I love a good conspiracy theory, the loonier the better. I like trying to understand what kernel of "truth" they are based on. So for example - Flat Earth: the kernel of "truth" is "Gee, Bob it sure does look flat" also I think the true "believers" like to throw in some misquoted scripture for good measure.
With a lot of the others you can see where people have tried to put 2 and 2 together and got "Satanic Lizard" as the answer.
But the nonsense around "15 minute cities" I just don't get? Apparently having more corner shops means we'll end up in Hunger Games style dystopia, all assigned to our "zones".
Somehow the WEF is involved, or is it the WWE or the WWF?
Does anyone know why a basic urban planning idea has attracted such nonsense? Is anyone actually concerned about it?
Are we just in a place now where everything can be a conspiracy?
Should I just spend less time on Facebook?
You forgot about social credits and the government being able to disable your car at the push of a button
A pillock decided that trying to limit people driving around in the city was actually an outright ban, and people would be blocked into their zone for life. Or something.Does anyone know why a basic urban planning idea has attracted such nonsense?
It seemed to start during Covid, along with the other paranoia.
Oxford are bringing new traffic control measures in, residents will need to apply for a permit to allow them to pass through these zones, limited to 100 days per year. The whole of the city is still accessible by car, you just have use a different route. The computer modelling has shown it will reduce pollution, congestion and public transport journey times.
It has got some people in meltdown.
FWIW I live in a "15 minute city". We have a supermarket, GP, swimming pool, leisure centre, pubs, restaurants and school, all within a 15 minute walk. It's a coastal village.
The ones that are giving me the most fun currently:
1. You can't fit that much fuel into a airliner. This is often accompanied by a picture of a large static farm diesel fuel tank and then a line drawing of a plane, I've no idea (even after asking) what the actual conspiracy here is. Something something chem-trails?
2. The cold weather the US is experiencing right now is either because Leviathan is waking up, or it is to prevent Leviathan from waking up. This ones often has pictures of a sand bank off the coast of the US, which TBF, if you squint does look like the head of a giant crocodile.
I think the 15 minutes city thing is because you're going to be restricted to your city zone by the Globalist's New World Order, and they're just softening you up, you sheeple.
I think Flat Earth is one of ones that appears at first to be harmless, but is in fact one of the the more dangerous ones.
I really need to listen to fewer podcasts about this stuff.
I know a lot of it seems to be centered on Oxford, but a 15 minute scheme in Glasgow seem to have triggered similar conspiracy nonsense.
Open a map of Europe and pick a city at random, its probably a 15 minute city as most of Europe's cities are built around dense urban housing, like mid rise apartments, rather than single dwelling suburban sprawl.
My wife's family are from Brasov, Romania and despite having half the population of Glasgow its probably less than a fifth of Glasgow's size. It does have an proper city centre, but shops and services are just built into the fabric of all the little districts so its more like a 10 minute city.
People still drive everywhere though.
You can't fit that much fuel into a airliner. This is often accompanied by a picture of a large static farm diesel fuel tank and then a line drawing of a plane, I've no idea (even after asking) what the actual conspiracy here is. Something something chem-trails?
The "Jet Fuel Hoax" is an absolute belter. I think that planes are actually supposed to run on fresh air and the fuel tanks are just for the chemtrails.
Oxford are bringing new traffic control measures in, residents will need to apply for a permit to allow them to pass through these zones, limited to 100 days per year
Sorry what?!
Conspirary loons are loons, but this sounds like an absolutely mental case of council overreach
It’s defensive knee-jerk drivers that are scared that their freedom* is going to be limited and they are going to be forced to walk everywhere or mix with the great unwashed on a bus. So they go on the attack.
*freedom - needing to buy, maintain, insure, tax and fuel a vehicle (or two) and then rage about driving standards, pot holes, the great unwashed impeding their progress, parking and traffic jams, rather than accepting that it would be great if the schools and shops were within a 15 minute pleasant walk and you only need to use the sacred car if you need/want to.
By pure coincidence, this was just uploaded.
It explains the new driving permits and looks at the press interpretation.
The "Jet Fuel Hoax" is an absolute belter. I think that planes are actually supposed to run on fresh air and the fuel tanks are just for the chemtrails.
No, I think it's that 'they' have invented something that doesn't need fuel, but won't tell us. There was a video of a bloke trying to work out how big the fuel tanks were on Concorde, getting it wrong by several orders of magnitude, so thus explaining why jet engines couldn't work.
Sorry what?!
Conspirary loons are loons, but this sounds like an absolutely mental case of council overreach
You would probably need to get someone from Oxford to explain is properly but from what I understand, the traffic restrictions are to stop you driving through the city, you can still drive around the city on the ring road any day you like. There is absolute no restriction how and where you enter the city if you aren't in a car.
The people who scream that nothing is local now and everyone has to travel to work, a Dr , shop or other facilities. Remembering the old days if saying good morning to the GP and Vicar as they stroll for their morning paper, passing the butchers as a rascally terrier runs out with string of sausages.
Well they are against councils and governments investing in logical amnesties as they think it’s means Judge Dredd type Megacities.
Oxford are bringing new traffic control measures in, residents will need to apply for a permit to allow them to pass through these zones, limited to 100 days per year
Sorry what?!
Conspirary loons are loons, but this sounds like an absolutely mental case of council overreach
Glasgow has installed one way streets and no entry bollards to make it virtually impossible to drive across the city centre IIRC. You can drive in from any side but have to return to the same side. Want to drive across you have to use one of the main orbital roads
It’s defensive knee-jerk drivers that are scared that their freedom* is going to be limited and they are going to be forced to walk everywhere or mix with the great unwashed on a bus. So they go on the attack.
*freedom - needing to buy, maintain, insure, tax and fuel a vehicle (or two) and then rage about driving standards, pot holes, the great unwashed impeding their progress, parking and traffic jams, rather than accepting that it would be great if the schools and shops were within a 15 minute pleasant walk and you only need to use the sacred car if you need/want to.
My parents, having given up their car anyway, got sucked into the 15 minute city rabbit hole, convinced cities would have locked gates every mile or so to keep people trapped in their zone.
I pointed out that within 15 minutes of their house they could reach a Tesco Express, two hairdressers, an Indian, a Chinese, a pizza place, two doctors surgeries, a pharmacy, a pub, a decent cafe, a primary school and a small industrial estate for employment, as well as (ok, occassional) buses to get you to places for other stuff, which is why they didn't need a car. The penny dropped.
According to the stupid person with the newspapers you will be charged every time you leave your 15 minute zone. Why can't these ****s find religion like nutters did in the old days.
On the subject of conspiracy theories I live in Somerset. Been taking a lot of photos of the flooding while out on my bike .
One woman commented " Our weather is controlled "
I replied " Yes by Mother Nature"
She replied " No by haaarp and chem trails I suggest you do your research"
WTF is haaarp? I've asked her for her source but have yet to get a response 🤔
High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
One woman commented " Our weather is controlled "
I replied " Yes by Mother Nature"
She replied " No by haaarp and chem trails I suggest you do your research"
WTF is haaarp? I've asked her for her source but have yet to get a response
Weirdly the people that insist our weather is controlled by chem trails also think that climate change is a hoax.
You would probably need to get someone from Oxford to explain is properly but from what I understand, the traffic restrictions are to stop you driving through the city, you can still drive around the city on the ring road any day you like. There is absolute no restriction how and where you enter the city if you aren't in a car.
Not from Oxford, but do the odd bit of work there. Was surprised to find Vans are exempt from the congestion charge. Possibly the only time, aside the tax implications a van has been less cost than a car.
A nice change from fun like getting fined for driving a Transit Connect through the Rotherhive tunnel each way (2 fines).
WTF is haaarp?
Live album by MUSE.
Leeds is pretty much stopping all traffic going through the city centre apart from buses and taxis. They're doing by installing 'bus gates' so if you drive down there you get a fine. Seems a perfectly good idea to me. I'd much prefer more pedestrianisation.
Oxford are bringing new traffic control measures in, residents will need to apply for a permit to allow them to pass through these zones, limited to 100 days per year. The whole of the city is still accessible by car, you just have use a different route.
The Oxford thing is a bit nuts, if you have a van you can drive through any of the zones for free or if you use a personal car for business 'goods vehicle' you can apply for free as well. Not sure what the fuss is about.
Should I just spend less time on Facebook?
Yes. Leave the morons to it.
The end.
You're welcome (to go and do something less boring instead)
The negative feelings toward the plan does have some merit.
The UK has a history of using the stick, rather than the carrot when it comes to a lot of things and Transport is one of those things.
We all know that since the 60s society / economy, whatever you want to call it was built around personal transport - cars mostly, and we all know it's gone too far, we just don't have the space or infrastructure and the inefficiency of everyone having their own car has caused the environment untold damage.
We need to change direction, getting millions of people to give up or even just reduce their use of cars is going to be unpopular, cars are frankly brilliant. A comfy, climate controlled vehicle that's just outside your house is waaay nicer then a cramped, too hot or too cold Bus or Train that probably isn't available exactly when you want, probably doesn't go exactly where you want it to, and will likely take longer.
Some measures have been taken to make it a bit better, better trains, better buses, a few cycle lanes etc, but they're few and far between.
IMHO a lot more measures have been taken to make it better by comparison, reduced speed limits, anti-congestion measures, increased taxation etc.
If we weren't skint, we could replace the sort of train network we lost after the Beeching Report, nationalise transport as a Public Service, not as a for-profit product etc, but despite some words, nothing much has come from it.
So, 15 min cities, aka 'the third option' instead of trying to replace personal transport, make it obsolete or less necessary maybe, everything within a short distance you can walk or cycle to. No more massive out-of-town stores, superhub Dr surgeries or even commuting. Sleep, Work and 'live' all within a small area. Village life on a grand scale. Sounds quite nice. I personally just don't trust anyone to use the carrot, I don't believe they'll put the work and money into making it nice, they'll do it with the stick. They may not build walls and gates you can see, they'll be financial ones.
Not to mention, high rises aside, this seems close to the 'streets in the sky' plan from the 1960s - Governments trying to create a artificial utopia which quickly turned to shit.
I personally just don't trust anyone to use the carrot, I don't believe they'll put the work and money into making it nice, they'll do it with the stick. They may not build walls and gates you can see, they'll be financial ones.
The problem is that in the short term, you need the stick. Partly because it can be used to fund better public or active transport, partly because if you try and put more buses on, they'll simply get stuck in all the traffic that is now everywhere all the time. We've reached a stage where we can;t maintain what we have (roads or rail) because everything is so busy all the time. As soon as you need to repair anything, the entire network grinds to a halt, there is no resilience or leeway in it any more.
But there's been no long-term planning, no strategy, no real gameplan. We (the country) are now building houses everywhere we can with desperate urgency to supply ever more houses but there's no thought gone into "where will these people go to school, where will they shop, how will they travel...?" because everyone is just whacking houses into any old field and the result is that everyone will drive everywhere.
That'll be fun on the roads... 🙄
15 minutes cities are great where they can work. West end of Glasgow for example. High housing density is the main thing so the population required to support services and shops is in a small area. Nothing new. When I lived there in the 1980s I could cycle to work in 15m and walk to either the city centre or Byres Rd within 15m. Minimart and pubs were 5 minutes walk. Great public transport as well.
Other areas where people have houses and gardens and low density housing it is more of a struggle. I am 20 minutes or more walk where I am now from anything apart from a corner shop. The car gets loads of use. Of course not being in the inner city also means we can use cars without congestion.
Incidentally - Glasgoew can block city centre through routes because of the foresight of 1960s city planners who built the M8 motorway to remove traffic from the surface streets through routes in the city. Pity they never built it all.
What’s the stick here?
A slight reduction in the thousands of miles of unrestricted roads to try and reduce gridlock in economically important areas? Isn’t a working road network and vibrant successful cities a carrot?
Or what about some successful residential areas no longer being a desert in terms of culture, services, food, trade? Aren’t new closer better amenities a carrot?
In the supermarket I overheard a lady talking about AI, then loitered to hear more.
She was saying that schools want children to use it so that they don’t have to learn and that they will be kept ignorant. I was thinking that the school was teaching them how to use large language models, because people are probably going to need to know how.
then she was was talking about how her son asked a LLM to write a synopsis of her. It was incomplete, so she made the assumption that it was filtering key information to keep people in the dark.
She kept saying “they” and “them” a lot.
15 minute cities about The Them controlling us. It ties in nicely with “ you will own nothing and be happy” thing
Things Fell Apart podcast is an interesting listen. It’s more about disinformation than conspiracy theories
We all know that since the 60s society / economy, whatever you want to call it was built around personal transport - cars mostly, and we all know it's gone too far, we just don't have the space or infrastructure and the inefficiency of everyone having their own car has caused the environment untold damage.
...Not to mention, this seems close to the 'streets in the sky' plan from the 1960s - Governments trying to create a artificial utopia which quickly turned to shit.
Except 'streets in the sky' was the attempt to make a city work WITH everyone driving cars, by rebuilding the city above the roads. It didn't work, although theres a degree to which you could argue that's exactly what the modern shopping mall is. It seems people really like car free spaces, and have no trouble walking long distances from their car to the shops. The other thing that comes to mind is CentreParks - again, a car free space where everything is within walking distance.
Yet when there are attempts to return our towns and villages to something more like that we have outrage. Suddenly people have to be able to stop directly outside every shop.
Some measures have been taken to make it a bit better, better trains, better buses, a few cycle lanes etc, but they're few and far between.
IMHO a lot more measures have been taken to make it better by comparison, reduced speed limits, anti-congestion measures, increased taxation etc.
So reduced speed limits are an anti congestion, anti pollution and safety measure. Motorways flow better at restricted speed (m25), cars produce fewer bad emissions (Birmingham), fewer people die (20mph)
Increased taxation is just not true - costs of motoring have gone up by less than costs of public transport in the last 10 years and even more significantly in the 10 years before that.
But regardless, theres a shitload of evidence that public transport vs car use isn't influence that much by costs. Even where public transport has been made free, car use doesn't drop massively (if public transport I s free people do use it more, but they don't stop driving). Yes, it should be cheaper, and driving/parking should be more expensive but that's not all you need to do to change behaviour. 
The UK has a history of using the stick, rather than the carrot when it comes to a lot of things and Transport is one of those things.
That, based on what's above, just doesn't seem to be the case. And regardless, research shows you NEED a lot of stick
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(22)00220-0/fulltext
So, 15 min cities, aka 'the third option' instead of trying to replace personal transport, make it obsolete or less necessary maybe, everything within a short distance you can walk or cycle to. No more massive out-of-town stores, superhub Dr surgeries or even commuting. Sleep, Work and 'live' all within a small area. Village life on a grand scale. Sounds quite nice. I personally just don't trust anyone to use the carrot, I don't believe they'll put the work and money into making it nice, they'll do it with the stick. They may not build walls and gates you can see, they'll be financial ones.
and that's where you conflate sensible planning aim [don't build car dependent cities, create mixed development, where there are workplaces and industry local to where people live] into a conspiracy theory - 'even commuting. Sleep work and live within a small area' which is not what anyone is actually suggesting or planning.
The key feature of the places that are implementing circulation plans (ie replanning access for private motor vehicles so that town centre roads are not used for through route] - London, Bath, Oxford - already have very walkable centres where shopping, leisure and workplaces are intermingled. They are easy to get around by walking cycling or public transport but people arent going to do that if it's not safe and comfortable because of the volume of motor vehicles.
15 minute places are ace though I can't think of many proper 15 minute cities. Lots of towns though.
Bourg Saint Maurice, on foot in 15 mins: swimming pool, cinema, mediateque, funiculaire to a ski resort, station, bus station (with busses to Tigne and Val), town hall, hospital, DIY store, Bike shop, ski and outdoor shops, several supermarkets, rapid car chargers (and a petrol station), nice walks, MTB trails, bike path, recycling centre.
As for all the other consiracy bollocks, well it's bollocks but some people seem to love it, it seems to have replaced religion or compliments it in some peoples heads.
Where I live has had roads closed and parking restricted. Its made it a much more pleasant place to live and you can see far more people on the streets walking around and just chilling
you also need to remember that car use is the minority of journeys in most cities but occupies the vast majority of space
Is that Leith, TJ ? There was an article in the Guardian yesterday or the day before, as you say, people friendly.
Theory: 15 minute cities.
Reality: Northstowe a new town with 2 schools, no shop, no doctors, no industrial buildings so no employment, 6ish years in and half the roads have recently had tarmac applied. The only shop is in my village that is surrounded by the new town.
Yes, this relates to phase 1 of the build, but I've been in this house for 17 years and there is little sign of any real infrastructure being built, aside from the 2 schools of course.
The BEST thing about Flat earthers, was the graffiti on the A1(M) where they spelled Earth wrong when spraying a sign with Flat Erath - Genius!
Most UK inner cities are like this tbh. I live in an area of Bristol where I am less than a 10 minute walk from supermarkets, pubs, doctors, schools, pharmacies, parks, hairdressers, you name it.
It's great! Need garlic for dinner tonight? Nip to Tesco, back in 10 minutes.
My only real gripe is that the bakery gets very busy on a saturday morning.
Absolutely agree about the newbuild estates though. They are popping up all round the outskirts of most towns and cities, and there appears to be a distinct lack of joined up thinking going on, plus a bare minimum spend by the housebuilding companies. It's going to be messy once all the houses are occupied.
Is that Leith, TJ ? There was an article in the Guardian yesterday or the day before, as you say, people friendly.
yes it is.
New builds can be done properly using planning gain. Granton waterfront is a huge development the size of a decent sized town. In order to get planning permission for all the new housing the builders have had to put in facilities - new schools, shopping, health centres parks etc etc
But then on the south of the city we have those depressing new build estates with nothing
If we weren't skint, we could replace the sort of train network we lost after the Beeching Report, nationalise transport as a Public Service, not as a for-profit product etc, but despite some words, nothing much has come from it.
rail is kind of really expensive to build though, and you have to buy peoples houses and knock them down and all that
but. are we still on local(ish) transport? a mahoosive increase in bus routes and busses to service them would be a better option and vaguely achievable in the foreseeable future, particularly in any given city of a moderate size. bus lanes. bus only roads. bus stops everywhere. bus stations. busses akimbo. bus madness.
probably a conspiracy in that already.
The "Jet Fuel Hoax" is an absolute belter. I think that planes are actually supposed to run on fresh air and the fuel tanks are just for the chemtrails.
I just lost fifteen points of IQ even reading that sentence.
The article on Leith, it intrigued me enough to have a virtual walk around the place on Google Earth.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/jan/27/leith-edinburgh-culinary-cultural-hub
I think Flat Earth is one of ones that appears at first to be harmless, but is in fact one of the the more dangerous ones.
There's a guy on YouTube, SciManDan who does a lot of Flat Earth debunking. This is a good recent video of his, explains why it's not harmless and why / how people get into it:
Absolutely agree about the newbuild estates though. They are popping up all round the outskirts of most towns and cities, and there appears to be a distinct lack of joined up thinking going on, plus a bare minimum spend by the housebuilding companies. It's going to be messy once all the houses are occupied.
There are a number of challenges in this area.
1) Desperation for new build means planning regs and requirements are relaxed a bit, anything to get houses built. So you can bang up identikit tat everywhere quickly with no provision for anything other than the basic accommodation and a road in and out. (doesn't help either that a lot of what is being built is low-density, the sort of 2-up, 2-down semi with a driveway that planners assume everyone wants but which makes it very difficult to achieve the population density for a truly workable 15-min city concept).
2) Bus companies (already stretched to breaking point) are unwilling to put in a bus route to a half-occupied estate cos there'll be very few people wanting to use it. They'd rather wait until it's full, then think about provision. The problem is that by the time it's full, everyone has already settled into their routine of driving everywhere for everything.
3) The same happens with shops - no-one wants to open any shops (or schools / GP / leisure centre etc) while the place is still being built and people are still moving in. So by the time the estate is built, there's little space for anything else and, as before, everyone has got used to driving everywhere for everything. So the few shops that do open are invariably the tacky little corner shop type places with inflated prices for everything.
So you've created this scenario where everyone drives everywhere, the local roads can't cope, the local buses get snarled up in all the congestion and then you need to try and undo it all by using the sticks (bus gates, fines, LTNs, School Streets, retrospective installation of cycle lanes...)
Edukator - that article is a bit odd as it does not really cover the Shore area well which is where many of the changes have occurred and concentrates more on the arty / expensive stuff not the stuff that is free.
This is where a lot of the action from trainspotting occurred and when I moved here 35 years ago there were hookers on the street corners, the roads were used as rat runs and some of the pubs were pretty dangerous places
Some measures have been taken to make it a bit better, better trains, better buses, a few cycle lanes etc, but they're few and far between.
IMHO a lot more measures have been taken to make it better by comparison, reduced speed limits, anti-congestion measures, increased taxation etc.
(agreeing with you) What really winds me up is the "stick" measures that are accompanied with absolutely no alternatives. Congestion charging has worked pretty well in London because public transport is robust - particularly in the last 10 years as the Overground has become better joined up with the underground. So people have shifted en masse away from cars onto those alternatives.
But in other places, this idea of having ULEZ, or things like passes to drive on certain roads, where there isn't the alternative, is absolutely rank. You see it in Dublin: unless you're going into the centre the public transport is utter crap - things like one bus an hour (if the driver can be bothered), no trains on bank holidays, meaning there's no alternative to driving.
Crazylegs - it doesn't have to be like that ( tho it often is) Granton waterfront shows a very different picture tho small shops are scarce
(doesn't help either that a lot of what is being built is low-density, the sort of 2-up, 2-down semi with a driveway that planners assume everyone wants but which makes it very difficult to achieve the population density for a truly workable 15-min city concept).
the prevailing attitude I hear in many places like here and with a similar demographic of well off homeowners is that new build estates are all "tiny shoeboxes with postage stamp gardens"
so...uh... whats the solution?
when I moved here 35 years ago there were hookers on the street corners, the roads were used as rat runs and some of the pubs were pretty dangerous places
I moved to the prosperous bourgeois town of Pau 34 years ago and there were hookers on street corners (or sitting by a red light in the window), the route nationale went right through the center, some of the bars I gave a wide berth and riots were common in la cité. It's pedestrianised now but I quite miss seeing the hookers, one got murdered. 🙁
This is where a lot of the action from trainspotting occurred and when I moved here 35 years ago there were hookers on the street corners, the roads were used as rat runs and some of the pubs were pretty dangerous places
I started working for a Leith based offshore shipping company in 1990.
The "gentrification" had just started, there were quite trendy real ale bars and restaurants, mixed with old school sailor bars, like the Drawbridge and the Port of Leith. The hookers seemed to get most of their business off the truck drivers.
One night, one of the lads took me to some of the other places, one was at the foot of a tower block. That was an eyeopener that night!
Funnily enough, we used to wander around Leith and regularly up and down Leith Walk into Edinburgh and I never got any trouble. The same could not be said of my native North East England!
Facebook now feeds me this stuff and I know I should resist wallowing in the stupid, but sometimes I just can't.
Here's today best responses
With all due respect.While your comments could have perhaps held some water a few years ago..And in particular the 15 minuete city referance..However In this particular case you are on the wrong side of history as it were..I dont need or feel that i have to elaborate or for that matter provide the overwhelming amount of information and interest this subject attracts.Should you be bothered to do even a minimal amount of reaserch you could educate yourself, so not to fall into the trap of making assumptions about something you obviously no nothing about. But still need to have your say via this particular medium. But i also have no doubt you spend many an-hour typing away repeating your misinformed inaccurate nonsense. With this in mind, the most appropriate way to finish my post to you is with these words. Put together by a much more intelligent, and person substance than you will ever be..."You Can Lie About The Facts, But You Cant Lie About The Consequences Of The Facts"n
actually the surveillance is already there...I have a friend that works in that area, its worse than China...and if you did just basic research, I don't no like read WEF 2030 agenda manifesto, or say listen to some of the 'professionals' and talks from Davos, or bill gates, or read the book covid 19 by klaus swaubb...you may get it...or you may carry on in your little bubble, and comply with everything...remember a dog will react if you suddenly tighten and shorten their chain...but a link at time? They barely notice...what this is called is conditioning..like they admitted covid 19 was at Davos...so how obedient are you?
No more facebook today I promise 😀
Some measures have been taken to make it a bit better, better trains, better buses, a few cycle lanes etc, but they're few and far between.
IMHO a lot more measures have been taken to make it better by comparison, reduced speed limits, anti-congestion measures, increased taxation etc.
Congestion charging has worked pretty well in London because public transport is robust...You see it in Dublin: unless you're going into the centre the public transport is utter crap - things like one bus an hour (if the driver can be bothered), no trains on bank holidays, meaning there's no alternative to driving.
I don't know Dublin well enough to comment but in London the process was the other way around: the congestion charge (to reduce traffic demand) and a huge amount of street engineering (to prioritise buses and bikes and pedestrians, and improve traffic flow) was necessary to make public transport more robust.
A "consumer choice" modal shift where car drivers decide that taking public transport is cheaper, quicker and more comfortable isnt gonna happen without a stick that makes driving more expensive and slower, and frees up road space.
"You Can Lie About The Facts, But You Cant Lie About The Consequences Of The Facts
Yeah you can. You just did!
No more facebook today I promise
I deleted it last year. It really is utter garbage
All the algorithm does is push right wing garbage, conspiracy nonsense etc to my feed, despite, or perhaps because, these things being the polar opposite to what I actually believe.
95% of posts in my feed were from people or groups I don't follow. I rarely saw anything from people I actually know. The entire thing is based around triggering people with rage to keep them interacting.
My wellbeing is genuinely significantly improved since I ditched it
Even Facebook Marketplace isn't any good any more. There's no normal people selling their own stuff - it's all traders.
There's only been one occasion I've heard '15 minutes cities' being brought up in conversation in real life.
It was in the co-op down the road where the lady serving at a till was loudly having a moan about it (method of controling us etc etc) loudly to a customer.
Her last comment to him was to, 'look it all up on Facebook'.
I really don't like SM.
(As far as I'm concerned STW is a community, not a SM platform, thank goodness.)
15 minute places are ace though I can't think of many proper 15 minute cities. Lots of towns though
Well, I live, literally a stone’s throw from what used to be the A350 trunk route from the M4 down to the South Coast, and was effectively the outer edge of town when I was growing up. At a brisk walk, it’s a twenty minute walk into the centre of town! It was a small market town, not a city, but it’s expanded dramatically, a bypass has been built, now being dualled, so all the new residents, ie those over the last twenty-odd years, all shop outside of town, because that’s where the supermarkets are.
Having said that, there’s a decent size Tesco Express in town, but that’s about it.
Things Fell Apart podcast is an interesting listen. It’s more about disinformation than conspiracy theories
And it is this episode I believe that covers the origins of the 15 minute city IIRC: BBC Audio | Things Fell Apart | S2. Ep 7: You’ll Own Nothing and You’ll Be Happy
I live in a little town called Brighouse and can get almost anything I need within 15 mins, apart from, maybe fashion, but as it's Brighouse that's irrelevant. I love it, especially not having to get my van out unless I'm going to work.
We aren't far from the train station so easy to go further afield on the train, including the airport. There's even a nice young man on an electric bike who delivers drugs to a chap round the corner to save him travelling more than 15 mins 🙂
At the moment we are undergoing a bit of disruption as they pedestrianise parts of town but in the future the bars and cafe's will be able to expand outside.
I do agree with the congestion charge idea for some town/city centres but I have a complaint about my hometown of Bradford. They have included the ring road all the way out almost to Bingley. Wherever else I go the Ulez allows me to at least go around the city.
“She kept saying “they” and “them” a lot.”
This is a thing nowadays apparently, and you can lose your job for not complying….. 😉
Here's today best responses
when anyone starts a reply with "with all due respect" at least you you know exactly what's coming next
Crazylegs - it doesn't have to be like that ( tho it often is) Granton waterfront shows a very different picture tho small shops are scarce
Oh I know it *shouldn't* be like that but it is (mostly) like that because we paint ourselves into a corner in terms of housebuilding, location etc, create a load of people who have little option but to drive for all their amenities, shopping etc and then wonder why there are so many people driving.
The conspiracy part arises (or is bolstered by) any measures to deter driving because people associate driving with freedom, so "they" are trying to stop you driving, "they" want to take your freedom away, "they" will stop you going more than 15 minutes from your house.
Am I the only one who thought this was going to be about really short city breaks?
In many ways we've got the society "they" wanted because "we" are complicit. When "they" built out of town stores "we" stopped using more expensive local shops where it was difficult to park (and God forbid "we" walk). When "we" complained about the traffic that generated "they" built ring roads and express roads. When "we" complained about local taxes and voted for cuts "they" made them. Ultimately "we" are responsible.
On this forum several are upset that in-town Alpkit stores can't compete with Decathlon's superstores supplied by Decathlon running goods trains direct from China, but happily buy from decathlon. "They" didn't force us to Internet shop, "we" chose to. Nobody forces me to use own/use our car but "we" do and this morning it'll get used to drive to horse riding because on about 50% of the trips we're not motivated enough to ride the bikes there and arrive wet. And so on.
Greed, convenience and laziness has got "us" here
Greed, convenience and laziness has got "us" here
and weak town planning.
the netherlands limits supermarket sizes in town centres and bans them in out of town shopping centres with the result their town centres are not dead like ours
the netherlands limits supermarket sizes in town centres and bans them in out of town shopping centres with the result their town centres are not dead like ours
Quite often in Spain, you'll see a supermarket built with 3 or 4 floors of apartments on top. So instead of a warehouse style building with a load of wasted roof space, you get a good bit of living space and a ready made set of customers for the shop.
It's why cities that are predominantly office space in the centre fared so badly during Covid. There's a whole ecosystem of cafes, takeaways etc built up on the basis of that transient daily population of people coming in, working, going home but no-one actually living there.
You need multi-use spaces; everything should be built with a mix of residential, work, leisure, shopping, dining etc. not just massive swathe of identikit semi-detached houses.
and weak town planning.
Throw in a bit of Nimby-ism to that analysis as well. I used to live in Hebden. Sainsbury's wanted to open a smaller supermarket on an other-wise derelict bit of land in the centre of town, there was a massive campaign to prevent it happening based mostly on them, well, being Sainsbury's and not a local store. In the meantime, the 'local' grocer went bust because they couldn't compete with the Co-Op supermarket (somehow doesn't suffer the same hostility), and the land is still derelict.
The public - can't please them - can't shoot them in the face.
Does anyone know why a basic urban planning idea has attracted such nonsense? Is anyone actually concerned about it?
Are we just in a place now where everything can be a conspiracy?
Should I just spend less time on Facebook?
I’ve never met anyone in real life who has ever even mentioned it never mind suggested it as a conspiracy! I have also never seen virtually no conspiracy theory stuff (of any sort) on Facebook, and very little politics, their algorithm feeds you stuff it “thinks” you like engaging with. You don’t need to spend less time there - just less time reading posts from headbangers!
Like a lot of parents, we're in a whatsapp group with other parents in the class. That's the only place I see conspiracy stuff hinted at.. e.g. Please sign this petitition against Digital ID (linked via a dodgy right wing website) or watch out for this person near the kids playground, with little information on whats happened other than "i heard this from someone"
a facebook local group had acouple of 15min City conspiracy nuts on it
This is an interesting site to show what's 15 minutes walk from somewhere of your choosing.
15 mins gets me most places in the relatively small market town I live in, but not the secondary school or the doctors. 20 mins gets me pretty much everything.
Quite often in Spain, you'll see a supermarket built with 3 or 4 floors of apartments on top.
Spanish towns and cities, especially those not so touristy, are very dense. The vast majority of people live in flats and English style housing estates are rare. Pampelona, Lugo, Burgos, Léon... are just a wall of typical 6 to 10 storey buildings as you approach. Fewer people have cars and it's quite possible to live without one as everything you need is nearby. Living in Sitges and working in Barcelona the car was a non-essential used only on occasional weekends for leisure.
Of the places I've lived the south Birmingham suburbs were the most devoid of local services and the place living without a car was the most difficult partly because using a bike has always felt suicidal - over an hour to walk to a swimming pool (Sparkhill or Solihull baths). Aberystwyth was good, Aberaeron not bad, Pau excellent, BSM good, Sitges good, Munster good, Nancy excellent... .
Living in Sitges and working in Barcelona the car was a non-essential used only on occasional weekends for leisure.
Same, I live in a suburb of Manchester, I already live in a 15 minute environment. There's nothing I can't get locally including my GP -literally across the road, a supermarket -again across the road the other way, 2 bike shops etc etc and a tram station to get further afield if I need to. Now, personally I hate living in a city, but it's obviously got upsides.
After reading this thread I think I must live in one of these "15 minute cities" well, 10 minute, and not a city. A coastal village with 3 primary schools, 1 secondary school, a football club, a cricket club, a supermarket, numerous eateries, hardware shop, post office, a doctors, a vets, dentist, pet shop, cafes, butchers, green grocers, 11 boozers, an industrial estate, a leisure centre, a train station and all the other usual bits n bobs like charity shops, bakers, vintage shops, barbers, key cutters etc. Beach on my doorstep, local off piste trail laden woods a 10 minute bike ride away.
Works well for me WFH full time, meant we could get rid of one of our cars saving us around 400pm (finance, tax, insurance) and despite it being a faff if I ever do need to go anywhere mid week outside of the village when the other halfs using the car for work, everything I need is in walking distance
But yeah conspiracies can be mad and the strings pulled together to justify them, I used to love going down the rabbit holes on youtube back in the day before they tweaked the algorithm to stop pushing them so much. MK Ultra, Hollow earth, 9/11 inside job, deep state, kalergi plan, weather control, illuminati, celebrity cloning, and my favourites always been big foot. Never believed any of them, just enjoyed the content.
For some reason around the time covid kicked off and the anti vaxxers went nuts I got the ick with it all.
anyone who studied Ograde/StandardGrade/Nat5 geography in Scotland will have considered the consequences of the exact opposite of 15 minute cities - when slum tenement residents were shipped off to outskirts with zero facilities. The people in my life most likely to jump on a 15 minute cities are bad bandwagon (who aren’t proper tinfoil hat wearers) are my in laws. They are the sort of gullible types who would read something in the daily express and believe it is fact. However they might see through the arguments as they complain their small town is sprawling with no facilities, and has lost its community spirit as it’s just a commuter dormitory for Edinburgh!I know a lot of it seems to be centered on Oxford, but a 15 minute scheme in Glasgow seem to have triggered similar conspiracy nonsense.
Open a map of Europe and pick a city at random, its probably a 15 minute city as most of Europe's cities are built around dense urban housing, like mid rise apartments, rather than single dwelling suburban sprawl.
My wife's family are from Brasov, Romania and despite having half the population of Glasgow its probably less than a fifth of Glasgow's size. It does have an proper city centre, but shops and services are just built into the fabric of all the little districts so its more like a 10 minute city.
People still drive everywhere though.
Leeds is pretty much stopping all traffic going through the city centre apart from buses and taxis. They're doing by installing 'bus gates' so if you drive down there you get a fine. Seems a perfectly good idea to me. I'd much prefer more pedestrianisation.
TBF they made Leeds awful to drive round in the 1970s?
(doesn't help either that a lot of what is being built is low-density, the sort of 2-up, 2-down semi with a driveway that planners assume everyone wants but which makes it very difficult to achieve the population density for a truly workable 15-min city concept).
I think the recent guidance about presumption of approval for building within a certain distance of rail/tram stops mandates higher densities
Conspirary loons are loons, but this sounds like an absolutely mental case of council overreach
As above, you can still drive from one side of Oxford to the other, you juts can't go through the city centre to do it. It's apparently had pretty spectacular positive effects on bus journey times etc. in the two months since it's been running, and this is with a pretty small enforcement zone.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/ca04d9f2caca421a8a1b426eb9f1d3ef
Nic Laporte - 15 Min City in the Netherlands.
This guy has quite a few good videos on YT about sustainable travel, bikes in general, cycling around Vancouver and Netherlands.
15 minute places are ace though I can't think of many proper 15 minute cities.
Paris is a good approximation, being to some extent a conglomeration of 15-minute cities in the form of arrondissements. If someone had carved out our arrondissement and dumped it in the countryside it would have been a well equipped small town.