyle is only possible for those whose profession and income permit it.

submitted by stickdog from archive.ph

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[–]comatoseMob 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I wish I didn't have to drive a car to get everywhere. My vehicle is my #1 biggest money pit, I hate it, and the car centric culture/zoning in the USA.

[–]InumaGaming Socialist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's all a result of economic planning for automobiles in the last millennium.

You want to change that, you have to fight and create an economic council that changes the rules.

[–]unagisongsBurn down Reddit! 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Working class people can afford cars? Cars are luxury items. Every American owning a car is simply not economically feasible anymore. Car repossession rates are through the roof. A million cars annually are repossessed in a good economic year. The fifteen minute city conspiracies are laughable when comparing the current nightmare transport situation in the US. The government is letting our transportation networks rot away into nothing. Great! We've got cars with 22 payments behind on to travel on a road, bridges and highways that have not passed inspection in decades to go to jobs that doesn't pay us enough to fuel our petrol fantasies any longer. If ya'll wanted to stop the "15 minute city" it started with the Berlin Wall falling and ending of the first Cold War. Suburbanization made sense when the goal was to spread out citizens to prevent urban populations getting wiped out in nuclear strikes. The elected government officials aren't putting any effort into maintaining the Cold War standard as the average American cannot fucking afford the golden hour lifestyle that long since past.

[–]stickdog[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I have bought used cars with cash my whole lower class life.

Then I get insurance with no collision.

Then I drive only when I need to.

My rent is more than ten times the cost of total annual car expenses. Hell, my health insurance is more than twice the cost of may annual car expenses, assuming that I never use it of course because the deductible is far too high. And I get to drive where I want when I want. It is one of the few things that makes my lower class life bearable.

And you really want to take that away from me because you know better.

[–]RandomCollection 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yep. Population Density tends to increase land values, which tends to increase the rents faster than incomes grow. That's a big part of the reason why New York City is known for its high cost of living.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/2022/03/14/opinion-high-density-zoning-wont-result-lower-housing-costs/9433033002/

People in Tokyo take over an hour on average to commute and they have a mass transit system that New Urbanists can only dream about.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1317534/japan-share-railway-commuters-tokyo-by-commute-time/

This compares unfavourably with the average commute in the US.

https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-commute-time-statistics/

[–]unagisongsBurn down Reddit! 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

People in Tokyo take over an hour on average to commute and they have a mass transit system that New Urbanists can only dream about.

This compares unfavourably with the average commute in the US.

This is an Apples to Oranges comparison. You cannot legitimately compare the largest metropolitan area in Japan to the average American commute. The average differences in population density alone makes it unfeasible for direct comparison, nor does this account for costs associated with driving versus riding.

[–]RandomCollection 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's a completely fair comparison because the New Urbanists are claiming that the nation should be like Tokyo. In other words, abandon the automotive-centric system of transport and single family home suburbs, living in Tokyo-like arrangements that emphasize density, walkability, and mass transport. The claim is that commutes will be shorter (15 minutes), to work and all services that a person may require.

The idea is that the suburbs and exurbs will be emptied and people will move to a few superstar cities. My rebuttal is that higher densities mean longer commutes on average, even in a city like Tokyo where the mass transit makes Jane Jacobs fans have an orgasm.

If that is not the case, then it is totally fair to call it out as a lie.

[–]captainramen🇺🇸🛠️ MAGA Communist 🛠️🇺🇸 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Duh? This only works for people who like me work from home i.e. parasites. Then again there's no legal reason that people who build caterpillar tractors can't live next to work in a container. Other than the Constitution.

[–]stickdog[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Excerpt:

Is there a global conspiracy to confine people to “15-minute cities”? At the recent UK local elections, MPs and councillors heard this message from voters. The commitment of a growing number of cities such as Bristol, Ipswich, London, Birmingham and Oxford to limit car usage in particular districts and neighbourhoods has been seized upon by the paranoid as further evidence of a “Great Reset” directed by the economic elites of Davos that uses climate change as an excuse for social regimentation. In parliament the Conservative MP Nick Fletcher denounced the 15-minute city as an “international socialist concept”.

It may not be international socialism, but the concept has been embraced by many on the centre-left, including the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, comprised of nearly a hundred city governments around the world: “In a ‘15-minute city’, everyone is able to meet most, if not all, of their needs within a short walk or bike ride from their home.”

Although the name is new, the concept is not. A recurrent goal of urban reformers, from proponents of the “garden city” in the 1900s to advocates of “transit-oriented development” in the late 20th century, has been the creation of car-free, village-like environments in which most places could be accessed on foot or on bicycles, with mass transit for longer journeys.

The idea of the 15-minute city sounds appealing. Who wouldn’t want to have everything they need – work, healthcare, education, shops, leisure – within a short walk of their front door? But only brief reflection is needed to demonstrate how impractical the idea is. Consider work. The majority of Americans in the private sector work for companies with more than 500 employees. Some of these firms, such as coffeehouse and drugstore chains, may have establishments in many neighbourhoods, but other jobs require employees to commute to a central office or warehouse or store. Even if more firms adopt a hybrid model, allowing employees to often work from home and sometimes requiring them to join colleagues in a physical office, that hybrid office is unlikely to be within walking or bicycle distance of most workers.

Mere access to public transport is not enough. A Brookings Institution study found that only around 30 per cent of potential jobs were accessible to American urban residents using mass transit – even with 90-minute commutes each way. Experimental voucher programmes by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development showed that low-income workers with access to cars were twice as likely to get jobs and four times as likely to remain employed. Except in a few of the world’s densest cities, such as New York, Tokyo and Paris, public transport is no substitute for the speed and convenience of point-to-point travel in an individual vehicle.

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